The next resident was an artist, poet, and politician. Mr. William James Linton was born at Mile-End Road in the east of London in 1812; his father was of Scotch extraction. After apprenticeship to a wood engraver at Kennington, he worked for the _Illustrated London News_, and mixed with artists and authors of the Liberal and advanced party, becoming known as a writer, editor, and lecturer of much energy on the Radical side. In 1849 he left London for Miteside in West Cumberland, and in May, 1852, moved to Brantwood; after a year's tenancy he bought the little house and estate of ten acres, to which on the enclosure of the common six acres more were added. At Brantwood he also rented the garden and field between the house and the lake, and kept cows, sheep, and poultry; he anticipated Ruskin in clearing part of the land and cultivating it; in his volume of _Memories_ (Lawrence & Bullen, 1895) he records the pleasures of his country life, as well as some of the trials of that period. He had been editing, and publishing at his own expense, a monthly magazine called _The English Republic_, and this was taken up again in 1854. Two young printers and a gardener came to Brantwood and offered their services, as assistants in this work; and with their help the magazine was printed in the outhouse, which he decorated with mottoes, such as "God and the People"--still to be traced in the roughcast on the wall. But its cost, however economically produced, was more than he could afford, and the magazine was dropped in April, 1855, after which he was employed on the woodcuts for the edition of Tennyson's poems illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, and other artists of the period. He tells how Moxon came to call on him and hasten the work, but could not be received into the house owing to serious illness; and how thankful he was for a ten-pound note put into his hand by the considerate publisher as they stood at the gate. At Brantwood Miss Eliza Lynn came to nurse the first Mrs. Linton in her fatal illness, and married Mr. Linton in 1858. At Brantwood she wrote her novels _Lizzie Lorton_, _Sowing the Wind_, and _Grasp your Nettle_; also _The Lake Country_, published in 1864. Mr. Linton, in 1865, published _The Ferns of the Lake Country_, but for some years he had not lived continuously at Brantwood, and in 1866 he went to America, where he died in 1898. Mrs. Lynn Linton's best known work was _Joshua Davidson_, written later than her Coniston period; she died in London in 1898, and was buried at Crosthwaite, Keswick. Portraits and relics of the Lintons are to be seen in the Museum at Coniston. Another poet, Gerald Massey, lived for a time at Brantwood, and dated the dedication of a volume of his poems from that address in May, 1860. He, like Linton, is known for his advocacy of democratic opinions; indeed, it is said that George Eliot took him for model in _Felix Holt the Radical_.