diff options
Diffstat (limited to '17558-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/17558-h.htm | 13734 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo1.png | bin | 0 -> 2798 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo10.png | bin | 0 -> 525 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo11.png | bin | 0 -> 803 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo2.png | bin | 0 -> 1306 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo3.png | bin | 0 -> 1600 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo4.png | bin | 0 -> 2320 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo5.png | bin | 0 -> 2125 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo6.png | bin | 0 -> 2399 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo7.png | bin | 0 -> 2537 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo8.png | bin | 0 -> 2213 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 17558-h/images/illo9.png | bin | 0 -> 5730 bytes |
12 files changed, 13734 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/17558-h/17558-h.htm b/17558-h/17558-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae9aa8c --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/17558-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,13734 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Life as an Author, by Martin Farquhar Tupper. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + visibility: hidden; + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + .padtop {margin-top: 3em;} + .padbottom {margin-bottom: 3em;} + .smushtop {margin-top: 0.8em;} + .smushbottom {margin-bottom: 0.8em;} + .tabpad {padding-top: 1.2em;} + + .left {text-align: left;} + .right {text-align: right;} + .botright {text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's My Life as an Author, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Life as an Author + +Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper + +Release Date: January 20, 2006 [EBook #17558] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR *** + + + + +Produced by Stacy Brown Thellend, Robert Connal and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France +(BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h3 class="u">Martin Tupper's Autobiography</h3> + + + + +<h1 class="padtop">MY LIFE</h1> +<h2 class="padbottom">AS AN AUTHOR</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2 class="padbottom">MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER<br /> +D.C.L. F.R.S.</h2> + +<h3><i>Viri, vivo, vivam.</i></h3> + +<h3 class="padtop smushbottom">LONDON:</h3> +<h4 class="smushtop">SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON<br /> +CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET, E.C.<br /> +1886<br /> +[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table class="center" summary="contents" style="width: 60%;"> +<tbody> + +<tr><td colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Preliminary—Sonnet—Public Life, not Private—Benjamin Franklin—Samples +from Books—Self-judgment</td> <td class="botright" style="width: 15%;">1-6</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Infancy and Schooldays—Parentage—Germany and Guernsey, +America and Canada—Winsor's Patent Gaslights—King George +III.'s Blessing—My Father's Dream—Second Sight—Heredity—First +School at Brentford—Next at Brook Green—Third +Charterhouse—Dr. Russell—Parson Schoolmasters—Coins and +Hoops—Andrew Irvine—Cockshies—Harpies at the Feast—Dr. +Stocker—Holt's—M'Neile—Harold Browne</td> <td class="botright">7-25</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Young Authorship in Verse and Prose—Melite—Rough Rhymes—Carthage—Umbrella +Sapphics—Height of Honesty—Holkar +Hall—Melrose Abbey—Heidelberg—Pterodactyles—The Buckstone—Scotch +Journal—Vitrified Forts—Ireland—Kingston +Caverns—Cornish Letter and Sketches—Penzance—The Logan—Land's +End—St. Michael's Mount—Rapid Travel </td> <td class="botright">26-51</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">College Days—Voice from the Cloister—Gladstone—Aristotle Class—Giants +in those Days—Studentship—A Reading-Man—College +Larks—D.C.L.—Dr. Bliss</td> <td class="botright">52-61</td> + +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Failure as to Orders—Stammering—Blewbury Vicarage—Lincoln's +Inn—Lewin's Critique—Brodie's Cacography—Inkpen's Entomology—Duke +of Wellington—Walters'—Letter as to India—Barrister +and Benedict—A Hoax—Theodore Hook—Old Lady +Cork</td> <td class="botright">62-71</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Stammering—Man's Privilege of Speech—Chess Playing—Anecdotes—Angling—Fishing +Sonnets</td> <td class="botright">72-78</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Oxford Prize Poems—Verses in the Schools—Parodies—Rhyme and +Rhythm—Scriptural Science—Classic Parallels </td> <td class="botright">79-85</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Sundry Providences—The Small Semisuicide—A Concussion—Horse +Accidents—Perils by Land and Sea—Lydstep Cavern </td> <td class="botright">86-89</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Yet more Escapes—White Cross Guild—Evils and +Temptations—Potipheras—Heresies—Creeds </td> <td class="botright">90-94</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Fads and Fancies—Vegetarian—Teetotalism—The Anglo-Saxon—Opera +Colonnade—Moderation—America Revisited—Poem +on Temperance and Total Abstinence—Gough—Dr. Hodgkin—A +Martyr—Clerical Letter on Pharisaism</td> <td class="botright">95-104</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Sacra Poesis—Geraldine—Critiques—John and Tom Hughes—Donnington +Priory—Little Providences</td> <td class="botright">105-110</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Origin of "Proverbial Philosophy"—M'Neile and Stebbing—N. P. +Willis—Harrison Ainsworth—Hatchard's—Moxon's—Cassell's—A +Prophecy—My Father's Letter and Gift—Sixty Times—Politeuphuia—Parallels—Mr. +Orton's Volume—American Laudations, +and English—As to <i>per contra</i>—Copyright Question—Wedding +Gifts—An Elizabethan Author—Seldom Seen, and +Few Adventures</td> <td class="botright">111-133</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">A Modern Pyramid—The Vision—A Fearful Flight—Imagination—The +Crystal Cubes and Mud Bricks—Sonnets and Sonneteering—Mackay +and Shakespeare's </td> <td class="botright">134-144</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">An Author's Mind—Prefatory Ramble—Addled Eggs—The Mental +Cathedral—Probabilities—Job's Trials </td> <td class="botright">145-152</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">The Crock of Gold—Dramatised in Boston and London—Origin of +the Story—The Twins—Heart: drawn from Living Models—Critiques +from Ollier and St. John</td> <td class="botright">153-158</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Æsop Smith—Mudie's—Rabelaisian Hints—The Early Gallop—Alfred, +or Albert Order—Fables </td> <td class="botright">159-162</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Stephan Langton—King Alfred's Poems—The Silent Pool—Hard +Reading for the History—The Book still in Print—Curious +Metrical Translation of Anglo-Saxon Poetry—The Jubilee at +Wantage and at Liverpool </td> <td class="botright">163-169</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Shakespeare Commemoration—Lord Carlisle—Lord Houghton, +Leigh Court—Stratford Church—The Baptismal Font—An +American Autograph Hunter—Sonnet </td> <td class="botright">170-172</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Translations and Pamphlets—Homer, <i>lib.</i> A.—Tennyson's Vivien—Classical +Versions—Hymn for All Nations—Protestant +Ballads—Fifteen Pamphlets</td> <td class="botright">173-179</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Paterfamilias's Diary—Courier Pierre—Devil's Bridge—Major Hely—Guernsey—The +Haro that saved Castle Cornet—Night-Sail +in the Race of Alderney—Durham's Statue of Prince Albert—Isle +of Man—King Orry—Walter Montgomery—Bishop +Powys </td> <td class="botright">180-189</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Never Give Up, at Dr. Kirkland's—Harvest Hymns—Gordon +Ballads—The Good Earl—John Brown—My Brother—Memory—Evil +not Endless</td> <td class="botright">190-199</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Protestant Ballads—"So help me, God!"—Nun's Appeal, &c. </td> <td class="botright">200-203</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Plays—Alfred—Raleigh—Washington—Twelve Scenes—Family +Records </td> <td class="botright">204-207</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Antiquariana—Lockhart and my Coin Article in the <i>Quarterly</i>—Farley +Finds—Mummy Wheat and Faraday </td> <td class="botright">208-212</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Honours—<i>Times'</i> Letter—A Peerage and Baronetcy—Prussian +Medal and Chevalier Bunsen's Letter—Authorship a Rank by +Itself—Many Inventions and Literary Discoveries, as Punch, +Humpty Dumpty, 666, &c.</td> <td class="botright">213-220</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Courtly: Prophetic Sonnet on our Empress—Many Royal Poems—Modern +Court Suit <i>v.</i> Queen Anne's—A Greeting to Prince +Albert Victor </td> <td class="botright">221-228</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">F.R.S.—Lord Melbourne's Carelessness—Spectrum Analysis—Spiritualism—Vivisection—Painted +Windows—Parabolic +Teaching </td> <td class="botright">229-233</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Personation—Bignor—The Greyhound—Alibis—A Rescue on Snowdon—Fraudulent +Collections—Forged Authorials—Boston Unitarianism—Pictures +Falsely Signed </td> <td class="botright">234-237</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Hospitalities—Farnham Castle—Orchids and Pines—Bishop Sumner—Garibaldi +at Gladstone's—Parham and Curzon—Ghosts—Purple +Parchments—Uncut Elzevirs—Shenstone's Leasowes—"Little +Testy"—Sonnet—Isle of Wight—Sojourns—City Feasts—Ostentatious +Hospitality </td> <td class="botright">238-244</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Social and Rural—No Scandals—Hawthorne's Visit—Alexander +Smith's—Jerdan's Haycock—Otto Goldschmidt and Macdougall—Dark +Visitors—Liberian Gold Medal—Noviomagians—Lucky +Angling—Albury Waltz—Rustic Stupidity—Redmen—The +Drinking Fountain—Our House a Hive of Bees—Foxhunt +in Drawing-room—The Donkey Burglar—Anthony +Devis—Irvingism</td> <td class="botright">245-256</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">American Ballads: "Ho, Brother! I'm a Britisher"—The +Quasi-Inspiration—"Thirty Noble Nations," and Thirty-three—Many +Others—Ground-baiting the Transatlantic </td> <td class="botright">257-259</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">First American Visit—Too Temperate for 1851; not Temperate +enough for 1876—Grand Dinner at Baltimore, and Great Speech—The +Astor Dinner—"Amice Davis"—Mayor Kingsland and +the Mile-long Procession—Willis, at Golden Square—The Fillmore +Dinner at the White House—Jenny Lind's Concert—Gordon +Bennet—Squier—Barnum </td> <td class="botright">260-270</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Second American Visit—Extreme Gold—Talmage—Bryant—Cooper—"Immortality" +at the Tabernacle—Lotus Club—Lord Rosebery—Dr. +Levis—Mr. Pettit's Portrait—The Listers at +Hamilton—Toronto—Sir Charles Tupper—Elgin—Dufferin—Mackay +and Sleighing—Dawson and Eozoa—Vaughan-Tuppers—The +Grand John Hopkins' Banquet—Charleston Tuppers—My +Palinode to the South—Visit to Williams Middleton—Parting +Stanzas—Ruined Mansion—Valete</td> <td class="botright">271-280</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">English and Scotch Readings, very rapid, from Isle of Wight to +Peterhead—My Entrepreneur D.: his Experiences: I Failed +with Him, but Succeeded Alone—Specimen of Readings—Local +Critiques—Many Friends Unrecorded—Miscellaneous Poems—Mr. +Gall's Primeval Man—Arbroath—Mill the Atheist—Mr. +Boyd's Piety—Hamilton Mausoleum—Wild Cattle—Burns's +Country—James Baird the Millionaire and the Hodman</td> <td class="botright">281-288</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Electrics—Sir Culling Eardley at Erith—Atlantic Telegraph—The +First Message—Meddlesome Revisers—Antique Telegraphy—Addison +and Strada—Professor Morse—A Telegram-Sonnet</td> <td class="botright">289-295</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">The Rifle, a Patriotic Prophecy in 1845—Early Pamphlet—Defence +not Defiance—Albury Club—Blackheath Review—Lord +Lovelace—Alarums—Drummond's Scare—A Lucky Shot </td> <td class="botright">296-303</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Autographs and Advertisements—Worth Eighteenpence each—A +Hundred at Once—Photographs—Oil Paintings—Locks of Hair—Interviewers—Puffs +and Anti-puffs</td> <td class="botright">304-311</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Kindness to Animals—Louis Napoleon and Alfort—Vivisection—Pontrilas +Court—The Omnibus Hack—Divers Ballads </td> <td class="botright">312-315</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Orkney and Shetland—Our Voyage—Wick Herring Fair—Balfour +at Shapinshay—Kirkwall—Aytoun—Gulf Stream—Snuff-Boxes +and Corals—Fair Isle Hosiery—Stennis—Scalloway—Lerwick +Literature—Artificial Flora—Thurso Castle—Robert Dick—Cape +Wrath—Stornoway—Callanish—Pipers—The brooch of +Lorne, &c. </td> <td class="botright">316-321</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">CHAPTER XL.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Literary Friends—Mrs. Somerville, Miss Granville, Mrs. Jameson, +Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Ouida, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Carter Hall, +Mrs. Grote, Lady Wilde, Miss Mackay, Rogers, Carlyle, +Haweis, Tennyson, Browning, Mortimer Collins, Dickens and +Son, Owen, Austen, Pengelley, Bowerbank, S. Mackenzie, M. +Arnold, S. Brooks, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon, Tenniel, +Cooper, P. B. Cole, E. Yates, Frank Smedley, J. G. Wood, +Cuthbert Collingwood, Mr. and Mrs. Zerffi, Birch, Miss Hooper, +Miss Barlee, G. MacDonald, Ronald Gower, Fred. Burnaby, +Charles Marvin—A Diner-Out—A Mormon Guest—Apostles—Frank's +Ranche—Twelve Anecdotes—Thackeray and Leech, +Longfellow, C. Kingsley, Ainsworth, Lord Elgin </td> <td class="botright">322-350</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">CHAPTER XLI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Some Older Friendships—Nightingale, and Farley Heath—Walter +Hawkins—His Tomb—Anchor—Anagrams—Christmas Largesse—Sham +Antiques—Joseph Durham—Alice's Statue—"Sir +Joe" and the Noviomagians—Prince Albert at St. Peter's Port—Baroness +Barnekow—Swedish Proverbial—King Oscar's +Poems—Geo. Metivier—French Proverbial—John Sullivan—Canon +Jenkins—Barnes, De Chatelain, De Pontigny—Correspondents, +&c. </td> <td class="botright">351-362</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">CHAPTER XLII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Political—A Dark Horse—No Party-Man—Gladstone—Ambidextrous +Stanzas—Liberal and Tory—The One-Vote System—Fancy +Franchises—The Voter's Motto—Fair Trade <i>v.</i> Free +Trade—Radically Conservative—Strikes, &c. </td> <td class="botright">363-372</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">CHAPTER XLIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">A Cure for Ireland—Racial Difficulties—The Unsunned Corner—Æsop +Smith's Prescription—An Irish Balmoral in 1858—My +Anti Celtic Ballads—Adventures </td> <td class="botright">373-379</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">CHAPTER XLIV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Some Spiritist Experiences—Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest Recorder +of Facts—Alexis—Howell—Vernon's Mesmerised Child—Mrs. +Cora Tappan—Chauncey Townsend's Book—Spirit-Drawings—Planchette—Showers +of Flowers, and Sugar-Plums, and +Pearls—Mr. Home—Prayer before <i>Séance</i>—The Table in the +Air—Live Coals in My Hand—The Vitalised Accordion—The +Colonel's Ghost—Iamblicus—Query Electrical Influence—Our +Mysterious Key—Miss Hudson—Thought-Reading </td> <td class="botright">380-399</td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">CHAPTER XLV.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Fickle Fortune—Losses and Failures—Testimonial—"L'espoir est +ma force"—My <i>Levée</i> in 1851—The Missed Codicil—Life and +Death </td> <td class="botright">400-403</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">CHAPTER XLVI.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Henry De Beauvoir, killed in Africa—Archdeacon Kitton—Our Old +Chancery Suit: A Lost Fortune—Belgravian Five Fields, +another Missed Chance—Earl Grosvenor </td> <td class="botright">404-407</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">CHAPTER XLVII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Flying: my Lecture at the Royal Aquarium with Fred. Burnaby as +Chairman—Henry Middleton's Invention—De Lisle Hay's +"Conquest of the Air"—Ezekiel's Angels—Ovid, and Tennyson—Claude +Hamilton—Extracts </td> <td class="botright">408-412</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Luther—The Peroration as to his Life and Exploits—Anniversary +Stanzas, in many Languages—Bullinger's Music—Wycliffe +Ballad—Wondrous Parallel </td> <td class="botright">413-416</td> +</tr> + +<tr><td colspan="2" class="tabpad"><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX">CHAPTER XLIX.</a></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">Final—Whatever is, is Right—Sick-bed Repentance—Intuitions—What +We Shall Be—Protest Against Atheism—The Infinities—A +Childlike Hymn—Eternal Hope—Mercy for Ever—The +Assurance of Ovid </td> <td class="botright">417-431</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="MY_LIFE_AS_AN_AUTHOR" id="MY_LIFE_AS_AN_AUTHOR"></a>MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2 class="padtop"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<h4>PRELIMINARY.</h4> + + +<p>I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections +to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent +this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You bid me write the story of my life,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And draw what secrets in my memory dwell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From the dried fountains of her failing well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And such small facts, with good or evil rife,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As happen to us all: I have no tale<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My life is in my books: the record there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A truthful photograph, is all I choose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To give the world of self; nor will excuse<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mine own or others' failures: glad to spare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leaving unwritten what God only knows."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of +pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its +apparent vainglory as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults +and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of +self-registered virtues and successes,—but even still more from the +mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace troubles +and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life," to the +casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of +circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations—whether +pleasant or the reverse—of matters merely personal, and therefore more +of a private than a public character.</p> + +<p>Indeed, so disquieted was I at the possible prospect of any one getting +hold of a mass of manuscript in old days diligently compiled by myself +from year to year in several small diaries, that I have long ago +ruthlessly made a holocaust of the heap of such written self-memories, +fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now +add my express protest against the printing hereafter of any of my +innumerable private letters to friends, or other MSS., unless they are +strictly and merely of a literary nature.</p> + +<p>Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most +fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a +higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it +fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must +ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded. And +even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take +into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of +inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good +or evil, and the possession or otherwise of gifts and talents, due very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> +much (under Providence) to one's ancient ancestors and one's modern +teachers? We are each of us morally and bodily the psychical and +physical composite of a thousand generations. Albeit every individual +possesses as his birthright a freewill to turn either to the right or to +the left, and is liable to a due responsibility for his words and +actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the +innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of +circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and +innocence, the merit or demerit, of His creature.</p> + +<p>So far as my own will goes, I leave my inner spiritual biography to the +Recording Angel, choosing only to give some recollections and memories +of my outer literary life. For spiritual self-analysis in matters of +religion and affection I desire to be as silent as I can be; but in such +a book as this absolute taciturnity on such subjects is practically +impossible.</p> + +<p>For the matter, then, of autobiography, I decline its higher and its +deeper aspects; as also I wish not to obtrude on the public eye mere +domesticities and privacies of life. But mainly lest others less +acquainted with the petty incidents of my career should hereafter take +up the task, I accede with all frankness and humility to what seems to +me like a present call to duty, having little time to spare at +seventy-six, so near the end of my tether,—and protesting, as I well +may, against the charge of selfish egotism in a book necessarily spotted +on every page with the insignificant letter I; and while, of course on +human-nature principles, willing enough to exhibit myself at the best, +promising also not to hide the second best, or worse than that, where I +can perceive it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p> + +<p>That shrewd old philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, thus excuses his own +self-imposed task of "autobiography," and I cannot do better than quote +and adopt his wise and just remarks:—</p> + +<p>"In thus employing myself, I shall yield to the inclination so natural +to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions, and I shall +indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, +might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will +always be free to read me or not. And (I may as well confess it, as the +denial would be believed by nobody) I shall, perhaps, not a little +gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I never heard or saw the introductory +words, 'Without vanity I may say,' &c., but some vain thing immediately +followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they may +have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with +it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the +possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action; and +therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man +were to thank God for his <i>vanity</i> among the other comforts of life.</p> + +<p>"And now I speak of thanking God, I desire, with all humility, to +acknowledge that I attribute the happiness of my past life to His divine +providence, which led me to the means I used, and gave the success. My +belief of this induces me to <i>hope</i>, though I must not <i>presume</i>, that +the same goodness will still be exercised towards me in continuing that +happiness or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience +as others have done; the complexion of my future fortune being known to +Him only in whose power it is to bless us, even in our afflictions."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> + +<p>Thus speaketh the honest wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I do not see that a better plan can be chosen for carrying out the title +of this book than the one I have adopted, namely, tracing from the +earliest years to old age the author's literary lifework, illustrated by +accounts of, and specimens from, his various books and writings, +especially those which are absolutely out of print, or, haply have never +been published. No doubt, in such excerpts, exhibited at their best, the +critical accusations of unfairness, self-seeking, and so forth, will be +made, and may be met by the true consideration that something of this +sort is inevitable in autobiography. However, for the matter of vanity, +all I know of myself is the fact that praise, if consciously undeserved, +only depresses me instead of elating; that a noted characteristic of +mine through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to +the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold +enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike +to any assumption of dignity—surely a feeling the opposite to +self-conceit; whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse +than I hope I am, and all my friends are deceived in their kind judgment +of me.</p> + +<p>But let this book speak for itself; I trust it is honest, charitable, +and rationally religious. If I have (and I show it through all my +writings) a shrinking from priestcraft of every denomination, that +feeling I take to be due to some ancient heredity ingrained, or, more +truly, inburnt into my nature from sundry pre-Lutheran confessors and +martyrs of old, from whom I claim to be descended, and by whose spirit I +am imbued. Not but that I profess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> myself broad, and wide, and liberal +enough for all manner of allowances to others, and so far as any narrow +prejudices may be imagined of my idiosyncrasy, I must allow myself to be +changeable and uncertain—though hitherto having steered through life a +fairly straight course—and that sometimes I can even doubt as to my +politics, whether they should be defined Whig or Tory; as to my +religion, whether it is most truly chargeable by the epithet high or +low; as to my likings, whether I best prefer solitude or society; as to +literature, whether gaieties or gravities please me most. In fact, I +recognise good in everything, though sometimes hidden by evil, right (by +intention, at least) in sundry doctrines and opinions otherwise to my +judgment wrong, and I am willing to believe the kindliest of my +opponents who appear to be honest and earnest. This is a very fair creed +for a citizen of the world, whose motto is Terence's famous avowal, +"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<h4>INFANCY AND SCHOOLDAYS.</h4> + + +<p>In a short and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously +to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to +state very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my +parentage. July 17, 1810, was my birthday, and No. 20 Devonshire Place, +Marylebone, my birthplace, at that time the last house of London +northward. My father, Martin Tupper, a name ever honoured by me, was an +eminent medical man, who twice refused a baronetcy (first from Lord +Liverpool, and secondly, as offered by the Duke of Wellington); my +mother, Ellin Devis Marris, being daughter of Robert Marris, a good +landscape artist, of an old Lincolnshire family, and made the heiress, +as adopted child, of her aunt, Mrs. Ellin Devis, of Devonshire Place and +Albury.</p> + +<p>My father's family have sojourned 336 years in Guernsey, having migrated +thither from Thuringia, <i>viâ</i> Hesse Cassel, owing to religious +persecution in the evil days of Charles V., our remote ancestors being +styled Von Topheres (chieftains, or head-lords) of Treffurth (as is +recorded in the heraldic MSS. of the British Museum), that being the +origin of our name.</p> + +<p>Of my mother's family (in old time Maris, as "of the sea," with mermaids +for heraldry), I have the commis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>sions of one who was an Ironside +cavalry officer, signed by Cromwell and Fairfax; and several of her +relatives (besides her father) were distinguished artists. In +particular, her uncle (my wife's father), Arthur William Devis, the +well-known historical painter, and her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, who +filled Albury House with his landscapes.</p> + +<p>Some of our old German stock crossed the Atlantic in Puritan times, and +many of the name have attained wealth and position both in Canada and +the United States; notably Sir Charles Tupper northwards, and sundry +rich merchants in New York, Virginia, and the Carolines southwardly.</p> + +<p>Of my infancy let me record that I "enjoyed" very delicate health, +chiefly due, as I now judge, to the constant cuppings and bleedings +whereby "the faculty" of those days combated teething fits, and (perhaps +with Malthusian proclivities) killed off young children. I remember, +too, that the broad meadows, since developed into Regent's Park and +Primrose Hill, then "truly rural," and even up to Chalk Farm, then +notorious for duels, were my nursery ramblings in search of cowslips and +new milk. Also, that once at least in those infantile days, my father +took me to see Winsor's Patent Gaslights at Carlton House, and how he +prognosticated the domestic failure of so perilous an explosive, more +than one blowing-up having carelessly occurred.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Another infantile recollection is memorable, as thus. My father's annual +holiday happened one year to be at Bognor, where a patron patient of +his, Lord Arran, rented a pleasant villa, and he had for a visitor at +the time no less a personage than George the Third: it must have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> been +during some lucid interval, perhaps after the Great Thanksgiving at St. +Paul's. My father took his little boy with him to call upon the Earl, +not thinking to see the King; but when we came in there was his +kind-hearted Majesty, who patted my curls and gave me his blessing! How +far the mysterious efficacy of the royal touch affected my after career +believers in the divine rights and spiritual powers of a king may +speculate as they please. At all events I got a good man's blessing.</p> + +<p>I remember also in my nursery days to have heard this curious story of a +dream. My father, when a young man, was a student at Guy's Hospital, +from which school of medicine he went to Yarmouth to attend the wounded +after the battle of Copenhagen. He was on one occasion leaving Guernsey +for Southampton in the clumsy seagoing smack of those days, when, on the +night before embarking, he dreamt that on his way to the harbour he +crossed the churchyard and fell into an open grave. Telling this to his +parents at "The Pollet," they would not let him go, with a sort of +superstitious wisdom; for, strangely enough, the smack was seized on its +voyage by a privateer, and all the crew and passengers were +consigned—for twelve years—to a French prison! I have heard my father +tell this tale, and noted early how true was Dr. Watts' awkward line, +"On little things what great depend." I might say more about warnings in +dreams and other somnolencies, whereof we all have experiences. For +instance, my "Dream of Ambition" in Proverbial Philosophy was a real +one. And this reminds me now of another like sort of spiritual monition +alluded to in my Proverbial Essay on "Truth in Things False," which has +several times occurred to myself, as this, for example: Years ago, in +Devonshire, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> first time, I was on the top of a coach passing +through a town—I think it was Crediton—and I had the strange feeling +that I had seen all this before: now, we changed horses just on this +side of a cross street, and I resolved within myself to test the truth +of the place being new to me or not, by prophesying what I should see +right and left as we passed; to my consternation it was all as I had +foreseen,—a market-place with the usual incidents. Now, if reasonably +asked how to account for this (and most of us have felt the like), I +reply that possibly in an elevated state of health and spirits the soul +may outrun the body, and literally foresee coming events both real and +ideal. But we must leave this to the Psychical Society for a judgment +upon the famous Horatian philosophy of "more things in heaven and +earth," &c.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On Mr. Galton's topic of hereditary talent I have little to report as to +myself. Neither father nor mother had any leanings either towards verse +or prose; but my mother was an excellent pianiste and a fair landscape +painter both in oils and water-colour; also she drew and printed on +stone, and otherwise showed that she came of an artistic family. As to +my father's surroundings, his brother Peter, a consul-general in Spain, +wrote a tragedy called Pelayo; and I possess half-a-dozen French songs, +labelled by my father "in my late dear father's handwriting," but +whether or not original, I cannot tell. As a Guernseyman, he might well +be as much French as English. They seem to me clever and worthy of +Beranger, though long before him: possibly they are my grandsire's. A +very fair judge of French poetry, and himself a good Norman poet, Mr. +John Sullivan of Jersey writes and tells me that the songs are +excellent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> and that he remembers them to have been popularly sung when +he was a boy.</p> + +<p>About the matter of hereditary bias itself, we know that as with animals +so with men, "fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;" this so far as bodies +are concerned; but surely spirits are more individual, as innumerable +instances prove, where children do not take after their parents. If, +however, I may mention my own small experience of this matter, literary +talent, or at all events authorship, <i>is</i> hereditary, especially in +these days of that general epidemic, the "cacoethes scribendi."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I wrote this paper following originally for an American publication; and +as I cannot improve upon it, and it has never been printed in England, I +produce it here in its integrity.</p> + +<p>A true and genuine record of what English schools of the highest class +were more than sixty-five years ago cannot fail to have much to interest +the present generation on both sides of the Atlantic; if only because we +may now indulge in the self-complacency of being everyway wiser, better, +and happier than our recent forebears. And in setting myself to write +these early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at times +necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and +asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude of plain +truth-telling), I desire to say nothing against or for either the dead +or the living beyond their just deserts, and I protest against any +charge of unreasonable want of charity as to my whilom "schools and +schoolmasters." It is true that sometimes I loved them not, neither can +I in general respect their memory; but the causes of such a feeling on +my part shall be made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> manifest anon, and I am sure that modern parents +and guardians will rejoice that much of my childhood's hard experience +has not been altogether that of their own boys.</p> + +<p>I was sent to school much too soon, at the early age of seven, having +previously had for my home tutor a well-remembered day-teacher in +"little Latin and less Greek" of the name of Swallow, whom I thought a +wit and a poet in those days because one morning he produced as an +epitaph on himself the following effusion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beneath this stone a Swallow lies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No one laughs and no one cries;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where he is gone or how he fares<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No one knows and no one cares."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>At this time of day I suspect this epigram not to be quite original, but +it served to give me for the nonce a high opinion of the pundit who read +with me Cornelius Nepos and Cæsar and some portions of that hopeless +grammar, the Eton Greek, in the midst of his hard-breathing consumption +of perpetual sandwiches and beer.</p> + +<p>The first school chosen for me (though expensive, there could not have +been a worse one) was a large mixed establishment for boys of all ages, +from infancy to early manhood, belonging to one Rev. Dr. Morris of +Egglesfield House, Brentford Butts, which I now judge to have been +conducted solely with a view to the proprietor's pocket, without +reference to the morals, happiness, or education of the pupils committed +to his care. All I care to remember of this false priest (and there were +many such of old, whatever may be the case now) are his cruel +punishments, which passed for discipline,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> his careful cringing to +parents, and his careless indifference towards their children, and in +brief his total unfitness for the twin duties of pastor and teacher. A +large private school of mixed ages and classes is perilously liable to +infection from licentious youths left to themselves and their evil +propensities, and I can feelingly recollect how miserable for nearly a +year was that poor little helpless innocent of seven under the +unrestricted tyranny of one Cooke (in after years a life convict for +crime) who did all he could to pollute the infant mind of the little fag +delivered over to his cruelty. Cowper's Tirocinium well expresses the +situation:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Would you your son should be a sot or dunce,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Train him in public with a mob of boys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Childish in mischief only and in noise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Else of a mannish growth and, five in ten,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For infidelity and lewdness, men."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>My next school was more of a success; for Eagle House, Brookgreen, where +I was from eight to eleven, had for its owner and headmaster a most +worthy and excellent layman, Joseph Railton. Mr. Railton was gentle, +though gigantic, fairly learned, just and kindly. His school produced, +amongst others eminent, the famous naval author Kingston, well known +from cabin-boy to admiral; there was also Lord Paulet, some others of +noble birth, and the two Middletons, nick-named Yankees, whom years +after I visited at their ruined mansion in South Carolina after the +Confederate War. Through the personal good influence of honest "Old +Joe," and his middle-aged housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, our whole +well-ordered company of perhaps a hundred boys lived and learned, worked +and played purely, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> happily together: so great a social benefactor +may a good school chieftain be.</p> + +<p>I have little to regret in my Brook Green recollections; the annual fair +was memorable with Richardson's show and Gingel's conjuring, and the +walks for mild cricketing at Shepherd's Bush, and the occasional Sundays +at home; and how pleasant to a schoolboy was the generous visitor who +tipped him, a good action never forgotten; and the garden with its +flowering tulip-tree, and the syringas and rose-trees jewelled with the +much-prized emerald May-bugs; for the whole garden was liberally thrown +open to us beyond the gravelled playground; all being now given over to +monks and nuns. Then I recollect how a rarely-dark annular eclipse of +the sun convulsed the whole school, bringing smoked glass to a high +premium; and there was a notable boy's library of amusing travels and +stories, all eagerly devoured; and old Phulax the house-dog, and good +Mr. Whitmore an usher, who gave a certain small boy a diamond +prayer-book, greatly prized then, though long since lost, and suitably +inscribed for him "<i>Parvum parva decent</i>;" and the speech days, wherein +the same small boy always signalised himself, to the general +astonishment, for he was usually a stammerer, owing much to the early +worries of Brentford; all these are agreeable reminiscences.</p> + +<p>My next school at eleven was Charterhouse, or as my schoolfellow +Thackeray was wont to style it, Slaughterhouse, no doubt from the cruel +tyranny of another educational D.D., the Rev. Dr. Russell. For this man +and the school he so despotically drilled into passive servility and +pedantic scholarship, I have less than no reverence, for he worked so +upon an over-sensitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> nature to force a boy beyond his powers, as to +fix for many years the infirmity of stammering, which was my affliction +until past middle life. As for tuition, it must all have grown of itself +by dint of private hard grinding with dictionaries and grammars, for the +exercises, themes, and other lessons were notoriously difficult, and +those before me would be inextricable puzzles now; however, we had to do +them, and we did them, unhelped by any teacher but our own industry. As +for the masters in school, two more ignorant old parsons than Chapman +and "Bob Watki" could not readily be found; and though the four others, +Lloyd, Dickens, Irvine, and Penny were somewhat more intelligent, still +all six in the lower school were occasionally summoned to a "concio," if +the interpretation of any ordinary passage in Homer or Virgil or Horace +was haply in dispute between a monitor and his class. In the upper +school the single really excellent teacher and good clergyman, Edward +Churton, had but one fault, a meek subserviency to the tyrannic Russell, +who domineered over all to our universal terror; and I remember kindly +Mr. Churton once affected to tears at the cruelty of his chief. What +should we think nowadays of an irate schoolmaster smashing a child's +head between two books in his shoulder-of-mutton hands till the nose +bled, as I once saw? Or, in these milder times when your burglar or +garotter is visited with a brief whipping, what shall we judge of the +wisdom or equity of some slight fault of idleness or ignorance being +visited with the Reverend Doctor's terrible sentence, "Allen, three +rods, eighteen, and most severely"?</p> + +<p>Let me comment on this line, one of a sharp satire by a boy named +Barnes, long since an Indian Judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> and I suppose translated Elsewhere. +Allen was head-gown-boy, and so chief executioner, the three rods being +some five-feet bunches of birch armed with buds as sharp as thorns, +renewed after six strokes for fresh excoriation! sometimes the +exhibition was in medio, a public terror to evil-doers, or doers of +nothing, but usually in a sort of side chapel to the lower school where +the whipping-block stood. Who could tolerate such things now? and who +can wonder that I, as a lad, proclaimed that I would rather die than be +flogged, for I had resolved in that event to commit justifiable homicide +on my flogger? I do not mean Allen, who became Head of Dulwich College, +and with whom I have since dined, annually as donor of a picture there, +but Russell, concerning whom I vowed that if ever he was made a Bishop +(happily he wasn't) I would desert the Church of England; as yet I have +not, albeit it has lately become so papalised as to be little worth an +honest Protestant's adherence.</p> + +<p>As to the exclusively classic education in my young days, to the +resolute neglect of all other languages and sciences, I for myself have +from youth upwards always protested against it as mainly waste of time +and of very little service in the battle of life. For proof of this, +before I was eighteen, I wrote that essay on Education to be seen in my +first series of Proverbial Philosophy, which long years after the +celebrated Dr. Binney of the Weigh-house in Thames Street issued with my +leave as a tractate useful to the present generation. And while there +was so much fuss made as to the criminality of a false quantity in +Greek, or a deficient acquaintance with those awkward verbs in "Mi," or +above all a false concord (every one of which derelictions in duty +involved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> severe punishment), let us remember that all this time +Holywell Street was suffered to infect Charterhouse with its poison (I +speak of long ago, before Lord Campbell's wholesome Act), and that our +clerical tutors and governors professionally recognised no sort of sins +or shortcomings but those committed in class! They practically ignored +everything out of school, much as a captain knows nothing of his company +off duty. It was the idle system of boys set to govern boys, that the +masters might have no damage. I think the system was called Lancastrian.</p> + +<p>One very noticeable trait in the parson-schoolmasters of those old days +(and perhaps it still survives) was the subserviency to rank and wealth +towards any pupils likely to give them livings, whereof more anon; at +present, an appropriate instance occurs to me. I was in my thirteenth +year monitor of the playground, when one Dillon, a scion of a titled +family, hunted and killed a stray dog there, and much to their credit +for humanity a number of other boys hunted and pelted <i>him</i> into a dry +ditch or vallum, dug for the leaping-pole under a Captain Clias who +taught us athletics. I was technically responsible for this open insult +offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed to look another way +and let lynch-law take its course. Accordingly, the Doctor had me up for +punishment, and he inflicted an almost impossible imposition, Book +Epsilon of the Iliad (the longest of all) to be translated word for +word, English and Greek, and to be given to him in MS. within a month +(it would have been work for a year), that or expulsion. Had Mr. Dillon +been a plebeian, no notice would have been taken of the matter, but he +was an honourable, so Russell must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> avenge his righteous punishment. +However, the result of this outrageous set-task was curious and worthy +of this its first and only record. All the seventy boys in Irvine's +house and others elsewhere, volunteered to do the whole imposition for +me, and within a week hundreds of pages closely written with Greek and +Latin, were sewn together, making a large quarto pamphlet, which was +duly handed by me to the wondering Doctor; who had, however, too much +shrewdness to care to inquire closely as to this popular outburst of a +general indignation, so he said nothing more about it.</p> + +<p>For other playground reminiscences: I saw, even in those tame times for +cricket when overhand bowling was illegal, and the fierce artillery of a +Spofforth impossible, a poor lad killed in the field, one Honourable +Henry Howard; he was taken to the pump for recovery, as from a swoon, +but the ball had struck him behind the ear, stone-dead. Again as to that +pump; it was sometimes maliciously used for sousing unfortunate +day-boys, who were allowed two minutes law out of school to enable them +to escape pursuit after lessons, most unjustly, and injuriously, seeing +that old Sutton founded his Charterhouse mainly for day-boys (John Leech +was one in my time) and for pensioners ("old Cods") whereof Colonel +Newcome of Thackeray fame, was another; but both of these charity +classes were utterly despised and ignored by the reverend brigands who +kept all the loaves and fishes for themselves.</p> + +<p>One remarkable playground experience was the fact that it helped to +develop in me antiquarian inclinations, and my own discovered +hunting-ground for Roman numismatics in the south of England, long +after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>wards expanded in "Farley Heath" near Albury. At Charterhouse +there was a great slope or semi-mound which had in old times been +utilised as a wholesale grave for the victims of plague and other +epidemics. It strikes me now as most perilous, but we boys used to dig +and scratch among bones and other <i>débris</i> for on occasional coin or +lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not +unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another +playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, usually driven in +duplicate or triplicate, the hoops were "stored" or "shied" into the +branching elms, from which they were again brought down by hockey-sticks +flung at them; a great boon to the smaller boys who thus gratuitously +became possessed of valuable properties. And for all else, there were +fights behind the school, in those pugilistic days scientifically +conducted with seconds and bottleholders, and some "claret" drawn, and +other like fashionable brutalities; also in its season came football, +but not quite so fiercely fought as it is now; and there was Mr. +Rackwitz, the man of sweets and pastries at the corner; and another sort +of rackets in the tennis court; and for another sort of court there was +then extant a bit of ruinous Gothic in old Rutland Court, a ghostly +entrance from Charterhouse Square, some thought haunted, and long since +cleared away.</p> + +<p>And now crossing the Square we come to No. 41, the Queen Anne fashioned +mansion where Mr. Andrew Irvine (another Reverend Master, who like all +the rest, except Churton, almost never "did duty," and when he did +manifestly could neither read, preach, not pray) had a houseful of +pupils, whereof the writer was one. That long room is full of ancient +memories of past and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> gone Carthusians, though it is now humiliated into +a local charity school. I remember some humorous scenes there, chiefly +owing to the master's notorious niggardliness. Andrew had some Gruyere +cheese, easily accessible to the boyish plunderers of his larder. Now we +had complained that our slabs of butter laid between the cut sides of +the rolls often were salt and strong, so one "Punsonby" (afterwards an +earl) managed to put a piece of highly-flavoured Gruyere into a roll, +and publicly at breakfast produced it before Mr. Irvine as a proof of +the bad butter provided by the unfortunate housekeeper. He was overborne +against his own convictions, by the heroic impudence of chief big boys +whom he dared not offend, and actually pretended indignation, promising +better butter in future!</p> + +<p>For another small scholastic recollection: Andrew's Indian brother had +brought over a lot of curiosities from the East, including a rhinoceros +skin, and bows and arrows, idols, and the like, all of which were +carelessly stored away in a cellar near the larder aforesaid. Of course +the boys made a raid upon such <i>spolia opima</i>, and divers portions of +that thick hide were exhibited as Indian rubber: but Andrew never knew +that many other things vanished, and that for example Knighton used to +walk home on Saturdays with preternaturally stiff arms, an arrow +(possibly poisoned) being hid in each sleeve! some creeses also were +appropriated by others. I wonder if any Carthusian of my time survives +as the possessor of such loot.</p> + +<p>Let me record, too, that in those evil days (for I am not one who can +think this age as "pejor avis") boys used to go, on their Monday +mornings' return from the weekly holiday, out of their way to see the +wretches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> hanging at Newgate; that the scenes of cruelty to animals in +Smithfield were terrible; that books of the vilest character were +circulated in the long-room; and that both morality and religion were +ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five +hundred boys. If more memories are wanted of those times, here are two; +the planned famine on one occasion, when—under monitorial +inspiration—all the juniors clamoured for "more, more," seeing they had +slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter +supposed to have been eaten-out; and on another, that lobsters, +surreptitiously obtained from out-of-bounds by the big boys were sworn +in the <i>débris</i> of their smaller claws to be pieces of sealing-wax! and +nothing else: at least a reckless young aristocrat declared that they +were so,—and the mean-spirited Andrew, fearful of giving offence in +such high quarters, pretended to believe him.</p> + +<p>Yet another trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to +homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as +Rousseau did with his housekeeper. We, that is Knighton and Ellis and I, +used to return on Sunday night in my father's carriage by the back way +of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of cattle; +and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and nuts from +the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we sped along. Alas! +on one occasion Knighton was skilful enough to smash a chemist's blue +bottle with an apple,—and on another I am aware that an oil lamp in +Carthusian Street succumbed to my only too-true cockshy: "Et hoc +meminisse <i>dolendum</i>."</p> + +<p>Another incident was amusing in its way. Poor Mr. Irvine (who was going +to be married) mended up a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> much smashed greenhouse to greet his +bride thereby with floral joy. Unluckily, the boys preferred broken +panes to whole ones, so nothing was easier than by flinging brickbats +and even mugs over the laundry wall to revel in the sweet sound of +smashed glass; moreover this would go to evidence the popular animosity +against a wretched bridegroom. Then, when he reappeared after some +temporary absence before the wedding, it was after this ridiculous +fashion. There was a wooden staircase screened off one side of the +long-room down which he would occasionally creep to listen at the door +at bottom to the tattle of the boys about him. He was heard creaking +downstairs, and some active young fellow by a round-about byway managed +to steal down behind and suddenly pushed him by the burst open door, +spread-eagle fashion, into the laughing long-room! The poor victim +pretended it was an accident, "Ye see, Mr. Yates, I was coming down the +stair, and me foot slipped." It seems that the luckless Andrew was +coming, so he averred, expressly to expostulate with the boys, to throw +himself on their generosity for a subscription towards his ruined +greenhouse, and to ask Messrs. "Punsonby," Yates, & Co. to promote it. +This they promised to do, and did after an original fashion. Several +pounds worth of pence and half-pence were distributed through the house, +so that when Andrew with his traitorous aides went round to collect +monies, it miraculously happened to be all coppers, unrelieved by a +single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often +was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, +from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected +hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> mean +over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the +wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to +all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, and as the +hired waiters from the Falcon brought out the viands (all was a delusive +peace as they went in) our harpies flew upon the spoil, and each meat, +fish and fowl was cleared off the great dishes held between the helpless +hands of the astonished servitors! It was really too bad, but if a man +is so manifestly unpopular no doubt he deserves it. Rugbeians would not +have so served Arnold. Nearly all my schoolmates are dead, and I cannot +call on Charles Roe or Frank Ellis to corroborate my small anecdotes, +but I could till lately on Sir William Knighton and one or two more. In +a crowd of five hundred scholars (Russell's average number, afterwards +much diminished, until Godalming brought up the tale), there must be +many still extant and of eminence whom I would name if I did but know +them. Certainly, yes, Trevelyan was my next neighbour in the "emeriti," +and there was Hebert, the one distinguished in the State, the other in +the Church; also Cole, and his noble chief of Enniskillen, whom I have +visited at Florence Court; and Walford, our great genealogist, with many +more; among the more recent dead, let me mention my good friend +Archibald Mathison, lately an Indian Judge, and Robert Curzon, and +Arthur Helps, the historian of Mexico. Thackeray I knew then but very +slightly, as he was a lower schoolboy, and John Leech not at all, +because he was a day boy, seeing that the upper school was made to keep +foolishly aloof from all such; however, in after years I made good +acquaintance with both of those true geniuses, and had Leech down to +Albury, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> to illustrate my tales, whilst I have several times +compared judgments with Thackeray as to Doctor Birch and his young +friends and other scholia.</p> + +<p>For the matter of my practical education at Charterhouse, I like others +went through the usual course, though without much distinction. I never +gained a prize, albeit I tried for some, by certain tame didactic poems +on the Tower, Carthage, and Jerusalem, and as I couldn't as a stammerer +speak in school, high places were out of my reach. Like others, however, +I learned by heart all Horace's odes and epodes, the Ajax and the +Antigone of Sophocles, and other like efforts of memory, almost useless +in after life, except for capping quotations, and thereby being thought +a pedant by the display of schoolboy erudition. How often have I wished +that the years wasted over Latin verses and Greek plays had been +utilised among French and German, astronomy, geology, chemistry and the +like; but all such useful educationals were quite ignored by the +clerical boobies who then professed to teach young gentlemen all that +they needed to know. Sixty years ago I perceived what we all see now +(teste Lord Sherborne) that a most imperfect classical education, such +as was then provided for us, was the least useful introduction to the +real business of life, except that it was fashionable, and gave a man +some false prestige in the circle of society. At about sixteen I left +Charterhouse for a private tutor, Dr. Stocker, then head of Elizabeth +College, Guernsey, seeing my father wished to do him a service for +kindly private reasons; I was not at the College, but a pupil in his own +house: however, as this other Rev. D.D. proved a failure, I was passed +on to a Rev. Mr. Twopeny of Long Wittenham, near Dorchester, staying +with him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> about a year with like little profit; when I changed to Mr. +Holt's at Albury, a most worthy friend and neighbour, with whom I read +diligently until my matriculation at Oxford, when I was about nineteen. +With Holt, my intimate comrade was Harold Browne, the present Bishop of +Winchester, and he will remember that it was our rather mischievous +object to get beyond Mr. Holt in our prepared Aristotle and Plato, as we +knew he had hard work to keep even in the race with his advanced pupils +by dint of midnight oil. With this good tutor and the excellent +ministrations of Hugh M'Neile, the famous rector of Albury, my <i>status +pupillaris</i> comes technically to an end, Oxford being practically +independence; albeit I am sure that education can cease only with human +life, even if it be not carried further, onward and upward, through the +cycles of eternity.</p> + +<p>As I did not care to stop the continuity of this gossiping record +(perhaps too light and too frank, but it is best unaltered) I must now +hark back for a few years, to fill in whatever small details of early +life and primitive literature happened to me, between school and +college. Truly, much of this amounts to recording trivialities; but +boyhood, not to say life also, is made up of trifles; and there is +always interest to a reader in personal anecdotes and experiences, the +more if they are lively rather than severe. Let this excuse that lengthy +account of "My Schooldays."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<h4>YOUNG AUTHORSHIP IN VERSE AND PROSE.</h4> + + +<p>Of my earliest MS., written soon after my seventh birthday, I have no +copy, and only a very confused memory: but I remember that my good +mother treasured for years and showed to many friends something in the +nature of an elegy which a broken-hearted little brother wrote on the +death of an infant sister from his first school: this is only mentioned +in case any one of my older readers may possibly supply such a lost MS. +in a child's roundhand. At school, chiefly as a young Carthusian, I +frequently broke out into verse, where prose translation was more +properly required: seeing that it pleased my indolence to be poetical +where I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me +to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this +small poetaster of having "cribbed" his metrical version from some +unknown collection of poems: however, he had always to be satisfied with +my assurance as to authenticity, for he was sure to be baffled in his +inquiries elsewhere.</p> + +<p>One such instance is extant as thus,—for I kept a copy, as the +assembled Charterhouse masters seemed to think it too good to be +original for a small boy of twelve to thirteen. Here then, as a specimen +of one of my early bits of literature, is a genuine and unaltered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> poem +(for any modern improvements would not be honest) in the shape of a +translated Greek epigram from the Anthologia:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not Juno's eye of fire divine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can vie my Melite, with thine<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So heavenly pure and bright;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor can Minerva's hand excel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That pretty hand I know so well,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So small and lily-white.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not Venus can such charms disclose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As those sweet lips of blushing rose<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And ivory bosom show;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not Thetis' nimble foot can tread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More lightly o'er her coral bed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than thy soft foot of snow.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What happiness thy face bestows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When smiling on a lover's woes!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thrice happy then is he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who hears thy soul-subduing song,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O more than blest, to whom belong<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The charms of Melite!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I was head of the lower school then, and I remember the father of Bernal +Osborne patting my curly locks and scolding his whiskered son for +letting a small boy be above him.</p> + +<p>Much about this time, and until I left Charterhouse at sixteen, there +proceeded from my pen numerous other mild rhymed pieces and sundry +unsuccessful prize poems; <i>e.g.</i>, three on Carthage, the second Temple +of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies +not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, +Æschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady +friends, one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G. A. S. had a musical +relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following "On a shell +sounding like the sea" is a fair specimen for a boy:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I remember the voice of the flood<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a linnet remembers the wood<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And his warblings so joyous before."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of course, this class of my juvenile lyrics was holiday work, and barely +worth a record, except to save a fly in amber, like this.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Whilst I was at Charterhouse, occurred my first Continental journey, +when my excellent father took his small party all through France in his +private travelling carriage, bought at Calais for the trip (it was long +before railways were invented), and I jotted down in verse our daily +adventures in the rumble. The whole journal, entitled "Rough Rhymes," in +divers metres, grave and gay, was published by the "Literary Chronicle" +in 1826, and the editor thereof, Mr. Jerdan, says, after some +compliments, "the author is in his sixteenth year,"—which fixes the +date. Possibly, a brief specimen or two of this may please: take the +livelier first,—on French cookery: if trivial, the lines are genuine: I +must not doctor anything up even by a word.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now Muse, you must versify your very best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sing how they ransack the East and the West,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To tell how they plunder the North and the South<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For food for the stomach and zest for the mouth!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such savoury stews, and such odorous dishes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such soups, and (at Calais) such capital fishes!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +<span class="i0">With sauces so strange they disguise the lean meat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That you seldom, or never, know what you're to eat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such fricandeaux, fricassees epicurean,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such vins-ordinaires, and such banquets Circean,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the nice little nothings which very soon vanish<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before you are able your plate to replenish,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such exquisite eatables! and for your drink<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not porter or ale, but—what do you think?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis Burgundy, Bourdeaux, real red rosy wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which you quaff at a draught, neat nectar, divine!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus they pamper the taste with everything good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of an old shoe can make savoury food,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the worst of it is that when you have done<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You are nearly as famish'd as when you begun!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For a more serious morsel, take the closing lines on Rouen:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes, proud Cathedral, ages pass'd away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While generations lived their little day,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">France has been deluged with her patriots' blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By traitors to their country and their God,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The face of Europe has been changed, but thou<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hast stood sublime in changelessness till now,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Exulting in thy glories of carved stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A living monument of ages gone!—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet—time hath touch'd thee too; thy prime is o'er,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A few short years, and thou must be no more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ev'n thou must bend beneath the common fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But in thy very ruins wilt be great!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>More than enough of this brief memory of "Sixty Years Since," which has +no other extant record, and is only given as a sample of the rest, +equally juvenile. Three years however before, this, my earliest piece +printed, I find among my papers a very faded copy of my first MS. in +verse, being part of an attempted prize poem at Charterhouse on +Carthage, written at the age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> of thirteen in 1823; for auld langsyne's +sake I rescue its conclusion thus curtly from oblivion,—though no doubt +archæologically faulty:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where sculptured temples once appeared to sight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now dismal ruins meet the moon's pale light,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where regal pomp once shone with gorgeous ray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And kings successive held their transient sway;—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where once the priest his sacred victims led<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on the altars their warm lifeblood shed,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where swollen rivers once had amply flowed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And splendid galleys down the stream had rowed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A dreary wilderness now meets the view,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And nought but Memory can trace the clue!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The poor little schoolboy's muse was perhaps quite of the pedestrian +order: but so also, the critics said, had been stern old Dr. Johnson's +in his "London."</p> + +<p>Mere school-exercises (whereof I have some antique copybooks before me), +cannot be held to count for much as early literature; though I know not +why some of my Greek Iambic translations of the Psalms and Shakespeare, +as also sundry very respectable versions of English poems into Latin +Sapphics and Alcaics still among my archives, should not have been +shrined—as they were offered at the time—in Dr. Haig Brown's +Carthusian Anthology. However somehow these have escaped printer's +ink,—the only true <i>elixir vitæ</i>—and we must therefore suppose them +not quite worthy to be bracketed with the classical versification of +Buchanan or even of Mr. John Milton,—albeit actually superior to sundry +of the aforesaid Anthologia Carthusiana; so of these we will say +nothing.</p> + +<p>Of other sorts of schoolboy literaria whereof from time to time I was +guilty let me save here (by way of change) one or two of my trivial +humoristics: here is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> one, not seen in print till now; "Sapphics to my +Umbrella,—written on a very rainy day," in 1827. N.B. If Canning in his +Eton days immortalised sapphically a knifegrinder, why shouldn't a young +Carthusian similarly celebrate his gingham?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Valued companion of my expeditions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wanderings, and my street perambulations,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What can be more deserving of my praises<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Than my umbrella?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Under thine ample covering rejoicing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(All the 'canaille' tumultuously running)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the rain streams and patters from the housetops,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Slow and majestic,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I trudge along unwetted, though an ocean<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pours from the clouds, as if some Abernethy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had given all the nubilary regions<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Purges cathartic!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Others run on in piteous condition,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Black desperation painted in their faces,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the full flood descends in very pailfuls<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Streaming upon them.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea, 'tis as if some cunning necromancer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had drawn a circle magically round me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till like the wretched victim of Kehama,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">(Southey's abortion)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nothing like liquor ever could approach me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But it is thou, disinterested comrade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bearest the rainy weather uncomplaining,<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Oh, my umbrella!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How many hats, and 'upper Bens,' and new coats,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How many wretched duckings hast thou saved me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Well—I have done—but must be still indebted<br /></span> +<span class="i8">To my umbrella!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another such trifle may be permissible, as thus: also about an umbrella,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +a stolen one. On the occasion of my loss I wrote this to rebuke the +thief, "The height of honesty:"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Three friends once, in the course of conversation,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Touch'd upon honesty: 'No virtue better,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'I'm sure I'm honest;—ay—beyond the letter:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You know the field I rent; beneath the ground<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there a pot of golden coins I found!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus modestly his good intents he told:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'But stay,' says Bob,' we soon shall see who's best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A <i>stranger</i> left with me uncounted gold!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But I'll not touch it; which is honestest?'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Your honest acts I've heard,' says Jack, 'but I<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Have done much better, would that all folks learn'd it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mine is the highest pitch of honesty—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I borrow'd an umbrella and—<i>return'd it!!</i>'".<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>N.B.</i>—I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I +attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved on the ivory +handle of <i>his</i> umbrella: he never lost it again.</p> + +<p>In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since +published "Paterfamilias's Diary of Everybody's Tour") I have kept +journals of holiday travel <i>passim</i>, whereof I now make a brief mention. +Six juvenile bits of authorship are before me, ranging through the +summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book +on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with +untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old +memories, faded interests, and departed friends. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> very rare survivals +of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals +of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order +of time a short quotation by way of sample,—a brick to represent the +house. My first, <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1828, records how my good father took his +sons through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of +Staffordshire, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching +us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also +how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the +magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all +touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace: in fact, a short +volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page. "Melrose +looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect +cathedral. While the horses were being changed we walked to see this +Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows +to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the architecture being +florid Gothic. The tracery round the capitals of pillars is in wonderful +preservation, looking as fresh and sharp as on the first day of their +creation; instead of the Grecian acanthus <i>Scotch kail</i> being a +favourite ornament. Some of the images still remain in their niches. In +the east aisle is the grave of the famous wizard, Michael Scott, and at +the foot of the tombstone a grim-looking figure,—query himself? In the +ruined cloisters the tracery is of the most delicate description, +foliage of trees and vegetables being carved on them. This Abbey was +founded by David the First, but repaired by James the Fourth, which +accounts for his altered crown appearing in stone on the walls," &c. &c. +The Scotch kail is curious, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> indicative of national preference: and +is the wizard still on guard? Recollect that in those days there were no +guide-books,—so every observant traveller had to record for himself +what he saw.</p> + +<p>The next, in 1829, was a second visit to the Continent, my first having +been in 1826, with those quotations from "Rough Rhymes" which have +already met your view. In this we took the usual tour of those days, +<i>viâ</i> Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, and I might quote plenty +thereof if space and time allowed. Here shall follow a casual page from +the 1829 MS. Journal, now before me.</p> + +<p>"Heidelberg has a university of seven hundred students, who wear no +particular academicals, but are generally seen with a little red or blue +cap topping a luxuriant head of hair, a long coat, and moustaches which +usually perform the function of a chimney to pipe or cigar. All along +our to-day's route extended immense fields of tobacco, turnips, and +vegetals of every description. Most of the women seem to be troubled +with goitres, and we observed that all who have them wear rows of +garnets strung tight on the part affected, whether with the idea of +hiding the deformity, or of rendering the beauty of the swelling more +conspicuous, or of charming it away, I cannot tell. The roads in these +parts are much avenued with walnut trees: Fels, our courier, told me +that of all trees they are most subject to be struck by lightning, and +that under them is always a current of air. I insert his information, as +he is both a sensible man, and has had great opportunities of +observing," &c. &c. Here is a gap of three years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<p>In 1832, my journal about Dorsetshire and the Isle of Wight is chiefly +geological: as this extract shows, it was mainly a search after fossil +spoils at Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of +a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, +as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as +ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science +founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their +hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, +mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were +their special prey, for which the long and flexible neck of the +Plesiosaurus is an <i>à priori</i> argument," &c. &c.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo1.png" width="200" height="194" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>The 1833 journal is Welsh; and, <i>inter alia</i>, I therein drew and I now +record that recently destroyed and more recently restored Druidical +movement, the Buckstone: "A solid mass of rock, not of living adamant +but of dead pudding-stone, seemingly 'by subtle magic poised' on the +brow of a steep and high hill, wooded with oaks: the top of this mass of +rock is an area of fifty-four feet, its base being four, and the height +twelve. It was once a logan stone, but now has no rocking properties; +though most perilously poised on the side of a slope, and certainly, if +in part a work of nature, it must have been helped by art, seeing the +mere action of the atmosphere never could have so exactly chiselled away +all but the centre of gravity. The secret of the Druids, in this +instance at least, was in leaving a large mass behind, which as a lever +counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> spot two +exact views of it, taken to scale,—whereof this is one,—now of some +curious value, since its intentional destruction last year by a snobbish +party of mischievous idiots. (However, I see by the papers that, at a +cost of £500, it has been replaced.) Let this touch suffice as to my +then growing predilection for Druidism, since expanded by me into +several essays find pamphlets, touching on that strange topic, the +numerous rude stone monuments from Arabia to Mona.</p> + +<p>The 1834 journal regards Scotland,—a country I have since visited +several times, including the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the voyage round +from Thurso <i>viâ</i> Cape Wrath to the Hebrides; whereof, perhaps, more +anon. For a specimen page of this let me give what follows; the locality +is near Inverness and the Caledonian Canal: "We now bent our steps +toward Craig Phadrick, two miles north. This is the site of one of the +celebrated vitrified forts, concerning the creation of which there has +been so much learned discussion. And verily there is room, for there is +mystery: I will detail what we saw. On the summit of a steep hill of +conglomerate rock we could trace very clearly a double oblong enclosure +of eighty yards by twenty, with entrances east and west, a space of five +yards being between the two oblongs. The mounds were outwardly of turf, +but under a thin skin of this was a thick continuous wall of molten +stone, granite, gneiss, and sand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>stone, bubbling together in a hotchpot! +The existence of these forts (occurring frequently on the heights and of +various shapes) is attempted to be explained by divers theories. One man +tells us they were beacons; but, first, what an enormous one is here, +one hundred and twenty-four feet by sixty of blazing wood, timber being +scarce too! next, they sometimes occur in low situations from which a +flame could scarcely be seen; thirdly, common wood fire will not melt +granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to +spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best +explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by +means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and +seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had +some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this +Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland +in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now, +starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of +a rich land, through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and +briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle +uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to +demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn +from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the +spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad +ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and with lit candles +descended into the abyss, hands, knees, and elbows being of as much +service as our feet. Now, I am not going to map my way after the manner +of guide-books, nor to nickname the gor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>geous architecture of nature +according to the caprice of a rude peasant on the spot or the fancy of a +passing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, +beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but +I rather choose to speak of these subterranean palaces with none of such +vulgar similarities. No one ever saw such magnificence in stalactites; +from the black fissured roofs of antres vast and low-browed caves they +are hanging, of all conceivable shapes and sizes and descriptions. Now a +tall-fluted column, now a fringed canopy, now like a large white sheet +flung over a beetling rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a +curtain, everywhere are pure white stalactites like icicles straining to +meet the sturdier mounds of stalagmite below; whilst in the smaller +caves slender tubes extend from top to bottom like congealed rain. One +cavern is quite curtained round with dazzling and wavy tapestry; another +has gigantic masses of the white spar pouring from its crannied roof +like boiled Brobdingnag macaroni; others like heaps of snowy linen lying +about or hanging from the ceiling. The extent of the caves is quite +unknown: eleven acres (I was told) have been surveyed and mapped, while +there are six avenues still unexplored, and you may already wander for +twenty-four hours through the discovered provinces of the gnome king." +This is not to be compared with Kentucky, perhaps not quite with +Derbyshire; but it seemed to me marvellous at the time. Let this much +suffice as hinted reference to those early journals, which, if the world +were not already more full of books than of their readers, would be as +well worth printing in their integrity as many others of their bound and +lettered brethren.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> + +<p>In connection with these journals, I have been specially requested to +add to the above this record following (dated forty-four years ago) as a +specimen of my letter-writing in old days: it has pen-and-ink sketches, +here inserted by way of rough and ready illustration. The whole letter +is printed in its integrity as desired, and tells its own archæological +tale, though rather voluminously; but in the prehistoric era before +Rowland Hill arose, to give us cheap stamps for short notes, it was an +economy to make a letter as long as possible to pay for its exorbitant +postage: for example, my letters to and from Oxford used to cost +eightpence—or double if in an envelope, then absurdly surcharged.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>My Cornish Expedition.</i></p> + +<table class="center" summary="Arms of Cornwall" style="width: 75%;"><tbody> +<tr> +<td class="center" style="width: 33%;">The Arms of Cornwall</td> +<td><img src="images/illo2.png" width="200" height="125" alt="FOR ONE AND ALL" title="FOR ONE AND ALL" /></td> +<td class="center" style="width: 33%;">8th and 9th of January 1840.</td> +</tr> +</tbody></table> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My Dear Mother, and all good Domiciliars</span>,—</p> + +<p>I suppose it to be the intention of our worshipful and right +bankrupt Government that everybody write to everybody true, full, +and particular accounts of all things which he, she, or it, may +have done, be doing, or be about to do; and seeing I may have +something to say which will interest you all, I fulfil the +gossiping intentions of the Collective Wisdom, and give you an +omnibus epistle. Now, I recommend a good map, a quiet mind, and as +Charley says, Atten<i>tion</i>.—The bright,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> clear, frosty morning of +the 8th found me at Devonport, and nine o'clock beheld the same +egregious individual, well-benjamined, patronising with his bodily +presence the roof of the Falmouth coach. A steam ferry-bridge took +us across the Hamoaze, which, with its stationed hulks, scattered +shipping, and town and country banks, made, as it always makes, a +beautiful landscape. At Torpoint we first encountered venerable +Cornwall; and a pretty drive of sixteen miles, well wooded, and +watered by several intrusions of the unsatisfied sea, brought coach +and contents to Liskeard, a clean, granite, country town, with +palatial inn, and (in common with the whole of Devonshire and +Cornwall) a large many gabled church, covered with carved cathedral +windows, and shadowed by ancient elms. Not being able to accomplish +everything, I heard of, but saw not, divers antiquities in the +distant neighbourhood of St. Clare, <span class="figleft" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo3.png" width="200" height="146" alt="" title="" /> +</span> +such as a circle of stones, an +old church and well, and the natural curiosity called the +cheese-ring, being a mass of layered granite capriciously +decomposed: these "unseen ones" (what a mysterious name for a +three-volumed Bentleyism!) I do not regret, for I know how to +appreciate those wonders, the only enchantment whereof is, +distance. So suffered I conveyance to Lostwithiel, a town lying in +a hollow under the pictorial auspices of Restormel Castle, whose +ivied ruins up the valley are fine and Raglandish: while the rest +were bolting a coach dinner, I betook me to y<sup>e</sup> church, and was +charmed with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>a curious antique font, and the tower, an octagon +gothic lantern with extinguisher atop, like this: as far as memory<span class="figright" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo4.png" width="200" height="304" alt="" title="" /> +</span> +serves me. Onward again, through St. Blazey, and a mining district, +not ill-wooded, nor unpicturesque, to the fair town of St. Austle, +which the piety of Cornish ancestors has furnished with another +splendid specimen of ecclesiastical architecture, the upper half of +the chief tower, a square one, being fretted on every stone with +florid carving, and grotesque devices: but what shall I say of +Probus tower, which from top to bottom is covered with delicate +tracery cut in granite? it rises above the miserable surrounding +village, a satire upon neighbouring degeneracy in things religious: +you must often have seen drawings of Probus at the Watercolour +Exhibition, as it is a regular artists' lion. At about half-past +six we got into Truro, a clean wide flourishing town with London +shops, a commemorative column, a fine spired church, bridges over +narrow streams, and, like most other West of England towns, well +payed and gas-lighted. From this, I had intended to go to Falmouth, +but a diligent brain-sucking of coach comrades induced me to jump +at once into a branch conveyance to Penzance, so passing sleepy +Redruth, Camborne, and St. Erth in the dark, I found myself safely +housed at the Union Inn, Penzance, at half-past eleven. Talking of +unions, the country is studded here as everywhere with them; fine +buildings put to the pernicious use of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> imprisoning for life those +whose only crime is poverty, and destined to be metamorphosed ere +long (so I prophesy) into lunatic asylums for desperate +ministerialists, prisons for the Chartists, veterinary colleges for +cattle with the rot, and as one good end, hospitals for the poor. +Near Redruth, I took notice in the moonlight of Carn-bréh, the +remains of a British beacon or hill-fort, much of the antiquarian +interest of which has been destroyed by a neighbouring squire +having added to it <i>modern</i> ruins, to make it an object from his +hall! the whole hill, like much of the country, is sprinkled with +granite blocks higgledi-piggledy, and it is a grand dispute among +the pundits, whether or not the Archdruid Nature has been playing +at marbles in these parts; I wished to satisfy myself about it, but +couldn't stop, and so there's no use in grummering about regrets. +I've seen enough, to be able to judge <i>à priori</i>, that father +Noah's flood piled the hill with blocks, which have served one Dr. +Borlase and others as occasions for earning the character of +blockheads. One thing is man's doing, without <i>much</i> dispute, and +that is, an obelisk in honour of old Lord De Dunstanville, which is +a conspicuous toothpick on the hilltop: no doubt, as in this case, +nature brought the stones there, and man did his part in arranging +them; poor Dr. B. would have you believe that every natural rock +had been lifted here bodily for architectural purposes, and as +bodily made a most elaborate and labyrinthine ruin afterwards. At +Penzance, a broiled fish supper, and to bed by midnight, having +ordered a twilight gig, wherein by 7 on the ninth I was traversing +the beautiful bay. Penzance is a fine town in a splendid situation; +the bay, bounded by the Lizard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> and its opposite bold +brother-headland, inclosing St. Michael's Mount, and having a +fertile and villa-studded background; the town full of good +handsome shops (one like the Egyptian Hall), a large cathedralish +church, and with a very special market-place, of light granite, in +the form of a plain Grecian temple, surmounted at the middle by an +imposing dome. As I had duly culled information from the natives, I +lost no time in breakfasting, but drove off, bun in hand, to +explore the country of the Druids. Now, if the matters I succeeded +in visiting were in isolated and plain situations, they might have +been less disappointing; but where the face of the whole soil is +covered naturally with jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of +granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone +set on end a little more obviously than the rest, or to find out by +dint of perseverance a little arrangement, which may or may not be +accidental: added to this, the cottages, and walls, and field +enclosures are built of such immense blocks cleared off the surface +of the fields, that one's mind is prepared for far more than the +Druids ever did: many a Stonehengeified doorway, many a Titanic +pigstye, many a "Pelion-on-Ossa" questionable-sentry box, puts one +out of conceit with our puny ancestors. I went first to the +Dâns-mene, a famous stone-circle; and felt not a little vexed to +find that I, little i, am feet taller than any of the uprights +there, not 25 in number, and no bigger than field gateposts. It is +evidently the consecrated portion of a battlefield, for there are +several single stones dotted about the neighbourhood, to mark where +heroes fell; like those at Inveraray, but smaller. The habit all +through Cornwall of setting up a stone in every field, for cattle +to scratch themselves withal, seems to be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> sly satire against +other rubbing-stones for A. S. Ses. A few dreary miles further +brought me to the "voonder of voonders," the Logan-Rock, which on +the map is near Boskenna. The cliff and coast scenery is superb; +immense masses of granite of all shapes and sizes tumbled about in +all directions; what wonder that in such a heap of giant pebbles +<i>one</i> should be found ricketty? or more, what wonder that the very +decomposing nature of coarse granite should have caused the +atmosphere to eat away, gradually, all but the actual centre of +gravity? both at the Logan, and Land's End, and Mount St. Michael, +I am sure I have seen a hundred rocks wasted very nearly to the +moving point, and I could mention specifically six, which in 20 +years will rock, or in half an hour of chiselling would. In part +proof of what I say, the Land-End people, jealous of Logan +customers, have just found out a great rock in their parts, which +two men can make to move; I recommended a long-handled chisel, and +have little doubt that my hint will be acted on; by next season, +the Cornish antiquaries will be puzzling their musty brains over +marks of "druidical" tools;<span class="figleft" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo5.png" width="200" height="312" alt="" title="" /> +</span> essays will appear, to demonstrate that +the chippings were accomplished by the consecrated golden sickle; +the rock will be proved to have been quarried at Normandy, and +ferried over; facsimiles of the cuts will be lithographed; and the +Innkeeper of the "First and Last house in England" will gratefully +present a piece of plate (a Druid "spanning" [consider Ezekiel's +"putting the branch to the nose" as a sign of contempt]!) to the +author of "Hints for a Chisel," "Proverbial Phil.," &c. &c. &c. +But—<i>revenous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> à nos moutons</i>: to <i>the</i> Logan: until it was +scrupulously pointed out, by so tangible a manner as my boy-guide +getting <i>on</i> it, I could scarcely distinguish<span class="figright" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo6.png" width="200" height="195" alt="" title="" /> +</span> it from the fine +hurlyburly of rocks around. That it moves there is no question; but +when I tell you that it is now obliged to be artificially kept from +falling, by a chain fixing it behind, and a beam to rest on before, +I think you will agree with me in muttering "the humbug!" Artists +have so diligently falsified the view, <i>ad captandum</i>, that you +will have some difficulty in recognising so old a friend as the +Logan:<span class="figright" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo7.png" width="200" height="215" alt="" title="" /> +</span> it is commonly drawn as if isolated, <i>thus</i>, and would so, +no doubt, be very astonishing; but, when my memory puts it as +above, stapled, and <i>obliged</i> to remain for Cockneys to log it, +surrounded by a much more imposing brotherhood, my wonder only is +that it keeps its lion character, and that, considering the easy +explication of its natural cause or accident, it should ever have +been conceived to be man's doing; perhaps the Druids availed +themselves of so lucky a chance for miracle-mongering, but as to +having contrived it, you might as well say that they built the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>cliffs. It strikes me, moreover, that Cornwall could never have +been the headquarters of Druidism, inasmuch as the soil is too +scanty for oaks: there isn't a tree of any size, much less an oak +tree in all West Cornwall: they must have cut samphire from the +rocks, instead of misletoe from oaks, and the old gentlemen must +have been pretty tolerable climbers, victim and all, to have got +near enough to touch the Logan: to be sure it was a frosty day, and +iron-shod shoes on icy granite are not over coalescible, but I did +not dare scramble to it, as a tumble would have insured a +particularly uncomfortable death; and although the interesting +"Leaper from the Logan, or Martin Martyr" would have had his name +enshrined in young lady sonnets, and azure albums, such immortality +had little charms for me. I contented myself<span class="figleft" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo8.png" width="200" height="199" alt="" title="" /> +</span> with being able to +swear that I have seen 90 tons of stone moved by a child of ten +years old. Near it is another, called the logging lady, a block, +upright like its neighbours, about 12 feet high, and which the boy +told me could only be made to log by two men with poles; in fact, +one end is worn with levers: well, I told him to try and move it; +no use, says he; try, said I; he did try, and couldn't; well, I +took a sight of where I thought he could do it, and set him to +push; forthwith, my lady tottered, and I told the boy, if he would +only keep to himself where he pushed it would be a banknote to him. +I mention this to illustrate what I verily believe, to wit, that, +if a man only took the breakneck trouble to clamber and try, he +would discover<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> several rocking-stones; but the fact is, this would +diminish the wonder, and Cockneys wouldn't come to see what is +easily explained: your Druids, with imaginary dynamics, invest +nature's freaks with mysterious interest. But away to Tol Peden +Penwith, where there is another curiosity; in the smooth green +middle of a narrow promontory, surrounded and terminated by the +boldest rock-scenery, strangely drops down for a perpendicular +hundred feet, a circular chasm, not ill named the Funnel, and which +not even a stolid Borlase can pretend was dug by the Druids: at the +bottom there is<span class="figright" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/illo9.png" width="200" height="365" alt="" title="" /> +</span> communication with the sea by means of a cavern, +and in stormy weather the rush up this gigantic earth's +chimney-must be something terrible: will this convey a rough idea? +the scenery all round is really magnificent, and the looking down +this black smooth stone-pit is quite fearful; it slopes away so +deceitfully, and looks like a huge lion-ant's nest. Few people see +this, because you can only get at it by a walk of a mile, but I +think it quite as worth seeing as the logan-rock. My next object +was the Land's End, where, as elsewhere, I did signalise myself by +<i>not</i> scribbling my autograph on a rock, or carving M. F. T. on the +sod: the rocky coast is of the same grand character; granite bits, +as big as houses, floundering over each other like whales at play; +the cliffs, cavernous, castellated, mossgrown, and weatherbeaten; +it looks <i>like</i> a Land's end, a regular break up of the world's +then useless ribs:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> an outlier of rocks in the sea, surmounted by a +lighthouse: looks <i>like</i> the end of the struggle between conquering +man, and sturdy desolation. One place, where I tremble to think I +have been, struck me as quite awful: helped by an iron-handed +sailor, who comforts you in the dizzy scramble with "Never fear, +sir, you shan't fall, unless I fall too," you fearfully pick your +way to the extreme end, where it goes slick down, and lying +prostrate on the slippery granite (which looks disjointed +everywhere, and as if it would fall with you, bodily) with head +strained over you see under you a dreadful cavern, open nearly to +where you are, up which roars the white and angry sea. O brother +David, and foot-tingling Sire, never can you take that look; and +never would I again. Only think of tipping over! ugh.—Into the gig +again, beside my shrewd Sam Weller driver, and away. Here and there<span class="figleft" style="width: 70px;"> +<img src="images/illo10.png" width="70" height="115" alt="" title="" /> +</span> +about this part of Cornwall are studded rude stone crosses, +probably of the time of St. Colomba, as they are similar to those +at Iona: about two or three feet high, and very rude. In one place, +I noticed what seemed to be a headless female figure, perhaps the +Virgin,<span class="figleft" style="width: 150px;"> +<img src="images/illo11.png" width="150" height="214" alt="" title="" /> +</span> and as large as life: my Jehu said he had heard that it +once had a head. We soon came to a small square inclosure, said to +be a most ancient cemetery; I scrambled over the wall, and found +among the briars and weeds one solitary tomb of a venerable and +Runic aspect, but I soon found out that it recorded the name of +somebody who departed Y<sup>e</sup> LYFE somewhere in 1577; nothing so +extremely ancient. A rough rock-besprinkled hill now attracted me, +as I heard it was called another Carn-bréh, and was surmounted by +some mound, or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>ruin: so out of the gig, and up in no time. Clearly +it had been an ancient beacon place, as atop are the remains of a +small square-built terrace inclosing some upright stones placed +irregularly,—a sort of huge fireplace. One of the neighbouring +rocks presented on its surface a fine specimen of what are called +rock basins; but unluckily for the antiquary, this excavation is on +the side of the stone, not on the summit; so that it could not +possibly hold water, and is clearly caused by some particular moss +eating away the stone.—By three o'clock returned to Penzance, had +dinner (it was breakfast too), bought a mineral memorial, and in +the gig again, over the sands to the outlandishly named Mara Zion, +or Market Jew, words probably of similar import. Opposite to this +little place, and joined to it by a neck of rocks passable at +low-water, stands that picturesque gem, Mount St. Michael. You know +the sort of thing; an abrupt, pyramid of craggy rock, crowned with +an edifice, half stronghold and half cathedral. It is a home of the +St. Aubyn family, and is well kept up in the ancient style, but in +rather a small way: a portcullised entrance, old armour hanging in +the guard-room, a beautiful dining-hall with carved oak roof, and +panels, and chairs; a chapel to match, with stained windows; an +elegant Gothic drawing-room, white and gold; and everything, down +to black-leather drinking jugs, in character with the feudal +stronghold. I mounted the corkscrew tower, and got to the broken +stone lantern they call St. Michael's chair; an uncomfortable job, +but rewarded by a splendid panorama, gilt by the setting sun: in +the chapel too, I descended into a miserable dungeon communicating +with a monk's stall, where doubtless some self-immured penitent had +wasted life away, only coming to the light for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> matins, and only +relieved from solitary imprisonment by midnight mass. This has been +discovered but very lately in repairing the chapel: it was walled +up, and contained a skeleton. As a matter of course, this old +castle contains a little hidden room, where that ubiquitous +vagabond, the royal Charles, laid his hunted head: the poor +persecuted debauchee sponged upon all his friends like Bellyserious +Buggins. Back again, by water this time, to little Mara Zion, but +ever and anon looking with admiration on that beautiful mount; the +western rocks are really magnificent, as big as the largest +hay-stacks, and tumbled about as loosely as an emptied sugar-basin; +some hanging by a corner, and others resting on a casual fragment; +I am sure of one logan-stone, if a little impertinent bit of rock +were only moved away; and I walked under and between more Titanic +architecture than Stonehenge can show: the Druids, for my part, +shall have their due, but not where they don't deserve it. At nine, +after a substantial fried-fish tea, I mounted the night coach to +Falmouth,—outside, as there was no room in, and so, through +respectable Helstone, remarkable for a florid Gothic arch erected +to some modern worthy of the town, to decent Penryn, and then by +midnight, to the narrowest of all towns, Falmouth. I longed to get +back to my darlings, and resolved to see them by next morning, so +booked an outside (no room inside, as before) for an immediate +start. Now, you can readily imagine that I was by no means hot, and +though the night of Thursday last was rather mild, still it was +midwinter: accordingly I conceived and executed a marvellous +calorificating plan, which even the mail-coachman had never heard +of. Haying comforted my interiors with hot grog of the stiffest, I +called for another shillingsworth of brandy, and deliberately +emptied it, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> the astonished edification of beholders, into my +boots! literal fact, and it kept my feet comfortable all night +long. And so, wrapped all in double clothing, sped I my rapid way, +varying what I had before seen by passing through desolate Bodmin, +and its neighbourhood of rock, moor, and sand: hot coffee at +Liskeard, morning broke soon after, then the glorious sun over the +sea. Hamoaze, the ferry, and Devonport at 1/2 past 8. Much as I +longed to get home, I went forthwith into a hot bath at 102, to +boil out all chills, and thence went spick and span to my happy +rest, having within 48 hours seen the best part of Cornwall and its +wonders, and rode or walked 250 miles. And so, brother David, +commend me for a traveller. <span class="smcap">Here</span> ends my Cornish +expedition. Does it recall to thee, O sire, thine own of old time, +undertaken (if I remember rightly) with Dr. Kidd?—Mails then did +not travel like the Quicksilver, averaging 12 miles an hour, and +few people go 40 miles before breakfast. Now, I feel able to get +nearer my Albury destination, and in a week or so, shall hope to be +residing at Dorchester, near the Blandford of paternal +recollections. Did you, dear mother, get a letter from me directed +to Albury? I hope so, for it sets all clear: and if not, I'll set +the nation against cheap postage. I don't feel the least confidence +now in the Post Office, forasmuch as they have no interest in a +letter after it is paid, and many will be mislaid from haste and +multiplicity. Please to say if it came safely to hand, as I judge +it important. If you, dear mother, got my last, I have nothing more +to say, and if not, I'll blow up the Post Office: unpopularity +would send all the letters by carriers: but whether or not, I can't +write any more, so with a due proportion of regards rightly +broadcast around, accept the remainder from—Your affectionate son,</p> + +<p class="right">M. F. T.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<h4>COLLEGE DAYS.</h4> + + +<p>In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went +through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we +have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two +cousins, Elisha and Carré, were at Exeter College, to take the benefit +of its Sarnian Exhibitions; my brother Daniel was at Brasenose, and my +brother William gained a scholarship of Trinity. When at Christ Church I +wore the same academical gown which my father had,—and have it still; a +curious antiquity in the dress line, now some fourscore years old, and +perfect for wear and appearance,—such as would have rejoiced the Sartor +Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line, +unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin +poets were always rendered by me in verse not prose, and that I +published anonymously "A Voice from the Cloister," being an earnest +appeal to my fellow-collegians against the youthful excesses so common +in those days.</p> + +<p>From this pamphlet I give an extract, as it is scarce; it began with +blank verse and ended with rhyme, all being for the period courageously +moral and religious. The end is as thus:—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has cleft with wearied wing the shades of night:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strike on the chords of joy a happier strain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hail, goodly company of generous youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hail, nobler sons of Temperance and Truth!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I see attendant Ariels circling there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet Chastity, young Hope, and Reason bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gentle Happiness with smiling face,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Melancholy flees the sons of day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the fool's censure equally betrays,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She asks not flattery, but let her claim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A kind perusal, and a secret name."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a +curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. I had the honour at +Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr. Burton's theological essay, +"The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also +contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to +give me the £25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone +to have £5 worth of them, as he was so good a second. Certainly such an +easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> + +<p>My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those +college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable +event, and may thus be worthy of mention. It was at that time not a +common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch +Cathedral—that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular +benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts. So when two +undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which +they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each +other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship +so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always +approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of letters through many +years have passed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to +praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and +modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too, +according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great +Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses, +ending with</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Crichton,—more, the Gladstone of the age,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode +(one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so +proverbially dangerous. Some of our most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> honest Ministers, <i>e.g.</i>, +Althorpe and Wellington, have been very bad speakers: some of our most +eloquent orators have proved very bad Ministers.</p> + +<p>And in this place I may introduce some account, long ago in print, of +the famous Aristotle class under the tutorship of Mr. Biscoe at Christ +Church, wherein (among far nobler and better scholars) your present +confessor took the lowest seat.</p> + +<p>Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle class at Christ Church was comprised +almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a +remarkable degree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards +attaining to great distinction, have rarely been associated at one +lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one +who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief +note of those old Aristotelians.</p> + +<p>Let the central figure be <i>Gladstone</i>—ever from youth up the beloved +and admired of many personal intimates (although some may be politically +his opponents). Always the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest, +hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and +it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and keen intelligences of +Eton and Christ Church formed themselves into a small social sort of +club, styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, the "W. E. G."</p> + +<p>Next to Gladstone Lord <i>Lincoln</i> used to sit, his first parliamentary +patron at Newark, and through life to death his friend. We all know how +admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcastle served his +country, and what a good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful Telemachus +in America.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Canning</i> may be mentioned thirdly; then a good-looking youth with +classic features and a florid cheek, since gone to "the land of the +departed" after having healed up the wounds of India as her +Governor-General. Next to the writer, one on each side, sat two more +Governors-General <i>in futuro</i>, though then both younger sons and +commoners, and now both also gone to their reward elsewhere; these were +<i>Bruce</i>, afterwards Lord Elgin, and <i>Ramsay</i>, Lord Dalhousie; the one +famous from Canada to China, the other noted for his triumphs in the +Punjaub. When at Toronto in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the +splendid hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture-room here +depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." Lord +<i>Abercorn</i> was of the class, a future viceroy; Lord <i>Douglas</i>, lately +Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of +Baden; and if Lord <i>Waterford</i> was infrequent in his attendance, at +least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of +eccentric celebrity. Then <i>Phillimore</i> was there, now our Dean of the +Arches; <i>Scott</i> and <i>Liddell</i>, both heads of houses, and even then +conspiring together for their great Dictionary. <i>Curzon</i> too (lately +Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine +travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine MSS. preserved at +Parham, where the writer has delighted to inspect them; how nearly +Tischendorf was anticipated in his fortunate find of that earliest +Scripture, no one knows better than Lord Zouch, who must have been close +upon that great and important discovery! <i>Doyle</i>, now Professor of +Poetry, <i>Hill</i>, of Mathematics, <i>Vaughan</i>, of History—all were of this +wonderful class; as also the Earl of <i>Selkirk</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> celebrated as a +mathematician; Bishops <i>Hamilton</i>, <i>Denison</i>, and <i>Wordsworth</i>; and +<i>Cornewall Lewis</i>, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; and <i>Kynaston</i>, +Head Master of St. Paul's; and a member of Parliament or two, as, for +example, <i>Leader</i>, once popular for Westminster.</p> + +<p>Now, other names of almost equal eminence may have been here +accidentally omitted, but the writer will not guess at more than he +actually recollects. Sometimes—for the lecture was a famous +one—members of other colleges came in; <i>Sidney Herbert</i>, of Oriel, in +particular, is remembered; and if <i>Robert Lowe</i>, of University, was only +occasionally seen, it must have been because he seldom went abroad till +twilight.</p> + +<p>Altogether "there were giants in those days;" and, without controversy, +a casual class, containing more than a score of such; illustrious names +as are here registered, must be memorable. The lecture-room was next to +Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite +traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," illustrated by each +reader with quotations, a record whereof is still <i>penes me</i>, and the +lecturer, now no longer living, was that able and accomplished classic, +the Reverend <i>Robert Biscoe</i>.</p> + +<p>My college days are full of recollections of men, since become famous in +literature, art, science, or position: of these the principal are +already recorded as having been members of the Aristotle class. Let me +add here, that I lived for three weeks of my first term in the gaily +adorned rooms in Peckwater of the wild Lord Waterford; and afterwards in +Lord Ossulston's, both being then absent from college; that Frank +Buckland and his bear occupied (long after I had left) my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> chambers +in Fells' Buildings; that I was a class-mate and friend of the luckless +Lord Conyers Osborne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and +gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his +shocking death—he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the +good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party +frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own +left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and +that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times +for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he +was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One +day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long +overlooked it, Mr. Tupper, but this must never occur again: indeed I +have only waited till now, because I knew of your general good conduct."</p> + +<p>"What have I done, Mr. Dean: be pleased to tell me."</p> + +<p>"Why, sir, the porter states that this is the fifth time you have not +come into college until past twelve o'clock."</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dean; there is some mistake: for I have never +once been later than ten."</p> + +<p>"Then, Mr. Tupper, somebody must have given your name in the dark: and I +request that you will do your best to discover who did this, and report +it to me."</p> + +<p>As I failed to do it, after some days, again the Dean sent for me; and +finding after question made that I pretty well guessed the delinquent +but declined to expose him, the Dean kindly added—"This does you +credit, sir," and I left. A few days passed, and I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> brought up again +with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I +could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not +speak. Then he said he was sorry for that, as he meant to nominate me +for a studentship. This, however, never came to pass, and so the matter +dropped; until Dean Gaisford succeeded Dean Smith, and Joseph lost his +Pharaoh.</p> + +<p>At college I lived the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied +continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up +Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick +scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that +Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or +Newton-Courtnay,—or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when +the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to +return home,—or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,—or +the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit +whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was +strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and +Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I +favoured with my approval (<i>valeat quantum</i>) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr. +Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical +experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 +Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of +the baronet <i>in præsenti</i>, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent +student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop +of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a <i>memoria technica</i> of mine in +rhyme giving the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily +producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents, +and radii," though helpful to memory, and humorous at the time, ending +with</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"At least I have proved that nothing is worse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>there are also similarly to be recorded my mathematical <i>séances</i> with +that worthy and clever Professor, A. P. Saunders, afterwards headmaster +of Charterhouse; and my Hebrew lectures with the mild-spoken Dr. Pusey, +afterwards so notorious; and I know not whatever else is memorable, +unless one condescended to what goes without saying about Hall and +Chapel, and Examinations: however, some frivolous larks in the Waterford +days, wherewith I need not say the present scribe had nothing to do, may +amuse. Here are three I remember; 1. An edict had gone out from the +authorities against hunting in pink,—and next morning the Dean's and +the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted +red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and +as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently +dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that +marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which nobody can +explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door +in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one +morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a +matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as +the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and +gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord +Hills<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>borough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards +Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd of roughs +with their fists, scattering them like duplicates of the hero of +Corioli.</p> + +<p>Of course I duly took my degrees of B.A. and M.A.,—and long after of +D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang for me, as they always do for a +grand compounding Doctor.</p> + +<p>A mentionable <i>curio</i> of authorship on that occasion is this: whatever +may be the rule now, in those days the degree of D.C.L. involved a +three-hours' imprisonment in the pulpit of the Bodleian Chapel, for the +candidate to answer therefrom in Latin any theological objectors who +might show themselves for that purpose; as, however, the chapel was +always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility +to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to +use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,—and I then +and there produced my poem on "The Dead"—to be found at p. 26 of my +Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's—a long one of +eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't +intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was +ridiculously thought that I had specially alluded to the registrar!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<h4>ORDERS: AND LINCOLN'S INN.</h4> + + +<p>Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech +seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders, +which also from religious motives was my own desire (for M'Neile at +Albury, and Bulteel at Oxford, had been instruments of good to me, the +first since I was 15, the other as a young collegian) and as Earl +Rivers, whom my father had financially assisted promised me a living, +and a curacy was easy where the mere licence was enough by way of +salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before +Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by +Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to +hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that +primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,—and I began to hope before his +awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only +half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough assured me with sorrow that I +could not be ordained unless I had my speech. So that first and sole +interview came to an untimely end: for soon after, not meaning to give +up the struggle at once, I resolved, before my next Episcopal visit, to +go down to Blewbury, the vicarage of my friend Mr. Evanson, who had +agreed to license me to his curacy, in order that by reading the lessons +in church I might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> practically test my competency. Of course, I prepared +myself specially by diligence, and care, and prayer, to stand this new +ordeal. But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got +his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed +the not ungainly Cœlebs; and as for the severe old clerk,—he naïvely +blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,—but what +means them stops?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips +against every difficult letter, a <i>t</i>, or a <i>p</i>, or a far too current +<i>s</i>. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson. +And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would +never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish +churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was +thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I +was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent +thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as +innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the +world.</p> + +<p>After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law, +thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I +had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to +myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are +as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could +not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to +other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or +rhythmed thoughts in black and white.</p> + +<p>There is a small chamber in the turret of No. 19 Lincoln's Inn Old +Square, on the second floor of rooms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> then belonging to my late friend +Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only +for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to +dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper +which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up +from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked +me where they came from:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as +found out.</p> + +<p>When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the <i>Literary +Gazette</i>, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L. E. L.'s brother. An +unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor +pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which +I most reluctantly assented; resolving however to be quite impartial. +The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he +quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you +have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have +done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for +me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he +threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him, +whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a +too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.</p> + +<p>The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds +in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where nobody could read +his hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>writing except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and +when <i>he</i> couldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition, +wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write +a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist, +breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a +couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near +the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of +strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray +caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of +foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on passengers' coats +and blank walls, as he passed on his daily walks to his office and back, +having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the +spoil. In the course of years he had amassed butterflies and beetles to +so valuable an extent, that when he was compelled by adverse fortune to +sell his cabinets by auction at Stevens's, he netted £1200 for his +collection: this he told me in later years himself; immediately after +the sale, he commenced collecting anew,—and having been made curator of +Lincoln's Inn Fields (through Mr. Brodie's interest), he soon found an +infinity of new insects,—derived perhaps from the Surgeon's Hall +Museum, or straying to the nine acres of that Garden,—is it not the +area of Cephren's Pyramid?—as a refuge for them out of smoky London. +The good man always brought a new flower to look at every morning while +at desk work; it lived in an old inkbottle of water, till one happy day +I bethought me charitably of giving him a pretty China vase,—that good +man, I say, is now long since gone to a world of light and +beauty—whence, I am sure, flowers and butterflies cannot be excluded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<p>About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day +at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, +and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political +offence, was being mobbed,—and that too on the 18th of June! He was +calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,—a groom being +behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the +scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted +out—Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations +into cheers, and the Iron Duke passed me silently with a military +salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we +conveyancers say, a short form for "mobilé", changeable) and escorted +our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little +incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a +mobocracy,—and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a +riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here +another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted +life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given +to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his +Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get +Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"—as accordingly I did, and the +pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye. +My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four +monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.</p> + +<p>After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred +pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to +make me more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He +penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was +duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst +others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after, +when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the +idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just +before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As +to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a +position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my +impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised +them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles +was offered Nottingham if he would pay £3000 for the honour,—and so I +failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were +at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was +of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.</p> + +<p>At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,—De Morgan, who had the +business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the +famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I +believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of +Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: +all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the +tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839, +which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a +matter quite for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>gotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my +father to get me an Indian Writership,—as also that previously I had +once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given +to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my +good father's efforts and my own;—and explains itself. In those days it +cost 9d. between Albury and London.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My Dearest Father</span>,—I can fully, though not perhaps so +fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five +great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word +more about India.—I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a +decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its +indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can +truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too +unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the +Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no +demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think +more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his +valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what +I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities +which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be +hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office +of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for +as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or +choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous +impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to +consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or +affliction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve +some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve +as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, +and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar +features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with +you on Friday.</p> + +<p>Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate +son,</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">M. F. Tupper</span>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Albury</span>, <i>December 28th, Wednesday.</i></p></div> + +<p>The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after +a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry +without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much +against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a +voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, +procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, +a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing +held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me—and +besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My +fee for all was fifty guineas—pretty well for a first and last exploit +in the way of law and its rewards.</p> + +<p>As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter +Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived +with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners +Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among +schoolboys—and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby & +Co." at my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> father's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my +weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with +vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and +confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All +these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr. +Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general +indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at +the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had +noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I +taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost +them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen. +Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a +social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original +humour,—but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only +once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy +and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and +expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the +dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord +Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented +"sandwiches," I will record this.</p> + +<p>In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour, +old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her +door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without +offence, as they were notorious and (the phy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>sicians judged) innocent +and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse +hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated +conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on +everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no +longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a +message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner +to-day"—sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in +white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the +whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes +decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and +stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of +society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published, +as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in +old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left +instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by +her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the +specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned +to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always +it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her +lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of +<i>bric-à-brac</i> which she had carried off with her in seeming +unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly +it was so. Let doctors decide. <i>Requiescat.</i> The forthcoming memoirs of +that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if +not over-edited.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<h4>STAMMERING AND CHESS.</h4> + + +<p>One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long +since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad +impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen +to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to +silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries +in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking +orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was +hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations, +when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons +more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; +it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good +father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid +pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many +things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one +can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note and +syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on +the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's +whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> That +was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced +for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while +Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, +emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by +my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and +tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let +me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, +and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my +literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the +most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many +such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did, +and courageously stand up against the multitude to claim before heaven +and earth man's proudest prerogative—the privilege of speech. In my +Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures +drawn from my own experiences: one of the stifled stammerer, the other +of the unbridled orator: which you can turn to as you will. As, however, +some of my old groanings after utterance are not equally accessible, I +will here give a few lines of mine from the "Stammerer's Complaint," +printed in the medical book of one of my Galens:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"... And is it not in truth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A poisoned sting in every social joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A drop of gall in each domestic sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An irritating petty misery,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I can never look on one I love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And speak the fulness of my burning thoughts?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I can never with unmingled joy<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Meet a long-loved and long-expected friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because I feel, but cannot vent my feelings,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because I know I ought, but must not, speak,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because I mark his quick impatient eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Striving in kindness to anticipate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The word of welcome strangled in its birth?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is it not sorrow, while I truly love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet social converse, to be forced to shun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The happy circle, from a nervous sense—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An agonising poignant consciousness—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I must stand aloof, nor mingle with<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wise and good in rational argument,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The young in brilliant quickness of reply,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Friendship's ingenuous interchange of mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Affection's open-hearted sympathies?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But feel myself an isolated being,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A very wilderness of widowed thought!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>All this is only sad stern truth; nothing morbid here: let any poor +stammerer testify to my faithfulness. Amongst others afflicted like +myself was Charles Kingsley, whom I knew well at a time when I had +overcome my calamity; whereas he carried his to the grave with him; +though he had frequent gleams of a forced and courageous eloquence, +preaching energetically in a somewhat artificial voice,—in private he +stammered much, as once I used to do, no doubt to his mortification, +though humbly acquiescing in God's will.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Chess is a chief intellectual resource to the stammerer; for therein he +can conquer in argument without the toil of speech, and prove himself +practically more eloquent than the men full of talk whom he so much +envies. Accordingly, in days gone by (for of late years I have given it +up, as too toilsome a recreation) I played often at that royal game. In +these times it is no game at all,—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>but a wearisome if seductive +science; just as cricket is an artillery combat now, and football a most +perilous conflict, and boating breaks the athlete's heart, and billiards +can only be played by a bar-spot professional, and tranquil whist itself +has developed into a semi-fraudulent system of open rules and secret +signs; even so the honest common-sense old game of chess has come to be +so encumbered with published openings and gambits and other parasitic +growths upon the wholesome house-plant, that I for one have renounced +it, as a pursuit for which life is too short and serious (give me a +farce or a story instead), and one moreover in which any fool well up to +crammed book games may crow over the wisest of men in an easy, because +stereotyped, checkmate. However, in this connection, I recollect a small +experience which proves that positive ignorance of famous openings may +sometimes be an advantage; just as the skilled fencer will be baffled by +a brave boor rushing in against rules, and by close encounter +unconventionally pinning him straight off. When a youth, just before +matriculation, I was a guest at Culham of the good rector there, a +chess-player to his own thinking indomitable, for none of the neighbours +could checkmate him: so he thought to make quick work of a silent but +thoughtful boy-stammerer,—by tempting him at an early period of the +game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his +usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat. +However, I declined the generous offer, which began to nettle my +opponent; but when afterwards I refused to answer divers moves by the +card (as he protested I ought), and finally reduced him to a positive +checkmate, he flew into such an unclerical rage that I would not play +again;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> his "revenge" might be too terrible. For another trivial chess +anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of +his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient +servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't +beat him again, sir,—he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly, +after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were +made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: so he was enabled to +sleep happily. I remember too playing with pegged pieces in a box-board +at so strange a place as outside the Oxford coach; and I think my +amiable adversary then was one Wynell Mayow, who has since grown into a +great Church dignitary. If he lives, my compliments to him.</p> + +<p>One of the best private chess-players I used often to encounter,—but +almost never to beat, is my old life-friend, Evelyn of Wotton, now the +first M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only +to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,—and if +ever through his carelessness I managed a stale, or a draw,—very seldom +a mate,—that was glory indeed. If he sees this, his memory will +countersign it.</p> + +<p>Let so much suffice, as perhaps a not inappropriate word about the +Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especially, where the player +is, like Moses, "not a man of words."</p> + +<p>One day, by the by, this text in the original, "lo ish devarim anochi" +(Exod. iv. 10), came to my lot in Pusey's Hebrew class, to my special +confusion: but every tutor was very considerate and favoured the one who +couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn +came to read or to answer,—"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know +it,—please to go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> on, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual confidence in my +proficiency had the effect of forcing my consciousness to deserve it; +and it usually happened that I really did know, silently, like +Macaulay's cunning augur, "who knew but might not tell."</p> + +<p>Speaking of recreation, Izaak Walton's joy as a contemplative man has +been mine from youth; as witness these three fishing sonnets, just found +in the faded ink of three or four decades ago, which may give a gleam of +country sunshine on a page or two, and would have rejoiced my +piscatorial friends Kingsley and Leech in old days, and will not be +unacceptable to Attwood Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons +with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had various luck as an +angler from Stennis Lake to the Usk, from Enniskillen to Killarney, from +Isis to Wotton,—and so it would be a pity if I omitted such an +authorial characteristic; especially as my stammering obliged me to +"study to be quiet."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look, like a village Queen of May, the stream<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dances her best before the holiday sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And still, with musical laugh, goes tripping on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over these golden sands, which brighter gleam<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To watch her pale-green kirtle flashing fleet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Above them, and her tinkling silver feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ripple melodies: quick,—yon circling rise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the calm refluence of this gay cascade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Marked an old trout, who shuns the sunny skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And, nightly prowler, loves the hazel shade:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Well thrown!—you hold him bravely,—off he speeds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now up, now down,—now madly darts about,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mind, mind your line among those flowering reeds,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">How the rod bends,—and hail, thou noble trout!"<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O, thou hast robbed the Nereids, gentle brother,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of some swift fairy messenger; behold,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His dappled livery prankt with red and gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shows him their favourite page: just such another<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Sad Galatæa to her Acis sent<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To teach the new-born fountain how to flow,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And track with loving haste the way she went<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down the rough rocks, and through the flowery plain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ev'n to her home where coral branches grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where the sea-nymph clasps her love again:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We the while, terrible as Polypheme,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brandish the lissom rod, and featly try<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once more to throw the tempting treacherous fly<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And win a brace of trophies from the stream."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come then, coy Zephyr, waft my feathered bait<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Over this rippling shallow's tiny wave<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To yonder pool, whose calmer eddies lave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some Triton's ambush, where he lies in wait<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To catch my skipping fly; there drop it lightly:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A rise, by Glaucus!—but he missed the hook,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Another—safe! the monarch of the brook,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With broadside like a salmon's, gleaming brightly:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Off let him race, and waste his prowess there;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The dread of Damocles, a single hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will tax my skill to take this fine old trout;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So,—lead him gently; quick, the net, the net!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now gladly lift the glittering beauty out,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hued like a dolphin, sweet as violet."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<h4>PRIZE POEMS, ETC.</h4> + + +<p>In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, +"The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton, +now Bishop of St. Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought +to know, but don't. A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine, +E. H. Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those +two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by +heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian +Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to +be coached in his recital. It was rumoured that I came second on both +occasions,—one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to +me, but I know not who placed it there. However, my pieces were +afterwards printed; both separately, and among my "Ballads and Poems," +by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me. As an impartial and veteran +judge of such <i>literaria</i>, I am bold to say they are far better than I +thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend +Abney & Co. were sure they would.</p> + +<p>At the close of my University career came, of course, the Great Go, +which I had to do as I did the Little Go, all on paper; for I could not +answer <i>vivâ voce</i>. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> this rule then, whatever may be the case now, +prevented me from going in for honours, though I had read for a first, +and hoped at least to get a second. Neither of these, nor even a third +class, was technically possible, if I could not stand a two days' ordeal +of <i>vivâ voce</i> examination, part of the whole week then exacted. +However, I did all at my best on paper, specially the translations from +classic poets in verse: whereof I'll find a specimen anon. The issue of +all was that I was offered an honorary fourth class,—which I refused, +as not willing to appear at the bottom of the list of all, +alphabetically,—and so my tutor, Mr. Biscoe, not wishing to lose the +honour for our college, managed to get it transferred to another of his +pupils, Mr. Thistlethwaite, whose father wrote to thank me for this +unexpected though not unmerited luck falling to his son.</p> + +<p>One short presentable piece of verse-making in the schools is as below +from Virgil: there were also three odes of Horace, a chorus from +Æschylus, and more from other Greek and Latin poets.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sicilian Muses, sing we loftier strains!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The humble tamarisk and woodland plains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delight not all; if woods and groves we try,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be the groves worthy of a consul's eye.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Told by the Sibyl's song, the 'latter time'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is come, and dispensations roll sublime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In new and glorious order; spring again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Virgo comes, and Saturn's golden reign.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A heavenly band from heaven's bright realm descends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All evil ceases, and all discord ends.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do thou with favouring eye, Lucina chaste,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Regard the wondrous babe,—his coming haste,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For under him the iron age shall cease,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the vast world rejoice in golden peace," &c. &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I select this bit, famous for being one of the places in Virgil which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +goes to prove that the Sibylline books (to which the Augustan poets had +easy access) quoted Isaiah's prophecies of Christ and the Millennium. It +will be considered that my public versifying was quite extempore, as in +fact is common with me. For other college memories in the literary line, +I may just mention certain brochures or parodies, initialed or +anonymous, whereto I must now plead guilty for the first time; +reflecting, amongst other topics, on Montgomery's Oxford, St. Mary's +theology, Mr. Rickard's "African Desert," and Garbet's pronounced and +rather absurd aestheticism as an examiner. Here are morsels of each in +order:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who praises Oxford?—some small buzzing thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some starveling songster on a tiny wing,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(<i>N.B.</i> They call the insect Bob, I know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I heard a printer's devil call it so)—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So fondly tells his admiration vast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No one can call the chastened strains bombast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though epitheted substantives immense<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Claim for each lofty sound the <i>caret</i> sense," &c. &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Next, a bit from my Low Church onslaught on St. Mary's in the Hampden +case, being part of "The Oxford Controversy":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Though vanquished oft, in falsehood undismayed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like heretics in flaming vest arrayed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each angry Don lifts high his injured head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or 'stands between the living and the dead.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes wide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Primó, beware of truth, whate'er betide;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Watch above all, so not <i>Saint</i> Thomas spake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest upon Calvin, Scylla's rook, you break," &c. &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These forgotten trivials, wherein the allusions do not now show clear, +are, I know, barely excusable even thus curtly: but I choose to save a +touch or two from annihilation. Here is another little bit; this time +from a somewhat vicious parody on my rival Rickard's prize poem: it is +fairest to produce at length first his serious conclusion to the normal +fifty-liner, and then my less reverent imitation of it. Here, then, is +the end of Rickard's poem:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Bright was the doom which snatched her favourite son,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor came too soon to him whose task was done.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long burned his restless spirit to explore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That stream which eye had never tracked before,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flows on eternal to the rising sun!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all save him shrunk backward in dismay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To reach that stream, though doomed to perish there!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That prayer was heard; by Niger's mystic flood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One rapturous day the speechless dreamer stood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fixt on that stream his glistening eyes he kept,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sun went down,—the wayworn wanderer slept!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So much for the prize-taker; the prize-loser vented his spleen as +thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Bright was the doom that diddled Mungo Park,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet very palpably obscure and dark.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long burned his throat, for want of coming nigh<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That stream he long'd and pray'd for wistfully,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Whose course, 'tis said, that no one can tell where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It flows eternal; guessing isn't fair.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though miles a thousand had he tramp'd along,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all, save him, were sure that path was wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He'd find that stream,—if it was anywhere!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That prayer was heard, of course, though no one knows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where this said Niger never flowed, or flows;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that is known is, that a dreamer stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In speechless transport by a mystic flood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And after fixing on't his glistening eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sun goes down, and so the dreamer dies!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For the fourth promised specimen, the best excuse is that Garbet really +did utter the words quoted,—and the answer he received about love is +exact, and became famous:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Didst e'er read Dante!'—Never. 'Cruel man!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take, take him, Williams,—I—I never can.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>N.B.</i>—Williams was the other examiner. Garbet went on with a further +question nevertheless,—as he was affectedly fond of Italian:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Dost know the language love delights in most?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If thou dost not, thy character is lost.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Yes, sir!'—the youth retorts with just surprise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Love's language is the language of the eyes!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In those days, as perhaps also in these, like Pope, "I spake in +numbers," verse being almost—well, not quite—easier than prose. In +fact, some of my critics have heretofore to my disparagement stumbled on +the printed truth that he is little better than an improvisatore in +rhyme. And this word "rhyme" reminds me now of a very curious question I +raised some years after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> my Oxford days in more than one magazine +article, as to when rhyme was invented, and by whom: the conclusion +being that intoning monks found out how easily the cases of Latin nouns +and tenses of verbs, &c., jingled with each other, and that troubadours +and trouveres carried thus the seeds of song all over Europe in about +the ninth century, until which time rhythm was the only recognised form +of versification, rhyme having strangely escaped discovery for more than +four thousand years. Is it not a marvel (and another marvel that no one +noticed it before) that not one of the old poets, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, +and I think Sanscrit, Arabic, and Celtic too, ever (except by manifest +accident, now intentionally ignored) stumbled upon the good idea of +terminating their metres with rhyme? Where is there any ode of Horace, +or Anacreon,—where any psalm of David; any epigram of Martial, any +heroic verse of Virgil, or philosophic argument of +Lucretius,—decorated, enlivened, and brightened by the now only too +frequent ornament of rhyme?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I have just found among my old archived papers, faded by nearly six +decades of antiquity, a treatise which I wrote at nineteen, styled by me +"A Vindication of the Wisdom of Scripture in Matters of Natural +Science." This has never seen the light, even in extracts; and probably +never can attain to the dignity of print, seeing it is written against +all compositor law on both sides up and down of a quarto paper book. +Therein are treated, from both the scriptural and the scientific points +of view, many subjects, of which these are some: Cosmogony, miracles (in +chief Joshua's sun and moon), the circulation of the blood revealed in +Ecclesiastes, magnetism as mentioned by Job, "He spreadeth out the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> +north over the empty space and hangeth the world upon nothing," the +blood's innate vitality—"which is the life thereof," the earth's +centre, or orbit, and inclination, astronomy, spirits, the rainbow, the +final conflagration of our atmosphere to purify the globe, and many +other matters terrestrial and celestial. Some day a patient scribe may +be found to decipher this decayed manuscript and set out orderly its +miscellaneous contents. I began it at eighteen, and finished it when at +Oxford.</p> + +<p>There is also now before me another faded copybook of my early Christ +Church days containing ninety-one striking parallel passages between +Horace and Holy Writ; some being very remarkable, as Hor. <i>Sat.</i> i. 8, +and Isaiah xliv. 13, &c., about "making a god of a tree whereof he +burneth part:" also such well-known lines as "Quid sit futurum eras, +fuge quærere," and "Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernæ crastina summæ +Tempora Di superi?"—compared with "Take no thought for the morrow" and +"Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may +bring forth." With many more; in fact I collected nearly a hundred out +of Horace, besides a few from others of the classics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<h4>SUNDRY PROVIDENCES.</h4> + + +<p>Carlyle somewhere gives utterance to a truism, which the present scribe +at least can most gratefully countersign, that "it takes a great deal of +providence to bring a man to threescore years and ten." Not only are we +in peril every time we take breath, both from the action of our own +uncertain hearts and from the living germs of poison floating in the +air, but from all sorts of outer accidents (so-called, whereas they all +are "well ordered and sure") wherewith our little life is compassed +from, cradle to grave; in truth, trifles seem to rule us: "the turning +this way or that, the casual stopping or hastening hath saved life or +destroyed it, hath built up or flung down fortunes." Every inch and +every instant, we are guided and guarded, whether we notice it or not: +"the very hairs of our heads are all numbered." Here shall follow some +personal experiences in proof. Nearly seventy years ago I knew a small +schoolboy of seven who accidentally slit his own throat while cutting a +slate-frame against his chest with a sharp knife; there was a knot in +the wood, the knife slipped up, a pinafore was instantaneously covered +with blood—(though the little semisuicide was unconscious of any +pain)—thereafter his neck was quickly strapped with diaculum +plaister,—and to this day a slight scar may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> be found on the left side +of a silvery beard! Was not this a providential escape? Again—a lively +little urchin in his holiday recklessness ran his head pell-mell blindly +against a certain cannon post in Swallow Passage, leading from Princes +Street, Hanover Square, to Oxford Street, and was so damaged as to have +been carried home insensible to Burlington Street: a little more, the +doctors said, and it would have been a case of concussion of the brain. +The post is still there "to witness if I lie," as Macaulay's Roman +ballad has it,—and here grown to twice its height, thank heaven! am I. +Then again, some ten years after, a youth is seen careering on a +chestnut horse in Parliament Street, when a runaway butcher's cart +cannoned against his shying steed, the wheel ripping up a saddle-flap, +just as the rider had instantaneously shifted his right leg close to the +horse's neck! But for that providence, death or a crushed knee was +imminent.</p> + +<p>Yet again, after some twenty years more: "Æsop Smith" was one dark +evening creeping up a hill after a hard ride on his grey mare Brenda, +when he was aware of two rough men on the tramp before him, one of whom +needlessly crossed over so that they commanded both sides, and soon +seemed to be approximating; which when Æsop fortunately noticed, with a +quick spur into Brenda he flashed by the rascals as they tried to snatch +at his bridle and almost knocked them over right and left whilst he +galloped up the hill followed by their curses: was not this an escape +worth being thankful for?</p> + +<p>Once more: the same equestrian has had two perilous dog-cart accidents, +noticeable, for these causes; viz.—broken ribs, and a crushed right +hand, have proved to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> him experimentally how little pain is felt at the +moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common +soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is +ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only +dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes +away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I +remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know +that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight for three miles, holding +both sides together with my hands to enable me to breathe: no +wonder,—all my elasticity was gone with broken ribs. Though these two +accidents cost me, one three months, and the other much longer of a +(partly bedridden) helplessness, were they not good providences to make +one grateful? I write my mental thanksgiving with the same healed broken +hand.</p> + +<p>So much of perils by land, by way of sample: here are three or four by +sea, to match them. Do I not remember how a rash voyager was nearly +swept off the <i>Asia's</i> slippery deck in a storm, when a sudden lurch +flung him to cling to the side rail of a then unnetted bulwark, swinging +him back again by another lurch right over the yawning waves—like an +acrobat? Had I let go, no one would have known of that mystery of the +sea,—where and when a certain celebrity then expected in America, had +disappeared! Captain Judkin after that always had his bulwarks netted; +so that was a good result of my escape: I was the only passenger on +deck, a favoured one,—the captain being on his bridge, two men at the +wheel in their covered house, the stormy wind all round in a cyclone, +and the raging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> sea beneath,—and so all unseen I had been swept +away,—but for good providence.</p> + +<p>Once again; do I not shudderingly recollect how nearly the little +Guernsey steamer was run over by an American man-of-war in the Channel, +because a tipsy captain would "cross the bows of that d—— d +Yankee:"—the huge black prow positively hung over us,—and it was a +miracle that we were not sunk bodily in the mighty waters. What more? +Well, I will here insert an escaped danger that tells its own tale in a +sonnet written at the time, the place being Tenby and the sea-anemone +caverns there, accessible only at lowest neap tide.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"An hour of peril in the Lydstep caves:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Down the steep gorge, grotesquely boulder-piled<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wild<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My haste hath sped me to the rippled sand<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Where, arching deep, o'erhang on either hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These halls of Amphitrité, echoing clear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ceaseless mournful music of the waves:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ten thousand beauteous forms of life are here;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And long I linger, wandering in and out<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Among the seaflowers, tapestried about<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All over those wet walls.—A shout of fear!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The tide, the tide!—I turned and ran for life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And battled stoutly through that billowy strife!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Perhaps this is enough of such hairbreadth 'scapes both by land and +water: though I might (in America especially) mention many more. Then +there are all manner of the ordinary maladies of humanity, which I +pretermit. Carlyle was quite right; it <i>does</i> require "a good deal of +providence" to come to old age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<h4>YET MORE ESCAPES.</h4> + + +<p>But there are many other sorts of peril in human life to which I may +briefly advert, as we all have had some experiences of the same. Who +does not know of his special financial temptation, some sanguine and +unscrupulous speculator urging him from rock to rock across the rapids +of ruin, till he is engulfed as by Niagara? Or of the manifestly +disinterested and generous capitalist, who gives to some young legatee a +junior partner's free arm-chair, only that he may utilise his money and +keep the house solvent for yet a year or two, utterly unheeding that ere +long the grateful beneficiaire must be dragged down with his chief to +poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will, +stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless +accident killing off our intending benefactor just before that promised +codicil? Or of the ruinous investment? Or of the bankrupt Life +Assurance? Or of the unhappy fact of your autograph, "a mere matter of +form," on the back of some dishonoured bill of one's defaulting friend? +Yet all these are providences too,—lessons of life, and parts of our +schools and schoolmasters.</p> + +<p>And there are many like social evils besides. Let me delicately touch +one of them. I desire as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Ancient, now nearing the close of my +career, at least in this the caterpillar and soon to be chrysalis +condition of my being, to give my testimony seriously and practically to +the fact (disputed by too many from their own worse experience) that it +is quite possible to live from youth to age in many scenes and under +many circumstantial difficulties, preserving still through them all the +innocent purity of childhood. True, the crown of greater knowledge is +added to the Man; but although it be a knowledge both of evil and of +good, theoretically,—it need not practically be a guilty knowledge. If +one of any age, from the youngest to the oldest, has not the power of +self-control perpetually in exercise, and the good mental help of prayer +habitually at hand to be relied on, he is in danger, and may fall into +sin or even crime, at any hour, unless the Highest Power intervene. But, +if the senses are trained to resist the first inclinations to +unchastity, by the eye that will not look and the ear that will not +listen, then the doors of the mind are kept closed against the enemy, +and even "hot youth" is safe.</p> + +<p>We live in a co-operative cycle of society; and amongst other +co-operations are all manner of guilds to encourage, by example, +companionship and the like, divers great virtues, and some less +important fads and fancies of the day: let me not be thought to +disparage any gatherings for prayer, or temperance, or purity; though +individual strong men may not need such congregated help as the weaker +brethren yearn for. Many a veteran now, changed to good morals from a +looser life in the past, may well hope to serve both God and man by +preaching purity to the young men around, by vowing them to a white +ribbon guild, and giving them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> the decoration of an ivory cross. But he +is apt to forget what young blood is, his own having cooled down apace; +anon he will find that Nature is not so easily driven back—<i>usque +recurrit</i>—and he will soon have to acknowledge that if the higher and +deeper influences of personal religion, earnest prayer, honest +watchfulness, and sincere—though it be but incipient—love of God and +desire to imitate Christ, are not chief motives towards the purification +of human passion, this brotherhood of a guild may tend to little except +self-righteousness, and it will be well if hypocrisy and secret sin does +not accompany that open boastfulness of a White Cross Order. After all +said and done, a man—or woman—or precocious child—must simply take +the rules of Christ and Paul, and Solomon, as his guide and guard, by +"Resisting," "Fleeing," "Cutting off—metaphorically—the right hand, +and putting out the right eye;" so letting "discretion preserve him and +understanding keep him;" but there is nothing like flight; it is easy +and speedy, and more a courage than a cowardice. Take a simple instance. +Some forty years ago, an author, well-known in both hemispheres, then +living in London, received by post a pink and scented note from "an +American Lady, a great admirer of his books, &c. &c.: would he favour +her by a call" at such an hotel, in such a square? Much flattered he +went, and was very gushingly received; but when the lady, probably not +an American (though comely enough to be one), after a profusion of +compliments went on to complain of a husband having deserted her, and to +throw herself not without tears on the kindness of her favourite author, +that individual thought it would be prudent to depart, and so promptly +remembering another engagement he took up his hat and—fled. He had +afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> reason to be thankful for this escape, as for others. <i>I, +fac simile</i>; as no doubt you have done, and you will do, for there are +many Potipheras; ay, and there exist some Josephs too.</p> + +<p>Other forms of evil in the way of heterodoxy and heresy have assailed +your confessor, as is the common case with most other people, whether +authors or not. The rashest Atheism or more cowardly Agnosticism are +rampant monsters, but have only affected my own spirit into forcing me +to think out and to publish my Essay on Probabilities, whereof I shall +speak further when my books come under review. But beyond these open +foes to one's faith, who has not met with zealous enthusiasts who urge +upon his acceptance under penalty of the worst for all eternity if +refused, any amount of strange isms,—Plymouth, Southcote, Swedenborg, +Irving, Mormon,—and of the other 272 sects which affect (perhaps more +truly infect) religion in this free land? I have had many of these +attacking me by word or letter on the excuse of my books. Who, if he +once weakly gives way to their urgent advice to "search and see for +himself," will not soon be addled and muddled by all sorts of +sophistical and controversial botherations, if even he is not tempted to +accept—for lucre if not godliness—the office of bishop, or apostle, or +prophet, or anything else too freely offered by zealots to new converts, +if of notoriety enough to exalt or enrich a sect; such sect in every +case proclaiming itself the one only true Church, all other sects being +nothing but impostors? We have all encountered such spiritual +perils,—and happy may we feel that with whatever faults and failings, +there is an orthodox and established form of religion amongst us in the +land. For my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> part, I go freely to any house of prayer, national or +nonconformist, where the Gospel is preached and the preacher is capable: +all I want is a good man for the good word and work—and if he has the +true Spirit in him, I care next to nothing for his orders: though to +many less independent minds human authorisation may be a necessity. From +cradle hymns to the more serious prayings of senility, my own religion +in two words is crystallised as "Abba, Father;" my only priest being my +Divine Brother; and my Friend and Guide through this life and beyond it +the Holy Spirit, who unites all the family of God. May I die, as I have +lived, in this simple faith of childhood.</p> + +<p>My "Probabilities" has, amongst others apposite, this sentence about the +origin of evil, and the usefulness of temptation: "To our understanding, +at least, there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities +of Goodness and the contrivances of Wisdom but by the infused permission +of some physical and moral evils; mercy, benevolence, design would in a +universe of Best have nothing to do; that universe itself would grow +stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's +excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is not +then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation? and was +not such existence an antecedent probability?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<h4>FADS AND FANCIES.</h4> + + +<p>In a recent page I have alluded to sundry "fads and fancies of the day," +some of greater and others of lesser import, and I have been mixed up in +two or three of them. For example;—as an undergraduate at Oxford I +starved myself in the matter of sugar, by way of somehow discouraging +the slave-trade; I don't know that either Cæsar or Pompey was any the +better for my small self-sacrifice; but as a trifling fact, I may +mention that I then followed some of the more straitlaced fashions of +Clapham. Also, when in lodgings after my degree, I resolved to leave off +meat, bought an immense Cheshire cheese, and, after two months of +part-consumption thereof, reduced my native strength to such utter +weakness as quite to endanger health. So I had to relapse into the old +carnality of mutton chops, like other folk: such extreme virtue doesn't +pay.</p> + +<p>Of course abstinence from all stimulant has had its hold on me +heretofore, as it has upon many others,—but, after a persistent six +months of only water, my nerve power was so exhausted (I was working +hard at the time as editor of "The Anglo-Saxon," a long extinct +magazine) that my wise doctor enjoined wine and whisky—of course in +moderation; and so my fluttering heart soon recovered, and I have been +well ever since.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> + +<p>Now about temperance, let me say thus much. Of course, I must approve +the modern very philanthropic movement, but only in its rational aspect +of moderation. In my youth, the pendulum swung towards excess, now its +reaction being exactly opposite; both extremes to my mind are wrong. And +here let me state (<i>valeat quantum</i>) that I never exceeded in liquor but +once in my life: that once serving afterwards as a valuable life lesson +all through the wine-parties of Christ Church, the abounding +hospitalities of America, both North and South, through two long +visits—and the genialities of our own Great Britain during my several +Reading Tours. If it had not been for that three days' frightful +headache when I was a youth (in that sense a good providence), I could +not have escaped so many generous hosts and seductive beverages. That +one departure from sobriety happened thus. My uncle, Colonel Selwyn, +just returned from his nine years' command at Graham's Town, South +Africa, gave a grand dinner at the Opera Colonnade to his friends and +relatives, resolved (according to the fashion of the time) to fill them +all to the full with generous Bacchus by obligatory toasts, he himself +pretending to prefer his own bottle of brown sherry,—in fact, dishonest +toast and water; but that sort of practical joke was also a fashion of +the day. The result, of course, was what he desired; everybody but +himself had too much, whilst his mean sobriety, cruel uncle! enjoyed the +calm superiority of temperance over tipsiness. However, the lesson to me +(though never intended as such) was most timely,—just as I was entering +life to be forewarned by having been for only that once overtaken. I +have ever since been thankful for it as a mercy; and few have been so +favoured; how many can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> truly say, only that once? But I pass on, having +a great deal more to write about temperance. On my first visit to +America in 1851, all that mighty people indulged freely in strong drinks +of the strangest names and most delicious flavours: on my second in +1876,—just a quarter of a century after,—there was almost nothing to +be got but iced water. Accordingly when I was at Charleston I took up my +parable,—and spoke through a local paper as follows: I fear the extract +is somewhat lengthy, but as an exhaustive argument (and the piece, +moreover, being unprinted in any of my books), I choose to give it here +in full, to be skipped if the reader pleases. It is introduced thus by +an editor:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In these days of extreme abstinence from wine and spirits, it is +refreshing to see what the strong common-sense of an eminent moral +philosopher has to say about temperance. We make, then, a longish +extract, well-nigh exhaustive of the subject, which occurs in a +lecture, entitled 'America Revisited—1851 and 1877,' from the pen +of Martin Tupper, explaining itself. The author introduces his +poetic essay thus:—'Since my former visit to the States +twenty-five years ago, few changes are more remarkable than that in +the drinking habits of the people; formerly it was all for +spirituous liquors, and now it is "Water, water everywhere, and +every drop to drink!" The bars are well-nigh deserted, and the +entrance-halls of most houses are ostentatiously furnished with +plated beakers and goblets ensuring an icy welcome: in fact, not to +be tedious, intemperance has changed front, and excess in water has +taken the place of excess in wine.'" To an Englishman's judgment +the true "part of Hamlet" in a feast is the more generous fluid, +and the greatest luxuries are simply Barmecidal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> without some +wholesome stimulant to wash them down; accordingly, my too +outspoken honesty protested thus in print against this form of +folly in extremes, and either pleased or offended, as friends or +foes might choose to take it.</p></div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Temperance? Yes! true Temperance, yes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moderation in all things, the word is express;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Nothing too much'—Greek, 'Meden Agan;'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So spake Cleobúlus, the Seventh Wise Man;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the grand 'golden mean' was shrewd Horace's law,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Solomon's self laid it down for a saw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That 'good overmuch' is a possible fault,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As meat over-salted is worse for the salt;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Chilo, the Stagyrite, Peter, and Paul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enjoin moderation in all things to all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The law to make better this trial-scene, earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And draw out its strongest of wisdom and worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By sagely suppressing each evil excess—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In feasting, of course, but in fasting no less—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In drinking—by all means let no one get drunk—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In eating, let none be a gluttonous monk,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But everyone feed as becometh a saint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With grateful indulging and wholesome restraint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not pampering self, as an epicure might,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor famishing self, the ascetic's delight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But man ever has been, and will be, it seems,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Given up to intemperance, prone to extremes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wish of his heart (it has always been such)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is, give me by all means of all things too much!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In pleasures and honours, in meats, and in drinks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He craves for the most that his coveting thinks;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To wallow in sensual Lucullus's sty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or stand like the starving Stylités on high,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be free from all churches and worship alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or chain'd to the feet of a priest on a throne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be rich as a Rothschild, and dozens beside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or poor as St. Francis (in all things but pride),<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +<span class="i0">With appetite starved as a Faquir's, poor wretch!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or appetite fattened to luxury's stretch;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Denouncing good meats, on lentils he fares,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Denouncing good wine, by water he swears—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In all things excessive his folly withstands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wise moderation that Scripture commands.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This vice of excess is no foible of mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though liking and needing a glass of good wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To help the digestion, to quicken the heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And loosen the tongue for its eloquent part,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But never once yielding one jot to excess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor weakly consenting the least to transgress.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For let no intolerant bigot pretend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My Temperance Muse would excuse or defend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As Martial or tipsy Anacreon might,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An orgy of Bacchus, the drunkard's delight:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No! rational use is the sermon I'm preaching,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eschewing abuse as the text of my teaching.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Old Pindar says slyly, that 'Water is best;'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When pure as Bandusia, this may be confest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But water so often is troubled with fleas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And queer little monsters the microscope sees;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is sometimes so muddy, and sometimes so mixt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With poisons and gases, both fixt and unfixt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And seems so connected with juvenile pills—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thought which the mind with unpleasantness fills—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That really one asks, is it safe to imbibe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So freely the live animalcula tribe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unkilled and uncooked with a little wine sauce<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poured in, or of whisky or brandy a toss—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gulp a cold draught of the colic, instead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of something to warm both the heart and the head?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That Jotham-first-fable, the bramble and vine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Piles up to a climax the praise of good wine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For in Judges we read—look it up, as you can—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'It cheereth the heart, both of God and of man;'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And everywhere lightness, and brightness, and health,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Gild the true temperance texts with their wealth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Giving strong drink to the ready to perish,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And heavy-heartedness joying to cherish.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What is wanted—and let some Good Templar invent it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Damaging drunkenness, nigh to prevent it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is a drink that is nice, warm, pleasant, and pale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delicious as 'cakes,' and seductive as 'ale,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like 'ginger that's hot in the mouth' and won't hurt you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As old Falstaff winks it, in spite of your virtue;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A temperate stimulant cup, to displace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pipes, hasheesh, and opium, and all that bad race;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cheap as pure water and free as fresh air—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, where shall we find such a beverage—where?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No wine for the pure or the wise—so some teach—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Abstinence utter for all and for each,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Total denial of every right use,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because some bad fools the good creature abuse!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As well might one vow not to warm at a fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor give the least rein to a lawful desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because some have recklessly burnt down their houses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because the rogue cheats, or the reveller carouses!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I see not the logic, the rational logic,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conclusive to me, coherent and cogic,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That since some poor sot in his folly exceeds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must starve out my likings, and stint out my needs.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Am I <i>that</i> brother's keeper? He is not an Abel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I know not his mates, we are not near each other,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But there's your example?—The drunkards can't see it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Example?—Your children!—No doubt it is right<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be to them always a law and a light;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +<span class="i0">But moderate temperance is the vise way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To form them, and hinder their going astray;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whereas utter abstinence proves itself vain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And drunkards flare up because good men abstain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The law of reaction is stringent and strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A youth <i>in extremis</i> is sure to go wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the pendulum swings with a multiplied force<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When sloped from its even legitimate course.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have known—who has not?—that a profligate son<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has been through his fanatic father undone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Restrained till the night of free licence arrives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then he breaks out to the wreck of two lives!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A fierce water-fever just now is red-hot;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drink water, or perish, thou slave and thou sot!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, liquors or wines? Not a taste, not a touch!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The times are so hard and the wines are so bad<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(For good at low prices are not to be had),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That forthwith society shrewdly shouts high<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For water alone, the whole abstinence cry!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, somehow supposed suggestive of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The cup of cold water is generously given,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But a glass of good wine is an obsolete thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And will be till trade is once more in full swing!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hint not hypocrisy; many are true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They preach what they practise, they say—and they do,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And used from their boyhood to only cold water,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enjoin nothing better on wife, son, and daughter;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But surely with some it is merely for thrift,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That they out off the wine, and with water make shift,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Although they profess the self-sacrifice made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As dread of intemperance makes them afraid.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so, like a helmsman too quick with his tiller,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eschewing Charybdis they steer upon Scylla,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To perish of utter intemperance—Yes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The victims of water consumed to excess.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To conclude: The first miracle, wonder Divine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wasn't wine changed to water, but water to wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wine of the Kingdom, the water of life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Transmuted, with every new excellence rife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wine to make glad both body and soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when the Redeemer was seen among men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He drank with the sinners and publicans then,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Exemplar of Temperance, yea, to the sot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In use of good wine, but abusing it not!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We dare not pretend to do better than He;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But follow the Master, as servants made free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is thus the true Christian with temperance lives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Giving God thanks for the wine that He gives."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I once heard Mr. Gough, the temperance lecturer: it was at the Brooklyn +Concert Hall in 1877. A handsome and eloquent man, his life is well +known, and that his domestic experiences have made him the good apostle +he is. I remember how well he turned off the argument against himself as +to the miracle of the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee: "Yes, +certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can." It was a witty +quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality. <i>Apropos</i>,—I do +not know whether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr. +Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the +fate of a poor old friend of mine in past days who was fatally a victim +to total abstinence. The story goes that a teetotal lecturer, in order +to give his audience ocular proof of the poisonous character of alcohol, +first magnifies the horrible denizens of stagnant water by his +microscope, and then triumphantly kills them all by a drop or two of +brandy! As if this did not prove the wholesomeness of <i>eau de vie</i> in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +such cases. If, for example, my poor friend above, the eminent Dr. +Hodgkin of Bedford Square, had followed his companion's example, the +still more eminent Moses Montefiore, by mixing water far too full of +life with the brandy that killed them for him, he would not have died +miserably in Palestine, eaten of worms as Herod was! Another such +instance I may here mention. When I visited the cemetery of Savannah, +Florida, in company with an American cousin, I noticed it graven on the +marble slab of a relation of ours, a Confederate officer, to the effect +that "he died faithful to his temperance principles, refusing to the +last the alcohol wherewith the doctor wanted to have saved his life!" +Such obstinate teetotalism, I said at the time, is criminally suicidal. +Whereat my lady cousin was horrified, for she regarded her brother as a +martyr.</p> + +<p>I cannot help quoting here part of a letter just received from an +excellent young clergyman, who had been reading my "Temperance," quite, +to the point. After some compliments he says, "I need scarcely say I +entirely agree with the scope and arguments of this vigorous poem. +Nothing is more clear, and increasingly so, to my own perception than +the terrible tendency of modern human nature to run into extremes" +(quoting some lines). "Your reference to 'thrift' is especially true. I +have often smiled at the pious fervour with which the heads of large +families with small incomes have embraced teetotalism! I have long +thought that the motto '<i>in vino veritas</i>' contains in it far more of +'<i>veritas</i>' than is dreamt of in most people's philosophy, and that the +age of rampant total abstinence is the age of special falseness. Of +course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,—and yet +they can be and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of +dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and +far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former. +Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of +tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just +sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes home with +respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who +reels past him in the street.</p> + +<p>"I desire to say this with reverence and caution. For we all need the +restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of God, as well as the +atonement and example of His dear Son. But when we see the present +tendency to anathematise open profligacy, and to ignore the hidden +Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord's own course), and the subtle +lying of the day, it seems as if those who ponder sadly over it ought to +speak out."</p> + +<p>Doubtless, there are many more fads and fancies, many other sorts of +perils and trials that might be spoken of as an author's or any other +man's experiences: but I will pass on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<h4>"SACRA POESIS" AND "GERALDINE."</h4> + + +<p>With the exception of "Rough Rhymes," my first Continental Journal as +aforesaid, and a song or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first +appearance in print, the creator of a real bound volume (though of the +smallest size) was as author of a booklet called "Sacra Poesis;" +consisting of seventy-five little poems illustrative of engravings or +drawings of sacred subjects, and intended to accompany a sort of pious +album which I wished to give to my then future wife. Most of it was +composed in my teens, though it found no technical "compositor" of a +printing sort until I was twenty-two (in 1832), when Nisbet published +the pretty little 24mo, with a picture by myself of Hope's Anchor on the +title. The booklet is now very rare, and a hundred years hence may be a +treasure to some bibliomaniac. Of its contents, speaking critically of +what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have +not been equalled by me since, and are still to be found among my +Miscellaneous Poems: but, many are feeble and faulty. Some of the +reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation; +some with sneers and due disparagement,—much as Byron's "Hours of +Idleness" had been treated not very many years before: though another +cause for hatred and contempt may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> operated in my case, namely +this: Ever since youth and now to my old age I have been exposed to the +"<i>odium theologicum</i>," the strife always raging between Protestant and +Papist, Low Church and High, Waldo and Dominic, Ulster and Connaught: +hence to this hour the frequent rancour against me and my writings +excited by sundry hostile partisans.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>My next volume was "Geraldine and other Poems," published by Joseph +Rickerby in 1838. The origin thereof was this,—as I now extract it from +my earliest literary notebook:—</p> + +<p>"In August 1838 I was at Dover, and from a library read for the first +time Coleridge's Christabel;" it was the original edition, before the +author's afterward improvements. "Being much taken with the poem, the +thought struck me to continue it to a probable issue, especially as I +wanted a leading subject for a new volume of miscellaneous verse. The +notion was barren till I got to Heine Bay a fortnight after, and then I +put pen to paper and finished the tale. It occupied me about eight days, +an innocent fact which divers dull Zoili have been much offended withal, +seeing that Coleridge had thought proper to bring out his two Parts at a +sixteen years' interval; a matter doubtless attributable either to +accident or indolence,—for to imagine that he was diligently polishing +his verses the whole time (as some blockheads will have it) would indeed +be a verification of the <i>parturiunt montes</i> theory. The fact is, these +things are done at a heat, as every poet knows. Pegasus is a racer, not +a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is +the tortoise, &c." The book had a fair success, both here and in +America, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> has been many times reprinted. Critiques of course were +various, for and against; the shuttlecock of fame requires conflicting +battledores: but, as I now again quote from that early notebook, "It is +amusing to notice, and instructive also to any young author who may +chance to see this, how thoroughly opposite many of the reviews are, +some extolling what others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible man +of his own opinion, unmoved by such seemingly unreasonable praise or +censure. When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most +melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the +critics; see in particular the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Coleridge left behind +him a very much improved and enlarged version of the poem, which I did +not see till years after I had written the sequel to it: my Geraldine +was composed for an addition to Christabel, as originally issued." +Another note of mine, in reply to a critic of <i>The Atlas</i>, runs +thus:—"Nobody who has not tried it can imagine the difficulties of +intellectual imitation: it is to think with another's mind, to speak +with another's tongue: I acknowledge freely that I never was satisfied +with Geraldine as a mere continuation of a story, but as an independent +poem, I will yet be the champion of my child, and think with <i>The +Eclectic</i> that I have succeeded as well as possible: as honest Pickwick +says, 'And let my enemies make the most of it.' At this time of day it +is not worth my while by any modern replies to attempt to quench such +long extinct volcanoes as 'The Conservative' and 'The Torch,' nor to +reproduce sundry glorifications of the new poet and his verses from many +other notices, long or short, duly pasted down for future generations in +my Archive-book. As to critical verdicts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> in this case, black and white +are not more contradictory: <i>e.g.</i>, let <i>Blackwood</i> be contrasted with +the <i>Monthly Review</i>, or the <i>Church of England Quarterly</i> with the +<i>Weekly True Sun</i>, &c. &c."</p> + +<p>It is a pity (at least the author of sold-out volumes may be forgiven +for the sentiment) that most of my books are not to be bought: they are +not in the market and are only purchasable at old-literature stores, +such as Reeves' or Bickers': some day, I hope to find a publisher +spirited enough to risk money in a ten-volumed "Edition of my Prose and +Poetry complete," &c.; but in the past and present, the subscription +system per Mudie and Smith, buying up whole editions at cost price +whereby to satiate the reading public, starves at once both author and +publisher, and makes impossible these expensive crown octavo editions, +"which no gentleman's library ought to be without." Some of the beat +smaller pieces in my "Geraldine and other Poems" will be found in Gall & +Inglis's Miscellaneous Tupper before mentioned: but my two Oxford Prize +Poems, The African Desert and The Suttees, are printed only in the +Geraldine volume.</p> + +<p>Anecdotes innumerable I could tell, if any cared to hear them, connected +with each of my books, as friends or foes have commented upon me and +mine in either hemisphere. In this place I cannot help recording one, as +it led to fortunate results. In 1839 I was travelling outside the Oxford +coach to Alma Mater, and a gentleman, arrayed as for an archery party +with bow and quiver, climbed up at Windsor for a seat beside me. He +seemed very joyous and excited, and broke out to me with this stanza,—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How fair and fresh is morn!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dewbeads dropping bright<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each humble flower adorn,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With coronets bedight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And jewel the rough thorn<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With tiny globes of light,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How beautiful is morn!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Her scattered gems how bright!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There,—isn't that charming? he said,—little aware of whom he asked the +amiable query. But when I went on with the second verse, he opened his +eyes wider and wider as I added:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There is a quiet gladness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the waking earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the face of sadness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lit with chastened mirth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is a mine of treasure<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In those hours of health,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Filling up the measure<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of creation's wealth!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of course, discovery of the author was unavoidable: so we collided and +coalesced, and I rejoiced to find in this "Angel unaware" no less a +celebrity than John Hughes of Donnington Priory, father of the still +greater celebrity (then a youth) Tom Hughes of Rugby and "Tom Brown's +Schooldays." Some time after I spent several pleasant days at his fine +old place in Berks, and made happy acquaintance with the brightest old +lady I ever met, his mother, who had known Burns and Byron and Scott; as +also with his pleasant good wife and her clever sons, one of whom, in +the ripeness of time, married a then charming little girl, the +heiress-ward of my host, and since well appreciated in society as a +<i>grande dame</i>; wife also to one famous for a Rugby<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> in both hemispheres, +for rifledom, the White Horse of Wilts, and now full-fledged county +judgeship. These excellent friendships survive many long years and will +be transplanted elsewhere hereafter. All this grew from a casual +encounter outside a coach: but such is life; what we call accidents are +all providences, and we are guided inch by inch and minute by minute. +Tom Hughes succeeded as a county judge in Yorkshire my old schoolfellow, +St. John Yates, mentioned on a recent page in connection with Andrew +Irvine's turkeycock irascibility.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Watch little providences: if indeed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or less there be, or greater, in the sight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of Him who governs all by day and night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sees the forest hidden in the seed:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all that happens take thou reverent heed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For seen in true Religion's happier light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Though not unknown of Reason's placid creed)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All things are ordered; all by orbits move,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Having precursors, satellites, and signs,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whereby the mind not doubtfully divines<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What is the will of Him who rules above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And takes for guidance those paternal hints<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That all is well, that thou art led by Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in thy travel trackest old footprints."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<h4>PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.</h4> + + +<p>And this may well be a fitting place wherein to record the origin, +progress, and after long years the full completion of what is manifestly +my chief authorial work in life, "Proverbial Philosophy." To ensure +accuracy, and not leave all the details to oftentimes unfaithful memory, +I will give a few extracts from "a brief account" of the book, set down +in 1838, at the beginning of Volume I. of "My Literary Heirloom," now +grown to many volumes, containing newspaper cuttings, anecdotes, and +letters and scraps of all sorts relating to my numerous works.</p> + +<p>"In the year 1828, when under Mr. Holt's roof at Albury (anno ætatis meæ +18), I bethought myself, for the special use and behoof of my cousin +Isabella, who seven years after became my wife, that I would transcribe +my notions on the holy estate of matrimony; a letter was too light, and +a formal essay too heavy, and I didn't care to versify my thoughts, so I +resolved to convey them in the manner of Solomon's Proverbs or the +'Wisdom' of Jesus the Son of Sirach: and I did so,—successively, in the +Articles first on Marriage, then Love, then Friendship, and fourthly on +Education: several other pieces growing afterwards. Whilst at Albury, my +cousin showed some of these to our rector,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> Hugh M'Neile, who warmly +praised them, and recommended their publication; but, regarding them as +private and personal, I would not hear of it, and in fact it was nine +years before they saw print; thus literally, though I meant it not then, +exemplifying the Horatian advice, 'nonumque premantur in annum.' +However, one day in August 1838, Mr. Stebbing, whose chapel, in the +Hampstead Road I used to attend when living at Gothic Cottage, Regent's +Park, in my first years of marriage, visiting me and urging me to write +something for the <i>Athenæum</i>, which he was then editing, I was induced +to show him these earliest essays; but I declined to <i>give</i> them to him, +whereat he was angered; perhaps the rather in that I objected to +piecemeal publication, possibly also casting some reproach (as the +fashion of the day then was) upon magazine and journalistic literature +generally. That I made an enemy of him was evidenced by a spiteful +little notice in the <i>Athenæum</i> of April 21st (three months after my +first series was published) stating that it was 'a book not likely to +please beyond the circle of a few minds as eccentric as the author's.' +The same false friend excluded me altogether from any notice in the +<i>Examiner</i> wherein he had some literary influence." To this day these +reviews have been my foes, which I regret.</p> + +<p>"Still, Mr. Stebbing did me substantial good; he praised the idea as +'new, because a resuscitation of what was very old,'—and as of my own +origination in these latter days, and as a good vehicle for thoughts on +many matters: and he promised his valuable assistance to a young +author's fame,—performing as above. So, after a last interview with him +at his house, wherein I conclusively refused him, I wrote my Preface at +once,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> jotting down (as I recollect at the street corner post opposite +Hampstead Road Chapel) on the back of an old letter my opening +paragraph,—</p> + +<p>"'Thoughts that have tarried in my mind, and peopled its inner +chambers,' &c., &c.</p> + +<p>"In ten weeks from that day I had my first series ready,—supposing it +then all I should ever write;—the same assurance of a final end having +been my delusion at the close of each of my four series. My first +publisher was Rickerby of Abchurch Lane, who produced a beautifully +printed small folio volume with ornamental initials, and now very +scarce: it came to a second edition, but brought me no money,—and the +third edition failing to sell, it was in great part sent to America; +where N. P. Willis finding a copy, fancied the book that of some +forgotten author of the Elizabethan era, and quoted it week after week +in a periodical of his, <i>The Home Journal</i>, as such: years afterwards, +when he met me in London, he was scared to find that one whom he had +thought dead three hundred years was still alive and juvenile and ruddy.</p> + +<p>"It might be thought indelicate in me to quote at length the many +pleasant greetings of the press to my first odd volumes; suffice it to +say, that the kind critics were with few exceptions unanimous in +commendation; and some great names, as Heraud, Leigh Hunt, and St. John +particularly favoured me,—the latter prophesying a tenth edition: but I +must still condescend to pick out at the end of this paper a few of the +plums of praise wherewith my early publication was indulged, if only to +please the numerous admirers of my chief 'lifework.' One comfort is that +no one of my reviewers all my life through has ever been bought or +rewarded. As to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> less fulsome style of criticism, I was supposed by +the <i>Spectator</i> to have 'written in hexameters,'—as if David or Solomon +had ever imitated Homer or some more ancient predecessor of his; and the +<i>Sun</i> fancied that I had 'culled from Erasmus, Bacon, Franklin, and +Saavedra,' whereas I was totally ignorant of their wisdoms: Saavedra I +have since learned is Cervantes. The <i>Sunday Times</i> finds 'Proverbial +Philosophy' 'very like Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life,"' but I may say +I never saw that neat little book of maxims till my brother Dan gave it +to me fourteen years after my Philosophy was public property; I am also +by this critic supposed to have 'imitated the Gulistan or Bostan of +Saadi,'—whereof I need not profess my total ignorance: however, the +writer kindly says of me, 'if he fail to make himself heard, the fault +will be rather in the public than in him.' The <i>Metropolitan</i> propounds +that 'a book like this would make a man's fortune in the East, but we +are afraid that philosophy in proverbs has no great chance in the West: +we should recommend the author to get it translated into Arabic.'" [I +have since heard that some of it has been.] Let this be enough as to +those first fruits of criticism, which might be extended to satiety; but +I decline to become "inebriated with the exuberance of my own +verbosity," as Beaconsfield has it about Gladstone.</p> + +<p>To carry on the story of my old book, its second series was due to +Harrison Ainsworth, at all events instrumentally. For, just as he was +establishing his special magazine, he asked me to help him with a +contribution in the style of that then new popularity, my Proverbs. This +I sturdily declined; for in my young days, it was thought +ungentlemanlike to write in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> magazines, though dukes, archbishops, and +premiers do so now: even authorship for money was thought vulgar: but, +when there greeted me at home a parcel of well-bound books as a gift +from the author, being all that were then extant of Ainsworth's, I was +so taken aback by his kindly munificence that I somewhat penitentially +responded thereto by an impromptu chapter on "Gifts," wherewith I made +the quarrel up and he was delighted: one or two others following. +However, I was too quick and too impatient to wait for piecemeal +publication month by month,—seeing I soon had my second series ready: +and so, leaving Rickerby as an unfruitful publisher (though, as will +soon appear, he produced other books for me) I went to Hatchards; with +whom I had a long and prosperous career—receiving annually from £500 to +£800 a year, and in the aggregate having benefited both them and +myself—for we shared equally—by something like, £10,000 a piece. But +in the course of time, the old grandfather and the father of the house, +excellent men both, went severally to the Better Land, and I had +published other books elsewhere, as will be seen, anon: and, amongst +other things, Mr. Bertrand Payne, who represented the respectable poetic +house of Moxon, desired to include me in his Beauties of the Poets, and +in order to that, having previously obtained license both from me and +Messrs. Hall & Virtue to select specimens of my lyrics for his volume, +asked me to let him add a few bits of Proverbial; to this I willingly +assented, but found myself repulsed by the temporary chief at +Hatchards'—lately a subordinate—with a direct refusal to permit any +portion of my book, of which they had a three years' lease then nearly +out, to be included in the specimen volume until, the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> remainder +copies were sold off. Mr. Payne on that immediately bought all they had, +writing a cheque of £900 in payment down,—whereof I got one-half, as I +should have done if sold at Hatchards'. I then of course went equitably +over to Moxon's,—and not long after published my third series with that +house, at Mr. Payne's suggestion and solicitation: it was not a +financial success, any more than others in that quarter; but I was paid +by having my later thoughts on topics of the day so handsomely published +at no cost of mine. The house of Moxon having its reverses,—and a +fourth and final series of "Proverbial Philosophy" having grown up +meanwhile, I concluded to go to Ward & Lock, that my four series might +for wider circulation be all included in one cheap volume, beautifully +got up, and with them I have since had some small success: for though +the royalty is only about a penny a volume, the numbers licensed have +been an edition of 20,000 succeeded in the course of years by another of +30,000; and I still leave the book with them so far as that cheap issue +is concerned.</p> + +<p>As, however, I desired to meet the wish of many friends and others of +the public who often asked for a handsomer form, suggesting a +reproduction of Hatchards' quarto, with additional illustrations for the +new matter, I applied to Cassell, and made arrangements to have the +whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to +meet (as Cassell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle +and artisan class; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the +whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring +on a new sale. I did not then know that Cassell's had numerous serials +already on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; and so I +was a little surprised and vexed to find that my book was after all to +appear as a whole and not in numbers, and that at a higher price, +half-a-guinea, in these cheap times quite prohibitive, I protested +vainly as to this; as I did also at the unsatisfactory character of the +illustrations to the third and fourth series, promised to be equal to +Hatchards' first and second, which had cost £2000: but Cassell's +additions were cheaply and insufficiently supplied by old German plates, +adapted as much as might be to my words for illustration. This manifest +inferiority of the last half of the volume, as well as its too great +price, stopped the sale,—and after a time with a high hand all the +copies were sold off by auction, to the loss of both publisher and +author. As I had supplied gratis the plates of Hatchards' edition, +buying up the half not mine and giving the other, I found myself thus +mulcted in a large sum, for which I have only to show in return about a +hundredweight of wood-blocks and stereotypes:—which may be bought by +any publisher at bargain price. Altogether the whole affair was +unsatisfactory and disappointing. Individuals may be genial, honest, and +considerate, but a company or a partnership simply looks to the hardest +bargain in the shrewdest way. Of all this I'll complain, vainly enough, +no more.</p> + +<p>In their several places, many anecdotes about "Proverbial Philosophy" +shall duly appear: I may mention one or two now, as timely. When that +good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw +me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, +"You will thank God for this book when your head comes to be as white as +mine." Let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet. When I +was writing the concluding essay of the first series, my father (not +quite such a prophet as old Hatchard) exhorted me to burn it, as his +ambition was to make a lawyer of me, the Church idea having failed from +my stammering, and he had very little confidence, as a man of the world, +in poetry bringing fortune. However, it did not get burnt, though I had +some difficulty in persuading him to let me get it printed instead. The +dear good man lived to bless me for it, especially for my essay on +Immortality, which I know affected him seriously, and he gave me £2000 +as a gift in consequence.</p> + +<p>As I may have been only too faithfully frank in mentioning this curious +literary anecdote,—which, as known to others, I could scarcely have +suppressed,—it is only fair to the memory of my dear and honoured +father that I should here produce one of his very few letters to me, +just found among my archives and bearing upon this same subject. It was +written to me at Brighton, and is dated Laura House, Southampton, +October 16, 1842:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dearest Martin</span>,—Anything that I could say, or any +praise that I could give respecting your last volume would, in my +estimation, fall very far short indeed of its merits. I shall +therefore merely say that I look upon your chapter upon +Immortality, not only as a most exquisite specimen of fine, sound, +and learned composition, but as combating in the most satisfactory +manner the <i>wisdom</i> of infidelity, almost perfect. I only hope that +you may receive the just tribute of the literary community: your +own feelings as the author of that chapter must be very enviable. +God bless you, dearest, dearest Martin.—Believe me, ever your +affectionate father and sincere friend,</p> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Martin Tupper</span>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> +</p></div> + +<p>I need not say that these are "<i>ipsissima verba</i>," and that I here +insert the letter in full, as the warmest and most honourable palinode I +could have received from a man so usually reserved and reticent as was +my revered and excellent father.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The brother of my friend Benjamin Nightingale (to be more spoken of +hereafter) was so fascinated with the book that he copied it all out in +his own handwriting, word for word, and was jocularly accused of +pretending to its authorship. I once met an enthusiast who knew both the +two first series by heart,—and certainly he went on wherever I tried to +pose him from the open volume,—my own memory being far less faithful. +Similarly my more recent friend William Hawkes claims to have read the +whole book sixty times; whereof this impromptu of mine is a sort of half +proof:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Impromptu</i>.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sixty times, you tell me, friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You've read my books from end to end.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perhaps not all my myriad rhymes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all my rhythmics sixty times.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yes, friend, for I have heard you quote<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My old Proverbials by rote<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Page after page, and anywhere<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have heard you spout them then and there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though I myself had quite forgot<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What I had writ, and you had not.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, author surely never more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was complimented so before;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For though I knew in years long past<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An amiable enthusiast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who copied out in his MS.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My whole Proverbial, as for press,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Until he half believed that he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was the real Simon M. F. T.,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet thou, my worthy William Hawkes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hast beaten Nightingale by chalks,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, years ago, your friends for fame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have given you Martin Tapper's name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because you constantly were heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quoting Proverbial word for word!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So then, by heart, as by the pen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'I live upon the mouths of men,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ev'n as Ennius lived of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A life worth more than gems or gold."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Two more strange anecdotes may here find their place (others will occur +elsewhere in this volume hereafter) respecting "Proverbial Philosophy." +Joseph Durham, the sculptor, a great friend of mine, had been known to +me for some years, and one day he gave me a curious little book, very +ancient and dingy-looking, entitled "Politeuphuia, Wits' Commonwealth: +London, 1667;" with this explanation, that he had picked it up at an old +bookstall, and, finding it was written somewhat in proverbs gave it to +me, adding, in his shrewd way, the humorous fancy that (until he had +read it and couldn't discover a line or thought of exact similarity) +possibly he might have checkmated me by showing me the mine from which I +had dug my wisdoms! As I have before me a memorandum pasted into the +booklet itself (it is a minute duodecimo) I will here quote exactly what +I wrote in it at the time: the date being Albury House, May 24, 1865:—</p> + +<p>"This little book has just been given to me by Durham; it is very +scarce, so much so that the British Museum, he says, does not possess a +copy; probably there are not six in the world. I never saw it, nor +heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> of it till now; just twenty-nine years after the publication of +my Proverbial Philosophy. It is a curious coincidence that the headings +of this Wits' Miscellany are similar to my own; as Of so and so +throughout; I first wrote On so and so; but did not like the sound, and +remembering it would be De in Latin, altered it to Of. The treatment +also of the subjects has some apparent similitude; but in looking all +through the book, it is strange that not one line, not one phrase, is +the same as any of mine. Travelling on the same road, and in somewhat of +the same proverbial rhythm, this is very curious; whilst it certainly +acquits me of even unintended and unconscious plagiarism. The headings +begin of God, of Heaven, of Angels, &c.,—and then of vertue, of peace, +of truth, &c., and afterwards of love, of jealousie, of hate, of beauty, +of flattery, &c., &c.,—all being aphoristic quotations from ancient +authors. As before stated, the whole was unseen by me until nearly +thirty years after I had published my independent essays on the same +theses much in a similar key."</p> + +<p>This is a parallel case to the recent statement in a printed book with +characteristic illustrations respecting the non-originality of Bunyan's +Pilgrim's Progress; and Milton's Paradise Lost has been similarly +disparaged, Mr. Plummer Ward having written and shown to me a pamphlet +by himself to prove that some Italian poem seen by Milton in youth +preceded him on the same lines;—while Mr. Geikie quotes from the +Anglo-Saxon Cædmon papers nearly identical with some in Paradise Lost. +But there is no end to assertions of this sort, impugning authorial +honesty and originality: when authors write on the same topics and with +much the same stock of words and ideas both religious and educational,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +it is only a marvel that the thoughts and writings of men do not oftener +collide, and seem to be plagiaristic reproductions. I have spoken of all +this at length, that if any one hereafter finds this "Politeuphuia" in +the British Museum (which is welcome to have my copy if it lacks one), +and years hence accuses my innocence of having stolen from it, he may +know that I have thus taken the bull by the horns and twisted him over.</p> + +<p>The last anecdote I shall now inflict upon my reader in this connection +is as follows:—</p> + +<p>One James Orton, an American gentleman whom I have never seen that I +know of (unless by possibility in some one of the crowds met +anonymously, before whom I may have read in public) was kind enough many +years ago to publish a beautifully printed and illustrated volume "The +Proverbialist and the Poet," whereof he sent me two copies; but lacking +his address, probably with the delicate object of preventing an +acknowledgment; and I am almost ashamed to state that his whole book in +different inks combines the threefold wisdoms of King Solomon, William +Shakespeare, and Martin Tupper; the title-page being decorated in +colours with views of the Temple, Stratford-on-Avon, and Albury House! +If I ventured to quote the Preface, it would beat even this as the +climax of fulsome flattery, and I think that my friends of the Comic +Press who have done me so much service by keeping up my shuttlecock with +their battledores, and so much honour by placing me prominently among +the defamed worthies of the world, would in their charity (for they have +some) pity the victim of such excruciating praise, if he failed hereby +to repudiate it.</p> + +<p>Not but that poor human nature delights in adulation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> I well remember +the joy wherewith I first greeted the following from a Cincinnati paper; +so hearty too, and generous, and obviously sincere.</p> + +<p>"The author of this book will rank, we are free to say, with the very +first spirits of the British world. It will live, in our judgment, as +long as the English language, and be a text-book of wisdom to the young +of all generations of America and England both. We would rather be the +author of it, than hold any civil or ecclesiastical office in the globe. +We would rather leave it as a legacy to our children, than the richest +estate ever owned by man. From our heart we thank the young author for +this precious gift, and, could our voice reach him, would pronounce a +shower of heartfelt blessings on his soul. When we began to read it with +our editorial pencil in hand, we undertook to mark its beautiful +passages, should we find any worthy of distinction; but, having read to +our satisfaction—indeed to our amazement—we throw down the pencil, +and, had we as much space as admiration, we would quote the whole of it. +It is one solid, sparkling, priceless gem."</p> + +<p>I may as well add a few more such extracts, as strictly within the text +of "My Lifework."</p> + +<p>"The author of 'Proverbial Philosophy' is a writer in whom beautiful +extremes meet,—the richness of the Orient, and the strength of the +Occident—the stern virtue of the North and the passion of the South. At +times his genius seems to possess creative power, and to open to our +gaze things new and glorious, of which we have never dreamed; then again +it seems like sunlight, its province not to create, but to vivify and +glorify what before was within and around us. Aspirations, fancies, +beliefs we have long folded in our hearts as dear and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> sacred things, +yet never had the power or the courage to reveal, bloom out as naturally +in his pages as wild flowers when the blossoming time is come. We are +not so much struck by the grandeur of his conceptions, or fascinated by +the elegance of his diction, as warmed, ennobled, and delighted by the +glow of his enthusiasm, the purity of his principles, and the continuous +gushing forth of his tenderness. His words form an electric chain, along +which he sends his own soul, thrilling around the wide circle of his +readers."—<span class="smcap">N. P. Willis's</span> <i>Home Journal</i>.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps no writer has attracted a greater degree of public attention, +or received a larger share of public praise, during the last few years, +than Martin F. Tupper,—a man of whom England may well be proud, and +whose name will eventually be one of the very noblest on the scroll of +fame."—<i>American Courier</i>.</p> + +<p>"Everybody knows the 'Proverbial Philosophy' of Martin Tupper; a million +and a half of copies—so, publishers say—have been sold in +America."—<i>New York World</i>.</p> + +<p>"Full of genius, rich in thought, admirable in its religious tone and +beautiful language."—<i>Cincinnati Atlas</i>.</p> + +<p>"'Apples of gold set in pictures of silver' is the most apposite +apophthegm we can apply to the entire work. We have rarely met a volume +so grateful to the taste in all its parts, so rich in its simplicity, so +unique in its arrangements, and so perfect in all that constitutes the +perfection of style, as the volume before us. It must live like immortal +seed, to produce a continual harvest of profitable +reflection."—(<i>Philadelphian</i>) <i>Episcopal Recorder</i>.</p> + +<p>"No one can glance at this work without perceiving that it is produced +by the inspiration of genius. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> is full of glorious thoughts, each of +which might be expanded into a treatise."—<i>Albany Atlas</i>.</p> + +<p>"We cannot express the intense interest and delight with which we have +perused 'Proverbial Philosophy.'"—<i>Oberlin's Evangelist</i>.</p> + +<p>"The 'Proverbial Philosophy' has struck with almost miraculous force and +effect upon the minds and hearts of a large class of American readers, +and has at once rendered its author's name and character famous and +familiar in our country. It abounds in gems and apt allusions, which +display without an effort the deep practical views and the æsthetical +culture of the author."—<i>Southern Literary Messenger</i>.</p> + +<p>Let all this suffice for America: a few from this side of the Atlantic +may be added:—</p> + +<p>"Were we to say all we think of the nobleness of the thoughts, of the +beauty and virtuousness of the sentiments contained in this volume, we +should be constrained to write a lengthened eulogium on it."—<i>Morning +Post</i>.</p> + +<p>"Martin Farquhar Tupper has won for himself the vacant throne waiting +for him amidst the immortals, and after a long and glorious term of +popularity among those who know when their hearts are touched, without +being able to justify their taste to their intellect, has been adopted +by the suffrage of mankind and the final decree of publishers into the +same rank with Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning."—<i>Spectator</i>.</p> + +<p>"It is a book easily understood, and repaying the reader on every page +with sentiments true to experience, and expressed often with surprising +beauty."—<i>Presbyterian</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>"One of the most thoughtful, brilliant, and finished productions of the +age."—<i>Banner of the Cross</i>.</p> + +<p>"For poetic imagery, for brightness of thought, for clear and striking +views of all the interests and conditions of man, this work has been +pronounced by the English and American press as unequalled."—<i>Literary +Messenger</i>.</p> + +<p>"The principal work of Martin Farquhar Tupper, 'Proverbial Philosophy,' +is instinct with the spirit of genial hopeful love: and to this mainly +should be attributed the vast amount of sympathetic admiration it has +attracted, not only in this country, but also in the United +States."—<i>English Review</i>.</p> + +<p>"We congratulate ourselves, for the sake of our land's language, on this +noble addition to her stock of what Dr. Johnson justly esteems 'the +highest order of learning.' If Mr. Tupper be not the high priest of his +profession, he is at least no undignified minister of the altar. The +spirit of a noble hope animates the exercise of his high +function."—<i>Parthenon</i>.</p> + +<p>"We know not whether Mr. Tupper, when he was pouring forth the contents +of these glorious volumes, intended to write prose or poetry; but if his +object was the former, his end has not been accomplished. 'Proverbial +Philosophy' is poetry assuredly; poetry exquisite, almost beyond the +bounds of fancy to conceive, brimmed with noble thoughts, and studded +with heavenward aspirations."—<i>Church of England Journal</i>.</p> + +<p>"The 'Proverbial Philosophy,' which first established Mr. Tupper's +reputation, is a work of standard excellence. It has met with +unprecedented success, and many large editions of it have been sold. It +led to the author's being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; and the +King of Prussia, in token of his Majesty's high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> approbation of the +work, sent him the gold medal for science and literature."—<i>Glasgow +Examiner</i>.</p> + +<p>"This book is like a collection of miniature paintings on ivory, small, +beautiful, highly finished, and heterogeneous: in style something +between prose and verse; not so rigid as to fetter the thought, not so +free as to exclude absolute distinctness, with the turn and phrase of +poetry."—<i>Christian Remembrancer</i>.</p> + +<p>"There is more novelty in the sentiments, a greater sweep of subjects, +and a finer sense of moral beauty displayed by Mr. Tupper, than we +remember to have seen in any work of its class, excepting of course the +'Proverbs of Solomon.' We also discover in his 'Philosophy' the stores +of extensive reading, and the indisputable proofs of habitual and devout +reflection, as well as the workings of an elegant mind."—<i>Monthly +Review</i>.</p> + +<p>"Have we not now done enough to show that a poet of power and of +promise,—a poet and philosopher both—is amongst us to delight and +instruct, to elevate and to guide."—<i>Conservative Journal</i>.</p> + +<p>"This work glows and glitters all over with the effluence and lustre of +a fine imagination, and is steeped in the rich hues and pervading beauty +of a mild wisdom, and a genial and kindly morality."—<i>Scots Times</i>.</p> + +<p>"The 'Proverbial Philosophy' contains much sound reflection, moral and +religious maxims of the highest importance, elegant figures and +allusions, sound and serious observations of life,—all expressed in +most appropriate and well-selected language."—<i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>.</p> + +<p>"One of the most original and curious productions of our +time."—<i>Atlas</i>.</p> + +<p>"A book as full of sweetness as a honeycomb, of gentleness as woman's +heart; in its wisdom worthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> the disciple of a Solomon, in its genius +the child of a Milton. Every page, nay almost every line, teems with +evidences of profound thinking and various reading, and the pictures it +often presents to our mind are the most imaginative and beautiful that +can possibly be conceived."—<i>Court Journal</i>.</p> + +<p>"If men delight to read Tupper both in England and America, why should +they not study him both in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth? +The judgment of persons who are more or less free from insular +prejudices is said in some degree to anticipate that which is admitted +to be the conclusive verdict of posterity."—<i>Saturday Review</i>.</p> + +<p>"The popularity of the 'Proverbial Philosophy' of Martin Tupper is a +gratifying and healthy symptom of the present taste in literature, the +book being full of lessons of wisdom and piety, conveyed in a style +startling at first by its novelty, but irresistibly pleasing by its +earnestness and eloquence."—<i>Literary Gazette</i>.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Mill, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Browning, Mr. Morris, Mr. +Rossetti—all these writers have a wider audience in America than in +England. So too has Mr. Tupper. The imagination staggers in attempting +to realise the number of copies of his works which have been published +abroad. Unlike most of his contemporaries, further, he has conquered +popularity in both hemispheres. He has won the suffrages of two great +nations. He may now disregard criticism."—<i>Daily News</i>.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>This sonnet, written and published in 1837, nearly half a century ago, +explains itself and may fairly come in here as a protest and prophecy by +a then young author. And, <i>nota bene</i>, if hyper-criticism objects that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> +a sonnet must always be a fourteen-liner (this being one only of twelve) +I reply that it is sometimes of sixteen, as in the one by Dante to +Madonna, which I have translated in my "Modern Pyramid:" and there are +instances of twelve, as one at least of Shakespeare's in his Passionate +Pilgrim. But this is a small technicality.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>To my Book "Proverbial Philosophy," before Publication.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My soul's own son, dear image of my mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I would not without blessing send thee forth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into the bleak wide world, whose voice unkind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Perchance will mock at thee as nothing worth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the cold critic's jealous eye may find<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In all thy purposed good little but ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May taunt thy simple garb as quaintly wrought,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And praise thee for no more than the small skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of masquing as thine own another's thought:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What then? count envious sneers as less than nought:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fair is thine aim,—and having done thy best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, thus I bless thee; yea, thou shalt be blest!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There were also two others afterward, in the jubilate vein; but I spare +my reader, albeit they are curiously prophetic of the wide good-doing +since accomplished.</p> + +<p>To the above numerous commendations which indeed might be indefinitely +extended, it is only fair to add that "Proverbial Philosophy" has run +the gauntlet of both hemispheres also in the way of parody, ridicule, +plagiaristic imitation, and in some instances of envious and malignant +condemnation. It has won on each side both praise from the good and +censure from the bad: our comic papers have amused us with its +travesties—as Church Liturgies and Holy Writ have been similarly +parodied,—and some of the modern writers who are unfriendly to +Christian influences have done<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> their small endeavour to damage both the +book and its author through adverse criticism. But their efforts are +vain. They have availed only to advance—from first to last now for some +forty-five years—the world-wide success of "Proverbial Philosophy."</p> + +<p>If it is expected, as a matter of impartiality, that I should here print +adverse criticisms as well as those which are favourable, I simply +decline to be so foolish: a caricature impresses where a portrait is +forgotten: the <i>litera scripta</i> in printer's ink remains and is quotable +for ever, and I do not think it worth while deliberately to traduce +myself and my book children by adopting the opinions of dyspeptic +scribes who will find how well I think of them in my Proverbial Essay +"Zoilism;" which, by the way, I read at St. Andrews, before some chiefs +of that university, with A. K. H. B. in the chair.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Accordingly, I prefer now to appear one-sided, as a piece of common +sense; quite indifferent to the charge of vain-gloriousness; all the +good verdicts quoted are genuine, absolutely unpaid and unrewarded, and +are matters of sincere and skilled opinion; so being such I prize them: +the opposing judgments—much fewer, and far less hearty, as "willing to +wound and yet afraid to strike"—may as well perish out of memory by +being ignored and neglected. Here is a social anecdote to illustrate +what I mean. I once knew a foolish young nobleman of the highest rank +who—to spite his younger brother as he fancied—posted him up in his +club for having called him "a maggot;" and all he got for his pains in +this exposure was that the name stuck to himself for life! so it is not +necessary to borrow fame's trumpet to proclaim one's few dispraises.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<p>Moreover, I have thought it only just to the many unseen lovers of +"Proverbial Philosophy" to show them how heartily their good opinions +have been countersigned and sanctioned all over the English-speaking +world by critics of many schools and almost all denominations. It is not +then from personal vanity that so much laudation is exhibited [God wot, +I have reason to denounce and renounce self-seeking]—but rather to +gratify and corroborate innumerable book friends.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>If there had been International Copyright in the more halcyon days of my +"Proverbial" popularity, when, as reported (see the <i>New York World</i> on +p. 124), a million and a half copies of my book were consumed in +America, I should have been materially rewarded by a royalty of +something like a hundred thousand pounds: but the bare fact is that all +I have ever received from my Transatlantic booksellers in the way of +money has been some £80 (three thousand dollars) which Herman Hooker of +Philadelphia gave me for the exclusive privilege—so far as I could +grant it—of being my publisher. For aught else, I have nothing to +complain of in the way of praise, however profitless, of kindliness, +however well appreciated, and of boundless hospitality, however fairly +reimbursed at the time by the valuable presence of a foreign celebrity. +No doubt the public are benefited by the cheapness of books unprotected +by copyright, and the author, if he wins no royalty, gains by fame and +pleasure; but the absence of a copyright law is a great mistake,—as +well as an injustice to the authorship of both nations, by starving the +literature of each other, American publishers will not sufficiently pay +their own native bookwrights when they can appropriate their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +neighbours' works for nothing; and ours in England probably enriched +themselves as vastly and cheaply by Mrs. Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's +Cabin" as many among the thirty-three States by "Proverbial Philosophy."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>As my handsome quarto "Proverbial" has been for two generations a common +gift-book for weddings, and has more than once appeared among the gifts +at royal marriages, it is small wonder that I have often been greeted by +old—and young—married couples as having been a sort of spiritual Cupid +on such occasions. Frequently at my readings and elsewhere ladies +thitherto unknown have claimed me as their unseen friend, and some have +feelingly acknowledged that my Love and Marriage (both written in my +teens) were the turning-points of their lives and causes of their +happiness. These lines will meet the eyes of some who will acknowledge +their truth, and possibly if they like it may write and tell me so: some +of my warmest friendships have originated in grateful letters of a +similar character.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It may also be worthy of mention that on this side of the Atlantic as +well as on the other (see especially the case of N. P. Willis) it has +often been taken for granted that the author of "Proverbial Philosophy" +has been dead for generations. No doubt this is due both to the antique +style of the book and to the retiring habits of its author: +comparatively few of my readers know me by sight. I could mention many +proofs of this belief in my non-existence: here is one; a daughter of +mine is asked lately by an eminent person if she is a descendant of the +celebrated Elizabethan author? and when that individual in passing round +the room came near to the Professor, and was introduced to him as her +father,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> the man could scarcely be brought to believe that his +long-departed book friend was positively alive before him. The Professor +looked as if he had seen a ghost.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Throughout this volume I wish my courteous readers to bear in mind that +the writer excludes from it as much as possible the strictly private and +personal element; it is intended to be mainly authorial or on matters +therewith connected. Moreover, if they will considerately take into +account that as a youth and until middle age I was, from the +speech-impediment since overcome, isolated from the gaieties of society, +as also that I religiously abstained from theatricals at a time before +Macready, who has since purified them into a very fair school of +morals,—to say less of having been engaged in marriage from seventeen +to twenty-five,—I can have (for example) no love adventures to offer +for amusement, nor any dramatic anecdotes such as Ruskin might supply. +The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini is full of entertaining and +highly coloured incidents which could not be possible to one rather of +the Huguenot stamp than that of the Cavalier, and so I cannot compete +therewith as to any of the spicier records of hot youth: for which +indeed let me be thankful.</p> + +<p>If then my reader finds me less lively than he had—shall I say +uncharitably?—hoped for, let him take into account that, to quote the +splendid but sensuous phrase of Swinburne, I have always been stupidly +prone to prefer "the lilies and languors of virtue" to "the roses and +raptures of vice."</p> + +<p>I will now proceed with the self-imposed duty of recording my authorial +performances.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<h4>A MODERN PYRAMID.</h4> + + +<p>In 1839, Rickerby was again my publisher; the new book being "A Modern +Pyramid; to Commemorate a Septuagint of Worthies." In this volume, +commencing with Abel, and ending with Felix Neff, I have greeted both in +verse and prose threescore and ten of the Excellent of the earth. +Probably the best thing in it is the "Vision Introductory;" and, as the +book has been long out of print, I will produce it here as an +interesting flight of fancy, albeit somewhat of a long one. If an author +can be accounted a fair judge of his own writings, this is my best +effort in the imaginative line; and as it is no new brain-child (we +always love the last baby best), but was written little short of fifty +years ago, the impartial opinion of an old judge is probably a correct +one. The sun-dial is still in my garden,—and as I stood by it half a +century since, there grew up to my mind's eye this Vision:—</p> + + +<p>"I was walking in my garden at noon: and I came to the sun-dial, where, +shutting my book, I leaned upon the pedestal, musing; so the thin shadow +pointed to twelve.</p> + +<p>"Of a sudden, I felt a warm sweet breath upon my cheek, and, starting +up, in much wonder beheld a face of the most bewitching beauty close +beside me, gazing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> on the dial: it was only a face; and with earnest +fear I leaned, steadfastly watching its strange loveliness. Soon, it +looked into me with its fascinating eyes, and said mournfully, 'Dost +thou not know me?'—but I was speechless with astonishment: then it +said, 'Consider:'—with that, my mind rushed into me like a flood, and I +looked, and considered, and speedily vague outlines shaped about, +mingled with floating gossamers of colour, until I was aware that a +glorious living Creature was growing to my knowledge.</p> + +<p>"So I looked resolutely on her (for she wore the garb of woman), gazing +still as she grew: and again she said mildly, 'Consider:'—then I noted +that from her jewelled girdle upwards, all was gorgeous, glistening, and +most beautiful; her white vest was rarely worked with living flowers, +but brighter and sweeter than those of earth; flowing tresses, blacker +than the shadows cast by the bursting of a meteor, and, like them, +brilliantly interwoven with strings of light, fell in clusters on her +fair bosom; her lips were curled with the expression of majestic +triumph, yet wreathed winningly with flickering smiles; and the lustre +of her terrible eyes, like suns flashing darkness, did bewilder me and +blind my reason:—Then I veiled mine eyes with my clasped hands; but +again she said, 'Consider:'—and bending all my mind to the hazard, I +encountered with calmness their steady radiance, although they burned +into my brain. Bound about her sable locks was as it were a chaplet of +fire; her right hand held a double-edged sword of most strange +workmanship, for the one edge was of keen steel, and the other as it +were the strip of a peacock's feather; on the face of the air about her +were phantoms of winged horses, and of racking-wheels: and from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> +glossy shoulders waved and quivered large dazzling wings of iridescent +colours, most glorious to look upon.</p> + +<p>"So grew she slowly to my knowledge; and as I stood gazing in a rapture, +again she muttered sternly,—'Consider!'—Then I looked below the girdle +upon her flowing robes: and behold they were of dismal hue, and on the +changing surface fluttered fearful visions: I discerned blood-spots on +them, and ghastly eyes glaring from the darker folds, and, when these +rustled, were heard stifled meanings, and smothered shrieks as of +horror: and I noted that she stood upon a wreath of lightnings, that +darted about like a nest of young snakes in the midst of a sullen cloud, +black, palpable, and rolling inwards as thick smoke from a furnace.</p> + +<p>"Then said she again to me, 'Dost thou not know me?'—and I answered +her,—'O Wonder, terrible in thy beauty, thy fairness have I seen in +dreams, and have guessed with a trembling spirit that thou walkest among +fears; are thou not that dread Power, whom the children of men have +named Imagination?'—And she smiled sweetly upon me, saying, 'Yea, my +son:' and her smile fell upon my heart like the sun on roses, till I +grew bold in my love and said, 'O Wonder, I would learn of thee; show me +some strange sight, that I may worship thy fair majesty in secret.'</p> + +<p>"Then she stood like a goddess and a queen, and stretching forth her +arm, white as the snow and glittering with circlets, slowly beckoned +with her sword to the points of the dial. There was a distant rushing +sound, and I saw white clouds afar off dropping suddenly and together +from the blue firmament all round me in a circle: and they fell to the +earth, and rolled onwards, fearfully converging to where I stood; and +they came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> on, on, on, like the galloping cavalry of heaven; pouring in +on all sides as huge cataracts of foam; and shutting me out from the +green social world with the awful curtains of the skies.—Then, as my +heart was failing me for fear, and for looking at those inevitable +strange oncomings, and the fixt eyes of my queenlike mistress, I sent +reason from his throne on my brow to speak with it calmly, and took +courage.</p> + +<p>"So stood I alone with that dread beauty by the dial, and the white +rolling wall of cloud came on slowly around with suppressed thunderings, +and the island of earth on which I stood grew smaller and smaller every +moment, and the garden-flowers faded away, and the familiar shrubs +disappeared, until the moving bases of those cold mist-mountains were +fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious Power, standing in +stature as a giant,—'Come! why tarriest thou? Come!'—and instantly +there rushed up to us a huge golden throne of light filigree-work, borne +upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged above with feathers fair +and white, but underneath they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with +black down: and all around fluttered beautiful winged faces, mingled and +disporting with grotesque figures and hideous imps. Then she mounted in +her pomp the steps of the throne, and sat therein proudly. Again she +said to me, 'Come!'—and I feared her, for her voice was terrible; so I +threw myself down on the lowest of the seven golden steps, and the +border of her dark robe touched me. Then was I full of dread, hemmed +about with horrors, and the pinions rustled together, and we rushed +upward like a flame, and the hurricane hastened after us: my heart was +as a frozen autumn-leaf quivering in my bosom, and I looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> up for help +and pity from the mighty Power on her throne; but she spurned me with +her black-sandalled foot, and I was thrust from my dizzy seat, and in +falling clutched at the silver net-work that lay upon the steps as a +carpet,—and so I hung; my hands were stiffly crooked in the meshes like +eagle's talons, my wrists were bursting, the bones of my body ached, and +I heard the chill whisper of Death (who came flitting up to me as a +sheeted ghost) bidding my poor heart be still: yet I would live on, I +would cling on, though swinging fearfully from that up-rushing throne; +for my mind was unsubdued, and my reason would not die, but rebelled +against his mandate. And so the pinions flapped away, the dreadful +cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the waterspout, raced the +whirlwind, hunted the thunder to his caverns, rushed through the light +and wind-tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the thick sea +of ice, that like a globe of hollow glass separates earth and its +atmosphere from superambient space, and flying forward through the +airless void, lighted on another world.</p> + +<p>"Then triumphed my reason, for I stood on that silent shore, fearless +though alone, and boldly upbraided the dread Power that had brought me +thither,—'Traitress, thou hast not conquered; my mind is still thy +master, and if the weaker body failed me, it hath been filled with new +energies in these quickening skies: I am immortal as thou art; yet shalt +thou fear me, and heed my biddings: wherefore hast thou dared—?' but my +wrathful eye looked on her bewitching beauty, and I had no tongue to +chide, as she said in the sobriety of loveliness,—'My son, have I not +answered thy prayer? yet but in part; behold, I have good store of +precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> things to show thee:' with that, she kissed my brow, and I +fell into an ecstasy.</p> + +<p>"I perceived that I was come to the kingdom of disembodied spirits, and +they crowded around me as around some strange creature, clustering with +earnest looks, perchance to inquire of me somewhat from the world I had +just left. Although impalpable, and moving through each other, +transparent and half-invisible, each wore the outward shape and seeming +garments he had mostly been known by upon earth: and my reason whispered +me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the +last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body +of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the +gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his +spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had +imprisoned it.—Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and +spake to me soothingly, saying, 'Knowest thou any of these?'—and I +answered, 'Millions upon millions, a widespread inundation of shadowy +forms, from martyred Abel to the still-born babe of this hour I behold +the gathered dead; millions upon millions, like the leaves of the +western forests, like the blades of grass upon the prairie, they are +here crowding innumerable: yet should my spirit know some among them, as +having held sweet converse with their minds in books; only this boon, +sweet mistress, from yonder mingled harvest of the dead, in grace cull +me mine intimates, that I may see them even with my bodily eyes.' So she +smiled, and waved her fair hand: and at once, a few, a very few, not all +worthiest, not all best, came nearer to me with looks of love; and I +knew them each one, for I had met and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> somewhile walked with each of +them in the paths of meditation; and some appeared less beatified than +others, and some even meanly clad as in garments all of earth, yet I +loved them more than the remainder of that crowded world, though not +equally, nor yet all for merit, but in that I had sympathy with these as +my friends. And each spake kindly to me in his tongue, so that I stood +entranced by the language of the spirits. Then said my bright-winged +guide, 'Hast thou no word for each of these? they love thy greeting, and +would hear thee.' But I answered, 'Alas, beautiful Power, I know but the +language of earth, and my heart is cold, and I am slow of tongue: how +should I worthily address these great ones?'—So with her finger she +touched my lips, and in an inspiration I spake the language of spirits, +where the thoughts are as incense to the mind, and the words winged +music to the ear, and the heart is dissolved into streams of joy, as +hail that hath wandered to the tropics: in sweetness I communed with +them all, and paid my debt of thanks.</p> + +<p>"And behold, a strange thing, changing the aspect of my vision. It +appeared to me, in that dreamy dimness, whereof the judgment inquireth +not and reason hath no power to rebuke it, that while I was still +speaking unto those great ones, the several greetings I had poured forth +in my fervour,—being as it were flowing lava from the volcano of my +heart,—became embodied into mighty cubes of crystal; and in the midst +of each one severally flickered its spiritual song, like a soul, in +characters of fire. So I looked in admiration on that fashioning of +thoughts, and while I looked, behold, the shining masses did shape up, +growing of themselves into a fair pyramid: and I saw that its eastern +foot was shrouded in a mist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> and the hither western foot stood out +clear and well defined, and the topstone in the middle was more glorious +than the rest, and inscribed with a name that might not be uttered; for +whereas all the remainder had seemed to be earthborn, mounting step by +step as the self-built pile grew wondrously, this only had appeared to +drop from above, neither had I welcomed the name it bore in that land of +spirits; nevertheless, I had perceived the footmarks of Him, with whose +name it was engraved, even on the golden sands of that bright world, and +had worshipped them in silence with a welcome.</p> + +<p>"Thus then stood before me the majestic pyramid of crystal, full of +characters flashing heavenly praise; and I gloried in it as mine own +building, hailing the architect proudly, and I grew familiar with those +high things, for my mind in its folly was lifted up, and looking on my +guide, I said, 'O Lady; were it not ill, I would tell my brethren on +earth of these strange matters, and of thy favour, and of the love all +these have shown me; yea, and I would recount their greetings and mine +in that sweet language of the spirits.'—But the glorious Wonder drew +back majestic with a frown, saying, 'Not so, presumptuous child of man; +the things I have shown thee, and the greetings thou hast heard, and the +songs wherewith I filled thee, cannot worthily be told in other than the +language of spirits: and where is the alphabet of men that can fix that +unearthly tongue,—or how shouldst thou from henceforth, or thy fellows +upon earth, attain to its delicate conceptions? behold, all these thine +intimates are wroth with thee; they discern evil upon thy soul: the +place of their sojourn is too pure for thee.'</p> + +<p>"Then was there a peal of thunder, like the bursting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> of a world, +whereupon all that restless sea of shadows, and their bright abode, +vanished suddenly; and there ensued a flood of darkness, peopled with +shoaling fears, and I heard the approach of hurrying sounds, with +demoniac laughter, and shouts coming as for me, nearer and louder, +saying, 'Cast out! Cast out!' and it rushed up to me like an unseen +army, and I fled for life before it, until I came to the extreme edge of +that spiritual world, where, as I ran looking backwards for terror at +those viewless hunters, I leaped horribly over the unguarded cliff, and +fell whirling, whirling, whirling, until my senses failed me—</p> + +<p>"When I came to myself, I was by the sun-dial in my garden, leaning upon +the pedestal, and the thin shadow still pointed to twelve.</p> + +<p>"In astonishment, I ran hastily to my chamber, and strove to remember +the strains I had heard. But, alas! they had all passed away: scarcely +one disjointed note of that rare music lingered in my memory: I was +awakened from a vivid dream, whereof the morning remembered nothing. +Nevertheless, I toiled on, a rebel against that fearful Power, and +deprived of her wonted aid: my songs, invitâ Minervâ, are but bald +translations of those heavenly welcomings: my humble pyramid, far from +being the visioned apotheosis of that of a Cephren, bears an unambitious +likeness to the meaner Asychian, the characteristic of which, barring +its presumptuous motto, must be veiled in one word from Herodotus +(2-136),—alas! for the bathos of translation, the cabalistic— +<span title="phelikos">φηλικος</span>, 'built up of mud.'</p> + +<p>"Was not Rome lutea as well as marmorea? and is not beautiful Paris +anciently Lutetia, with its tile-sheds for Tuileries, and a Bourbe-bonne +for its Sovereign?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> + +<p>All these sonnets, with others, were published by me elsewhere, as I +state further on. The volume also contains some of my less faulty +translations, as from Sappho, Æschylus, Pythagoras, Virgil, Horace, +Dante, Petrarch, &c. And here I will give a chance specimen out of my +"Septuagint of Worthies," to each one of whom I have appropriated a page +or two of explanatory prose besides his fourteen lines of poetry. Take +my sonnet on "Sylva" Evelyn:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wotton, fair Wotton, thine ancestral hall,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy green fresh meadows, coursed by ductile streams,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ripple joyous in the noonday beams,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leaping adown the frequent waterfall,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Thy princely forest, and calm slumbering lake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are hallowed spots and classic precincts all;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For in thy terraced walks and beechen grove<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The gentle, generous Evelyn wont to rove,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Peace-lover, who of nature's garden spake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From cedars to the hyssop on the wall!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O righteous spirit, fall'n on evil times,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy loyal zeal and learned piety<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blest all around thee, wept thy country's crimes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And taught the world how Christians live and die."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The sonnet is a form of metrical composition which has been habitual +with me, as my volume "Three Hundred Sonnets" will go to prove; and I +have written quite a hundred more. The best always come at a burst, +spontaneously and as it were inspirationally. A laboured sonnet is a +dull piece of artificial rhyming, and as it springs not from the heart +of the writer, fails to reach the heart of the reader. If the metal does +not flow out quick and hot, there never can be a sharp casting. Good +sonnets are crystals of the heart and mind, perfect from beginning to +end, and are only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> unpopular where poetasters make a carnal toil of them +instead of finding them a spiritual pleasure. But one who knows his +theme may write reams about sonneteering; for instance, see that +striking article on Shakespeare's sonnets in a recent <i>Fortnightly</i> (or +was it a <i>Contemporary</i>?) by Charles Mackay, himself one of our literary +worthiest, who has so well worked through a long life for his country +and his kind: my best regards to him.</p> + +<p>His discovery, or rather ingenious hypothesis, quite new to me, is, that +some of the one hundred and fifty-four in that collection are by other +writers than Shakespeare, though falsely printed under his name, and +that some more (though by him) were written impersonately in the +characters of Essex and Elizabeth; which would account for an awkward +confusion of the sexes hitherto inexplicable. Mackay thinks that the +publisher included any sonnets by others which he thought worthy of the +great bard, as if they were his, and so caused the injurious and wrong +appropriation; most of them are exquisite, and many undoubtedly +Shakespeare's; some I have said probably by another hand. Critically +speaking too, not one of all the one hundred and fifty-four is of the +conventional and elaborate fourteen-liner sort, with complicated rhymes; +but each is a lyrical gem of three four-line stanzas closed by a +distich. Milton's eighteen are all of the more artificial Petrarchian +sort; which Wordsworth has diligently made his model in more than four +hundred instances of very various degrees in merit.</p> + +<p>As I am writing a short memoir of my books, I may state that my own +small quarto of sonnets grew out of the "Modern Pyramid."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<h4>AN AUTHOR'S MIND: PROBABILITIES.</h4> + + +<p>My next book, published by Bentley in 1841, is in some sort a +psychological curiosity,—its title being "An Author's Mind, the Book of +Title-pages;" and when I add that it contains in succession sketches of +thirty-four new brain-children, all struggling together for exit from my +occiput, it may be imagined how impelled I was to write them all down +(fixt, however briefly, in black and white) in order to get rid of them. +The book is printed as "edited" by me; whereas I wrote every word of it, +but had not then the courage to say so, as certain things therein might +well have offended some folks, and I did not wish that. I think I will +give here a bit of the prefatory "Ramble," to show how the emptying out +of my thought-box must have been a most wholesome, a most necessary +relief:—</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Now, reader, one little preliminary parley with you about myself. Here +beginneth the trouble of authorship, but it is a trouble causing ease; +ease from thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, which never cease to make one's +head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease from dreams by night and +reveries by day (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's +children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army), +harassing the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a +definite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> life,—ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of +aerial forget-me-nots, clamouring to be recorded. O happy unimaginable +vacancy of mind, to whistle as you walk for want of thought! O mental +holiday, now as impossible to me as to take a true schoolboy's interest +in rounders and prisoner's base! An author's mind,—and remember always, +friend, I write in character, so judge not as egotistic vanity merely +the well playing of my <i>rôle</i>,—such a mind is not a sheet of smooth +wax, but a magic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions,—no empty +tenement, but a barn stored to bursting—it is a painful pressure, +constraining to write for comfort's sake,—an appetite craving to be +satisfied, as well as a power to be exerted,—an impetus that longs to +get away, rather than a dormant dynamic—thrice have I (let me confess +it) poured forth the alleviating volume as an author, a real author, +real, because, for very peace of mind, involuntary,—but still the +vessel fills,—still the indigenous crop springs up, choking a better +harvest, seeds of foreign growth,—still these Lernæan necks sprout +again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and +controvert, to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly it were +enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive,—to be fitted with a +colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaïdes might not +keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to +ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, +perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often +cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of +a man, fret, wear, worry him,—to be irritable is the conditional tax +laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> internal imagery +makes him hasty, quick, nervous, as a haunted, hunted man—minds of +coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a +texture,—they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a +tougher scabbard,—the river, not content with channel and restraining +banks, overflows perpetually,—the extortionate exacting armies of the +ideal and the causal persecute <span class="smcap">my</span> spirit, and I would make a +patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace. I write +these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd +increase,—I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and +Elijah with the priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental +nurslings; a dire resolve has filled me to effect a premature +destruction of the literary populace superfætating in my brain,—plays, +novels, essays, tales, homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and +poetics, politics and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than +sundry commentators of maltreated Aristotle. I will exhibit them in +their state chaotic,—I will addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not +chirp,—I will reveal, and secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and +thoughts shall not batten on me."</p> + +<p>The whole volume, as before-mentioned, is an epitome or quintessence of +more than thirty works,—perhaps the best being "The Prior of Marrick," +a story of idolatry; "Anti-Xurion," a crusade against razors; and "The +Author's Tribunal," an oration; but I confess, not having looked at the +book since my hair was black (and now it is snow-white), and considering +that I wrote it forty-five years ago, I am surprised to find how well +worth reading is my old Author's Mind. It may some day attain a +resurrection: possibly even, in more than the skeleton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> form of its +present appearance, muscles and skin being added, in a detailed filling +up and finishing of these mere sketches, if only time and opportunity +were given to me. But I much fear at my time of life that my Tragedy of +Nero must remain unwritten, as also my Novel of Charlotte Clopton, and +that thrilling Handbook of the Marvellous; not to mention my abortive +Epic of Home, and sundry essays, satires, and other lucubrations which, +alas! may now be considered addled eggs. In a last word, I somewhat +vaingloriously claim for authorship, as thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Cathedral Mind.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shrine of sweet thoughts veil'd round with words of power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Author's Mind in all its hallowed riches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stands a Cathedral; full of precious things—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cloister and aisle, dark crypt and aery tower;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And secret stores, and heaped-up offerings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Art's noblest wealth with Nature's fruit and flower.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Paintings and Sculpture, Summer's best, and Spring's,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its plenitude of pride and praise betoken;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An ever-burning lamp shines in its soul;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deep music all around enchantment flings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And <span class="smcap">God's</span> great Presence consecrates the whole!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Probabilities.</span></h4> + +<p>In this our day, Agnosticism, if not avowed Atheism, seems to be making +great way, and destroying the happiness of thousands. It may be a truth, +though partly an unpleasant one, that "he has no faith who never had a +doubt," even as "he has no hope who never had a fear." Well, in my short +day and in my own small way I seem to have been through everything,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> and +there was a time when I was much worried with uninvited difficulties and +involuntary unbeliefs. Such troublesome thoughts seemed to come to me +without my wish or will,—and stayed too long with me for my peace: +however, I searched them out and fought them down, and cleared my brain +of such poisonous cobwebs by writing my "Probabilities, an Aid to +Faith;" a small treatise on the antecedent likelihood of everything that +has happened, which did me great good while composing it, and has (to my +happy knowledge from many grateful letters) enlightened and comforted +hundreds of unwilling misbelievers. The book, after four editions, has +now long been out of print; however, certainly I still wish it was in +the hands of modern sceptics for their good. The scheme of the treatise +is briefly this: I begin by showing the antecedent probability of the +being of a God, then of His attributes, and by inference from His +probable benevolence, of His becoming a Creator: then that the created +being inferior to His perfection might fall, in which event His +benevolence would find a remedy. But what remedy? That Himself should +pay the penalty, and effect a full redemption. How? By becoming a +creature, and so lifting up the race to Himself through so generous a +condescension. I show that it was antecedently probable that the +Divinity should come in humble form, not to paralyse our reason by +outward glories,—that He might even die as a seeming malefactor; this +was the guess of Socrates: and that for the trial of our faith there are +likely to be permitted all manner of difficulties and mysteries for us +to gain personal strength by combating and living them down. Many other +topics are touched in this suggestive little treatise, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>anent a few +critiques are available; as thus, "The author has done good service to +religion by this publication: it will shake the doubts of the sceptical, +strengthen the trust of the wavering, and delight the faith of the +confirmed. As its character becomes known, it will deservedly fill a +high place in the estimation of the Christian world."—<i>Britannia.</i> And +similarly of other English journals, while the Americans were equally +favourable. Take this characteristic instance, one of many: the +<i>Brooklyn Eagle</i> maintains that "the author is one of the rare men of +the age; he turns up thoughts as with a plough on the sward of +monotonous usage." And <i>Hunt's Magazine</i>, New York, commends "this +reasoning with the sceptical, showing that if they consider +probabilities simply, then all the great doctrines of our faith might +reasonably be expected."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>An extract from the book itself, as out of print, may be acceptable, the +more so that it takes a new and true view (as I apprehend) of Job and +his restored prosperity:—</p> + +<p>"One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last give +way was only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another +fall, albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named among God's +chosen three, 'Noah, Daniel, and Job,' and worthy that the Lord should +bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point I wish to touch +on,—the great compensation which God gave to Job. Children can never be +regarded as other than individualities, and notwithstanding Eastern +feelings about increase in quantity, its quality is, after all, the +question for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> heart. I mean that many children to be born is but an +inadequate return for many children dying. If a father loses a +well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching void that he +gets another. For this reason of the affections, and because I suppose +that thinkers have sympathised with me in the difficulty, I wish to say +a word about Job's children lost and found. It will clear away what is +to some minds a moral and affectionate objection. Now this is the state +of the case.</p> + +<p>"The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels and +oxen, and so forth, and ten children. All these are represented to him +by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he mourns for his +great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents and +purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from +different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses +had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience +follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or +false.</p> + +<p>"Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man +of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double +of everything once lost—his children remain the same in number, ten. It +seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor children, +really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, and schemed it; +and the singly coming messengers believed it all, as also did the +well-enduring Job. But the scriptural word does not go to say that these +things happened; but that certain emissaries said they happened. I think +the devil missed his mark—that the messengers were scared by some +abortive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> diabolic efforts; and that (with a natural increase of camels, +&c., meanwhile) the patriarch's paternal heart was more than compensated +at the last by the restoration of his own dear children. They were dead, +and are alive again; they were lost, and are found. Like Abraham +returning from Mount Calvary with Isaac, it was the resurrection in a +figure.</p> + +<p>"If to this view objection is made, that, because the boils of Job were +real, therefore similarly real must be all his other evils; I reply, +that in the one temptation, the suffering was to be mental; in the +other, bodily. In the latter case, positive personal pain was the gist +of the matter—in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind +be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction +as the children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed +the evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how +double was the joy of Job over these ten dear children!</p> + +<p>"Again, if any one will urge that, in the common view of the case, Job +at the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he has +ten old ones in heaven, and ten new ones on earth,—I must, in answer, +think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us as the verity of it would +have been to Job. Affection, human affection, is not so numerically nor +vicariously consoled—and it is, perhaps, worth while here to have +thrown out (what I suppose to be) a new view of the case, if only to +rescue such wealth as children from the infidel's sneer of being +confounded with such wealth as camels. Moreover, such a paternal reward +was anteriorly more probable."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<h4>THE CROCK OF GOLD, ETC.</h4> + + +<p>The origin of the "Crock of Gold" is so well given in a preface, written +by Mr. Butler of Philadelphia, for his American edition of my works in +1851, that I choose here to reproduce it, as below. Our cousins over the +water were characteristically very fond of the "Crock of Gold," and some +editions of "Proverbial Philosophy" were published by them as "by the +author of the 'Crock of Gold'" on the title-page, whereof I have a copy. +Moreover, it was dramatised and acted at "the Boston Museum, Tremont +Street"—a playbill which I have announcing the twenty-first +representation, November 1, 1845; the writer sent it to me in MS., where +it lies among the chaos of my papers. In England it has been issued five +times in various forms, and a printed play thereof as adapted by +Fitzball, who wrote for Astley's and the like, was acted (without my +leave asked or granted) in November 1847, at the City of London Theatre +in the East End: I did not stop it, as on a certain private scrutiny I +saw that the influence of the play upon its crowded audiences seemed a +good one. Unseen and unknown in a private box I noted the touching +effect of Grace's Psalm (ch. viii.) and the sobs and tears all over the +theatre that accompanied it; so it was a wisdom not to interfere with +such whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>some popularity and wholesale good-doing. It was a fair +method of preaching the Gospel to the poor, for that crowd was of the +humblest.</p> + +<p>The "Crock of Gold" has been translated complete as a <i>feuilleton</i> both +in French and German by newspapers; and I have copies somewhere,—but I +know not who wrote the French, the German authoress having been the +Fraulein Von Lagerström.</p> + +<p>What Mr. Butler says in his preface, no doubt after speech with me, for +I was his visitor at the time in 1851, is this:—</p> + +<p>"All who have had the good fortune to meet Mr. Tupper during his visit +here have been struck with his characteristic impulsiveness. In +accordance with this feature of his mind, nearly all of his most +successful performances have been occasioned by something altogether +incidental and unpremeditated—the result of an impulse +accidentally—shall we not say, providentially?—imparted. It was so +with the first work in this series (four volumes) respecting the +composition of which he has given to me in conversation the following +account. Some years ago he purchased a house at Brighton. While laying +out the garden, he had occasion to have several drains made. One day +observing a workman, Francis Suter, standing in one of the trenches wet +and wearied with toil, Mr. Tupper said to him in a tone of pleasantry, +'Wouldn't you like to dig up there a crock full of gold?'—'If I did,' +said the man, 'it would do me no good, because merely finding it would +not make it mine.'—'But suppose you could not only find such a +treasure, but might honestly keep it, wouldn't you think yourself +lucky?'—'Oh yes, sir, I suppose I should—but,' after a pause, 'but I +am not so sure, sir, that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> is the best thing that could happen to me. +I think, on the whole, I would rather have steady work and fair wages +all the season than find a crock of gold.'</p> + +<p>"Here was wisdom. The remark of the honest trench-digger at once set in +motion a train of thought in the mind of the author. He entered his +study, wrote in large letters on a sheet of paper these words, '<span class="smcap">The +Crock of Gold</span>, a Tale of Covetousness,' and in less than a week +that remarkable story was written. By the advice of his wife, however, +he spent another week in rewriting it, and then gave it to the world in +its finished state."</p> + +<p>In the same Butlerian volume occurs the following MS. notice written by +me (in about 1853) respecting the origins of my two other tales, the +three being issued together:—</p> + +<p>"As in the instance of my 'Crock of Gold,' both 'The Twins' and 'Heart' +were undoubtedly the outcome in after years of early observations, +anecdotes, and incidents, whereof memory kept in silence an experimental +record. Very few artists succeed in the delineation of life without +living models; but no good one servilely will betray the forms they +rather get hints from than actually copy. Thus though I sketched Roger +Acton from one Robert Tunnel, an Albury labourer, and took the cottage +near Postford Pond as his home,—adding thereto Mr. Campion's park and +house at Danney, near Hurst (I was then living at Brighton) as the model +for Sir John Vincent's estate,—as well as Grace, Ben Burke, and so on +from persons I I had seen,—I need not say that my sketches from nature +were but outlines to my finished work of art. Simon Jennings, however, +is an exact portrait of a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> I knew at Brighton. So also with these +tales, and others of my writings."</p> + +<p>About "The Twins" a curious and somewhat awkward coincidence happened, +in the fact that my totally ideal characters of General Tracey and his +family were supposed to be intended for some persons whom the cap (it +seems) fitted pretty accurately, and who then lived at the southern +watering-place I had too diaphanously depicted as Burleigh-Singleton. It +is somewhat dangerous to invent blindly. However, my total innocence of +any intentional allusion to private matters whereof I was entirely +ignorant was set clear at once by an explanatory letter; and so no harm +resulted. In the case of "Heart" similarly, I invented the bankruptcy of +a certain Austral Bank, which at the time of my tale's publication had +no existence,—the very name having been taken some years after. This is +another instance of the literary perils to which imaginative authors may +be subject; for <i>litera scripta manet</i>, especially if in printer's ink, +and, for aught I know, that offhand word might be held a continuous +libel. For all else, by way of notice, the stories speak for themselves; +as, Covetousness was the text for "The Crock of Gold," while Concealment +and False Witness are severally the <i>morale</i> of "The Twins" and "Heart." +I once meditated ten tales, on the Ten Commandments, these three being +an instalment; and I mentally sketched my fourth upon Idolatry, "The +Prior of Marrick," but nothing came of it. The Decalogue hangs together +as a whole, and cannot be cut into ten distinct subjects without +reference to one another.</p> + +<p>In the chapter headed "The find of the Heartless," I find a manuscript +note perhaps worth printing here:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If I had been gifted with the true prophetic power, hereabouts should +my heartless hero have stumbled on a big nugget of gold (I wrote before +the Australian gold discovery), even as the shrewd Defoe invented for +his Robinson Crusoe in Juan Fernandez, where gold has not yet been +found, though it may be. However, I did not originally make the splendid +guess, and will not now in a future edition surreptitiously interpolate +such a suggestive incident, after the example of dishonest Murphy in his +prognostic of that coldest January 7th. It may be true enough that, for +my story's sake, I may wish I had thought of such a not unlikely find: +for the uselessness of the mere metal to a positively starving man in +the desert might have furnished comment analogous to what was uttered by +Timon of Athens; and would have been picturesque enough and +characteristic withal."</p> + +<p>Here may follow a bit of notice for each tale from two critics of +eminence,—as copied from one of my Archive-books, for memory is +treacherous, and I must not invent. Of the "Crock of Gold" Mr. Ollier +wrote as follows:—</p> + +<p>"A story of extraordinary power, and, which is a still greater eulogy, +of power devoted to a great and beneficent purpose. Mr. Martin Tupper +(the author) is already known to the world by his 'Proverbial +Philosophy,' and other works which indicate an extraordinarily gifted +mind and an originality of conception and treatment rare indeed in these +latter days,—but he has never demonstrated these qualities to such +perfection as in his present deeply interesting work, wherein romance is +united to wisdom, and both to practical utility. Terror is there in its +sternest shape—the hateful lust of gold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> is shown in all its hideous +deformity and inconceivable meanness, and through the awful suspense +that hovers over the incidents, occasional gleams of pure and hallowed +love come to humanise the darkness. This is cue of the few fictions +constructed to stand the shocks of time."</p> + +<p>And of the other tales we find the following from the pen of the +celebrated Mr. St. John, when he was editor of the <i>Sunday Times</i>. He +speaks of the three tales together:—</p> + +<p>"In every page of this work there is something which a reader would wish +to bear in his memory for ever. For power of animated description, for +eloquent reflections upon the events of everyday life, and for soft, +touching, pathetic appeals to the best feelings of the heart, these +tales are worthy of a place on every library table in the kingdom. They +are well calculated to add to the author's already established +reputation."</p> + +<p>Of this trilogy of tales, undoubtedly the best is the "Crock of Gold:" +"The Twins," though written from living models, is very inferior, as the +hero is too goody-goody and the villain too hopelessly wicked: "Heart" +has more merit, and has been much praised by a celebrated authoress for +its touching chapter on Old Maids. Much of it also is autobiographical, +as with "The Twins."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<h4>ÆSOP SMITH.</h4> + + +<p>"Æsop Smith's Rides and Reveries" is one of the books which, really +written by me from beginning to end, is nominally only edited. It is a +volume of self-experiences, to be read "through the lines,"—and almost +every incident and character therein is drawn from living models and +actual facts. It grew naturally out of the simple circumstance that I +used daily to ride out alone on one of my horses—more exactly, +mares—Minna and Brenda, and jotted down my cantering fancies in prose +or verse when I got home. Hurst & Blackett were its publishers in +1858,—and it soon was all sold off, but did not come to a second +edition in London, though reproduced widely in New York and +Philadelphia. The fact is that, between an independent publisher who +sells a little over cost price, and a Gargantua purchaser of thousands +at a time, like Smith or Mudie, the poor author is sacrificed: he has +received his fee for the edition (I got £100 for this first and only) +and forthwith finds himself dismissed, while the reading public is made +glad by easy perusal instead of costly purchase: and thus he is cheated +of his second edition. Most authors know how their interests are +affected wholesale by that modern system of subscription libraries: but +cheapness pleases the voracious multitude,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> and so in this competitive +free-trade era the units who feed those devourers are swallowed up +themselves. However, "what must be, must,"—<i>che sara sara</i>,—and I care +not even to complain of what cannot be helped, and wins fame to the one, +whilst it does good to the many, though financially unprofitable to +individual authorship.</p> + +<p>In the scarce copy of "Æsop Smith" now before me, I find a few +manuscript notes of mine perhaps worth transcribing. One has it, "This +book is actually autobiographical; but (as Rabelais did) I often mix up +irrelevant and extraneous matter by way of gilding pills, &c., and that +&c. is like one of Coke's upon Littleton, full of hints to be +amplified." Further, "Let readers remember that this book was written +and published long before recent changes in our laws of marriage and +divorce and libel: also when no Englishman dared to go bearded, and no +civilian was permitted to be armed. In advocacy of all these things and +many more, then unheard of but now common, I was in advance of the age; +and in some degree my private notions conduced to very wholesome public +changes." Again: "When Rabelais is diffuse, or a buffoon, or worse, it +may be to throw disputers off the scent as to his real mark of satire or +philosophy. Perhaps, like Liguori, Æsop has written a book for the sake +of a sentence, and veils his true intent in a designed mist of all sorts +of miscellaneous matter. I shan't tell you clearly, but you may guess +for yourselves." The book includes a hundred and thirty original fables, +essayettes, anecdotes, tirades, songs, and musings, all of which +thronged my brain as I cantered along, and were set down in black and +white as soon as I got home. Stay: some were even pencilled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> in the +saddle,—in especial this, which became very popular afterwards, +particularly in the charming musical composition thereof by Mrs. +Stafford Bush, and as sung by Mr. Fox at St. James's Hall and elsewhere. +It was printed in an earliest edition of my Ballads and Poems (Hall & +Virtue), and is headed there, "Written in the saddle on the crown of my +hat." I reproduce it here for the sake of that heading, though it occurs +also in my extant volume of poems without it:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Early Gallop.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"At five on a dewy morning,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Before the blaze of day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be up and off on a high-mettled horse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All care and danger scorning,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Over the hills away,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To drink the rich sweet breath of the gorse,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And bathe in the breeze of the downs.—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ha! man, if you can,—match bliss like this<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In all the joys of towns!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With glad and grateful tongue to join<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The lark at his matin hymn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thence on faith's own wing to spring<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And sing with cherubim!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To pray from a deep and tender heart<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With all things praying anew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The birds and the bees and the whispering trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And heather bedropt with dew.—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be one with those early worshippers,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And pour the carol too!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then off again with a slackened rein<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And a bounding heart within,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To dash at a gallop over the plain<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Health's golden cup to win!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This, this is the race for gain and grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Richer than vases and crowns;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And you that boast your pleasures the most<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Amid the steam of towns,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come taste true bliss in a morning like this,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Galloping over the downs!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Among the most notable prose pieces (though it is of little use to refer +my readers to a book hopelessly out of print) there may be selected my +panacea for Ireland, to wit, a Royal Residence there to evoke the +loyalty of a warm-hearted people,—I called my fable "The Unsunned +Corner:" I mean to quote some of it in a future political page of this +book. Also other papers, as "Bits of Ribbon," suggesting as just and +wise the more profuse distribution of honours,—in particular +recommending an Alfred or an Albert Order. Also, many of my Rifle +ballads,—whereof, more anon. And "The Over-sharpened Axe"—applicable +to modern Boardschool Educationals: and Colonel Jade's matrimonial +tirades, all real life: and "The Grumbling Gimlet," a fable on Content, +&c. &c. With plenty more notabilia—which those who have the book can +turn to if they will.</p> + +<p>I could fill many pages with the critiques <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i> this queer +book has provoked, but it is useless now that the world has let it die.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<h4>STEPHAN LANGTON—ALFRED.</h4> + + +<p>I wrote "Stephan Langton, a Story of the Time of King John," because, +1st, I had little to do in the country; 2dly, I wished to give some +special literary lift to Albury and its neighbourhood, more particularly +as my story had a geographical connection with Surrey; 3dly, I had the +run of Mr. Drummond's library, and consulted there some 300 volumes for +my novel: so it was not an idle work though a rapid one; 4thly, I wanted +to show that though in a Popish age England's heart, and especially +Langton's, was Protestant, quite a precursor of Luther. As this book is +extant, at Lasham's, Guildford, I refer my readers to it. One curious +matter is that my ideal scenes have taken such hold upon my +neighbourhood that streams of tourists come constantly through Albury to +visit "The Silent Pool" and other sites of scenes invented by me, and +have thereby enriched our village inn and the flymen, as well as given +to us a new sort of fame. The book, so cheap in the Guildford edition, +was originally published by Hurst & Blackett in 2 vols., illustrated by +Cousins: that edition is very scarce now.</p> + +<p>The tragedy at the "Silent Pool" and the <i>Auto-da-fé</i> are perhaps the +most dramatic scenes in the book,—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>as the Robin Hood gathering in Combe +Valley is the most picturesque.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I quote a few particulars from one of my diaries. "This book tended to +clear my brain of sundry fancies and pictures, as only the writing of +another book could do <i>that</i>. Its seed is truly recorded in the first +chapter as to the two stone coffins still in the chancel of St. +Martha's. I began the book on November 26, 1857, and finished it in +exactly eight weeks, on January 21, 1858, reading for the work included. +In two months more it was printed by Hurst & Blackett. I intended it for +one full volume, but the publishers preferred to issue it in two scant +ones; it has since been reproduced by Lasham, Guildford, in one vol., at +one-and-sixpence; it was 14s. I consulted and partially read for it (as +I wanted accurate pictures of John's reign in England) the histories of +Tyrrell, Hollingshed, Hume, Poole, Markland, Thomson's Magna Charta, +James's Philip Augustus, Milman's Latin Christianity, Hallam's Middle +Ages, Maimbourg's Lives of the Popes, Ranke's Life of Innocent III., +Maitland on the Dark Ages, Ritson's Life of Robin Hood, Salmon's, +Bray's, and Brayley's Surrey, Tupper's and Duncan's Guernsey, besides +the British and National and other Encyclopædias and Dictionaries as +required. It was a work of hard and quick and fervid labour, not an idle +piece of mere brain-spinning, and it may be depended on for +archæological accuracy in every detail. More than thirty localities in +our beautiful county Surrey are painted in the book; of other parts of +England twelve; of France and Italy twelve; there are more than twenty +historical characters honestly (as I judge) depicted; and some fifteen +ideal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> ones fairly enough invented as accessories: I preferred Stephan +to the commoner Stephen, for etymological and archæological reasons: it +is clearly nearer the Greek, and is spelt so in ancient records."</p> + +<h4><span class="smcap">King Alfred's own Poems.</span></h4> + +<p>One of the rarest of the books I have written (if any bibliomaniac of +some future age desires to collect them) must always be "King Alfred's +Poems, now first turned into English metres;" for the little volume was +privately printed by Dr. Allen Giles, the edition being only of 250 +copies, which soon vanished, a few of them bearing Hall & Virtue's name +on a new title, and being dated 1850,—the majority hailing from the +private press aforesaid. I constructed it purposely for the "Jubilee +Edition of the Works of King Alfred," learning as well as I could (by +the help of Dr. Bosworth's Dictionary and a Grammar) in a few weeks a +little Anglo-Saxon,—and I confess considerably assisted by Mr. Fox's +prose translation of Boethius. There are thirty-one poems in all, some +being of Alfred's own, but the major part rendered by the wise king out +of Latin into the language of his own people to help their teaching. I +turned it into English verse in thirty-one different metres, each being +as nearly as I could manage in the rhythm of the original: there were no +rhymes in those days; alliteration was the only sort of jingle: in the +judgment of Mr. Fox and some other Anglo-Saxon critics my version was +fairly close, and for the poetical part of my own production at least +nothing is of the slipshod order of half rhymes or alternate prose and +verse—too common, especially in our hymnology—but honest double +rhyming throughout. Without transcribing the little volume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> I could not +give a true idea of it: but here shall come three or four samples:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo, I sang cheerily<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In my bright days,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But now all wearily<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Chaunt I my lays,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrowing tearfully,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Saddest of men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can I sing cheerfully<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As I could then?" &c. &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here is a verse of another:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O Thou that art Maker of heaven and earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who steerest the stars, and hast given them birth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For ever thou reignest upon Thy high throne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And turnest all swiftly the heavenly zone," &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet another:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What is a man the better,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A man of worldly mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though he be gainful getter<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of richest gems and gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With every kind well fillèd<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of goods in ripe array,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though for him be tillèd<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A thousand fields a day?" &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Again:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I have wings like a bird, and more swiftly can fly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far over this earth to the roof of the sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now must I feather thy fancies, O mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To leave the mid earth and its earthlings behind," &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And for a last word:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thus quoth Alfred—'If thou growest old<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hast no pleasure, spite of weal and gold,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And goest weak,—then thank thy Lord for this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That He hath sent thee hitherto much bliss,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For life and light and pleasures past away;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say thou, Come and welcome, come what may.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These are little bits taken casually: to each of the poems I have added +suitable comment in prose. Mr. Bohn in his well-known series has added +my verse to Mr. Fox's prose Boethius.</p> + +<p>The Anglo-Saxon preface to that volume commences thus: "Alfred, King, +was the translator of this book: and from book-Latin turned it into Old +English, as it is now done. Awhile he put word for word; awhile sense +for sense. He learned this book, and translated it for his own people, +and turned it into song, as it is now done." His Old English song, that +is, Anglo-Saxon alliteration, is all now modernised in this curious +little book of English metres. It was well praised by many critics; but +at present is out of the market. When I am "translated" myself, all +these old works of mine will rise again in a voluminous complete +edition.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"The Alfred Jubilee," on that great king's thousandth year, 1848, is one +of the exploits of my literary life, undertaken and accomplished by Mr. +Evelyn, the brothers Brereton, Dr. Giles, and myself in the year 1848, +chiefly at Wantage, where Alfred was born. We arranged meetings and +banquets in several places, notably Liverpool, where Mr. Bramwell Moore, +the mayor, gave a great feast in commemoration, a medal was struck, the +Jubilee edition of King Alfred's works was at least begun at Dr. Giles's +private printing-press, whilst at Wantage itself 20,000 people collected +from all parts for old English games, speeches, appropriate songs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> such +as "To-day is the day of a thousand years" from my pen, collections for +a local school and college as a lasting memorial, and—to please the +commonalty—a gorgeous procession and an ox roasted whole, with gilded +horns and ribbons,—the huge carcase turned like a hare on a gigantic +spit by help of a steam-engine before a furnace of two tons of blazing +coal; and that ox was consumed after a most barbaric Abyssinian fashion +in the open air. My Anglo-Saxon Magazine came out strong on the +occasion,—but it is obsolete now; and I care not to use up space in +reprinting patriotic indignation: for let me state that, considered as a +national commemoration of the Great King, the chief founder of our +liberties, this Wantage jubilee was all but a failure; the British lion +slumbered, and it was flogging a dead horse to try to wake him up; very +few of the magnates responded to our appeal: but we did our best, +nevertheless, as independent Englishmen, and locally achieved a fair +success.</p> + +<p>If I went into the whole story with anecdotical detail, I should weary +my reader: let me only reproduce my song at the grand Liverpool banquet, +by way of ending cheerily.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Day of a Thousand Years.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To-day is the day of a thousand years!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bless it, O brothers, with heart-thrilling cheers!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alfred for ever!—to-day was He born,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Day-star of England, to herald her morn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, everywhere breaking and brightening soon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sheds on us now the full sunshine of noon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fills us with blessing in Church and in State,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Children of Alfred, the Good and the Great!<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Chorus</i>—Hail to his Jubilee Day,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The Day of a thousand years.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Anglo-Saxons!—in love are we met,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To honour a Name we can never forget!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Father, and Founder, and King of a race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That reigns and rejoices in every place,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Root of a tree that o'ershadows the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">First of a Family blest from his birth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blest in this stem of their strength and their state,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alfred the Wise, and the Good, and the Great!<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Chorus</i>,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The Day of a thousand years!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Children of Alfred, from every clime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your glory shall live to the deathday of Time!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hereafter in bliss still ever expand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er measureless realms of the Heavenly Land!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For you, like him, serve <span class="smcap">God</span> and your Race,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gratefully look on the birthday of Grace:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then honour to Alfred! with heart-stirring cheers!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To-day is the Day of a thousand years!<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Chorus</i>,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The Day of a thousand years!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This song was set to excellent music, and went well, especially in the +chorus. Several Americans were of our company, in particular, Richmond, +a literary friend of mine. At the dinner I had to make a principal +speech, and my cousin Gaspard of the Artillery (now General) answered +for the Army.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<h4>SHAKESPEARE COMMEMORATION.</h4> + + +<p>On the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon I +contributed an ode, to be found in my extant book of poems. Among the +notabilia of the feastings and celebration, I remember how Lord Houghton +raised a great laugh by his pretended indignation when the glee singers +greeted the guests at dinner as "Ye spotted snakes with double +tongue!"—Doubtless it was a Shakespearean old English piece of +music,—but stupidly enough selected for a complimentary greeting. My +ode was well received, but I'll say no more of that, as it can speak for +itself. Lord Leigh made us all very welcome at his splendid Palladian +mansion, and there I met Lord Carlisle, then Viceroy of Ireland, who +kindly told me that as he had known my father, and knew me, and my son +was then in Ireland (he was a captain in the 29th Regiment), he would +put him on his staff, as a third generation of the name. I am not sure +if this happened, for my son soon was sent elsewhere; and he has long +since gone to the Better Land. But Lord Carlisle's kindness was all the +same. At the ball I remember Lord Carlisle's diamonds hanging like a +string of glass chandelier drops at his button-hole with a Shakespeare +favour, and jingling perilously for chippings as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> he danced: for size +those half-dozen Koh-i-noors must be—foolishly—invaluable.</p> + +<p>At Stratford Church, either then or some while after, I strangely was +the means of saving Shakespeare's own baptismal font from destruction, +as thus: the church had been "restored,"—<i>i.e.</i>, all its best patina +was polished away; and among the "improvements," I noticed a brand new +font. "Where is the old one?" "O sir, the mason who supplied the new one +took it away." So I called and found this font—quite sacred in +Shakespearean eyes as where their idol had been christened—lying broken +in a corner of the yard. Then off I went to the rector, I think it was a +Mr. Granville, expostulating; and (to make the matter short) with some +difficulty I got the font mended and put back again, as it certainly +never should have been removed. I have since been to Stratford, and find +that they use the new font, and have put the old one in a corner of the +nave.</p> + +<p>An odd thing happened to me in the church, where at the vestry I had +just signed my name as other visitors did. An American, utterly unknown +to me as I to him, came eagerly up to me as I was inspecting that +unsatisfactory bust and inscription about Shakespeare, and said, "Come +and see what I've found,—Martin Tupper's autograph,—he must be +somewhere near, for he has just signed: do tell, is he here?" I rather +thought he might be. "I've wished to see him ever since I was a small +boy. Do you know him, sir?" Well, yes, a little. "Show him to me, sir, +won't you? I'd give ten dollars for his autograph." After a word or two +more, my good nature gave him the precious signature without the +dollars,—and I shan't easily forget his frantic joy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> showing the +document to all around him, whilst I escaped.</p> + +<p>Besides a Pindaric Ode to Shakespeare, to be found in my Miscellaneous +Poems, wherein many of his characters are touched upon, I wrote the +following sonnet, now out of print:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Stratford Jubilee.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Went not thy spirit gladly with us then,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Most genial Shakespeare!—wast thou not with us<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who throng'd to honour thee and love thee thus,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A few among thy subject fellow-men?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yea,—let me truly think it; for thy heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Though now long since the free-made citizen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of brighter cities where we trust thou art)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was one, in its great whole and every part,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With human sympathies: we seem to die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But verily live; we grow, improve, expand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Death transplants us to that Happier Land;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Therefore, sweet Shakespeare, came thy spirit nigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cordial with Man, and grateful to High Heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all our love to thy dear memory given."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<h4>TRANSLATIONS AND PAMPHLETS.</h4> + + +<p>The best of my unpublished MSS. of any size or consequence is perhaps my +translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its +original metre of hexameters: hitherto I have failed to find a publisher +kind enough to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English +versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable. Still, some day I don't +despair to gain an enterprising Sosius; for my literal and hexametrical +translation is almost what Carthusians used to call "a crib," and +perhaps some day the School Board or their organ, Mr. Joseph Hughes's +<i>Practical Teacher</i>, may adopt my version. Its origin and history is +this: finding winter evenings in the country wearisome to my homeflock, +I used to read to them profusely and discursively. Amongst other books, +a literary daughter suggested Pope's Homer; which, as I read, after a +little while, I found to be so very free and incorrect a translation (if +my memory served me rightly) that I resolved to see what I could do by +reading from the original Greek in its own (English) metre. I soon found +it quite easy to be both terse and literal; and having rhythm only to +care for without the tag of rhyme, I soon pleased my hearers and in some +sort myself, reading "off the reel" directly from the Greek into the +English.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + +<p>This version is still unblotted by printer's ink: if any compositor +pleases he is welcome to work on the copy; which I can supply gratis: +only I do not promise to do more than I have done, Book Alpha. Life is +too short for such literary playwork.</p> + +<p>Here followeth a sample: quite literal: line for line, almost word for +word: my translation renders Homer exactly. I choose the short bit where +Thetis pleads with Jove for her irate son, because I am sure Tennyson +must have had this passage in his mind when he drew his word-picture of +Vivien with Merlin.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But now at length the twelfth morn from the first had arrived; and returning<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Came to Olympus together the glorious band of immortals,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Zeus the great king at their head. And Thetis, remembering the cravings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of her own son, and his claims, uprose to the surface of ocean,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And through the air flew swift to high heaven, ascending Olympus.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There she found sitting alone on the loftiest peak of the mountain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All-seeing Zeus, son of Kronos, apart from the other celestials.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So she sat closely beside him, embracing his knees with her left hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While with her right she handled his beard, and tenderly stroked it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whispering thus her prayer to Zeus, the great king, son of Kronos," &c. &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Let that suffice with a <i>cætera desunt</i>.</p> + +<p>I need not say that I have written innumerable other, translated pieces, +from earliest days of school exercises to these present. There is +scarcely a classic I have not so tampered with: and (though a poor +modern linguist)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> I have touched—with dictionary and other help, a few +bits of Petrarch, Dante, &c.; examples whereof may be seen in my "Modern +Pyramid," as already mentioned.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Sundry Pamphlets.</span></h4> + +<p>My several publications in pamphlet shape may ask for a page or +two,—the chief perhaps (and therefore I begin with it) being my "Hymn +for All Nations" in thirty languages, issued at the time of the first +great exhibition in 1851, due to a letter I wrote to the Bishop of +London on November 22, 1850, urging such a universal psalm. Mr. +Brettell, a printer, issued this curiosity of typography: for it has all +the strange types which the Bible Society could lend; and several other, +versions than the fifty published (some being duplicated) are in a great +volume before me, unprinted because neither England, nor Germany, nor +America could supply types for sundry out-of-the-way languages +contributed by missionaries in the four quarters of the world. My hymn +was "a simple psalm, so constructed as scarcely to exclude a truth, or +to offend a prejudice; with special reference to the great event of this +year, and yet so ordered that it can never be out of season." "This +polyglot hymn at the lowest estimate is a philological curiosity: so +many minds, with such diversity in similitude rendering literally into +all the languages of the earth one plain psalm, a world-wide call to man +to render thanks to God." Dr. Wesley and several others contributed the +music, and the best scholars of all lands did the literature: the mere +printing of so many languages was pronounced a marvel in its way; and I +have a bookful of notices, of course laudatory, where it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> was not +possible to find fault with so small a piece of literature. It may be +well to give the hymn admission here, as the booklet is excessively +scarce.</p> + +<p>The title goes—"A Hymn for all Nations," 1851, translated into thirty +languages (upwards of fifty versions).</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glorious <span class="smcap">God</span>! on Thee we call,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Father, Friend, and Judge of all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holy Saviour, heavenly King,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Homage to Thy throne we bring!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In the wonders all around<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ever is Thy Spirit found,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of each good thing we see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the good is born of Thee!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thine the beauteous skill that lurks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everywhere in Nature's works—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thine is Art, with all its worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thine each masterpiece on earth!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea,—and, foremost in the van,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Springs from Thee the Mind of Man;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On its light, for this is Thine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shed abroad the love divine!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo, our <span class="smcap">God</span>! Thy children here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From all realms are gathered near,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wisely gathered, gathering still,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For 'peace on earth, towards men goodwill!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"May we, with fraternal mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bless our brothers of mankind!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May we, through redeeming love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be the blest of <span class="smcap">God</span> above!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Beside this, I give from memory a list of others of the pamphlet sort, +perhaps imperfect:—</p> + +<p>1. "The Desecrated Church," relating to ancient Al<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>bury,—whereof this +matter is remarkable; I had protested against its demolition to Bishop +Sumner, and used the expression in my letter that the man who was doing +the wrong of changing the old church in his park for a new one elsewhere +would "lay the foundation in his first-born and in his youngest son set +up its gates" (Josh. vi. 26); and the two sons of the lord of the manor +died in succession as seemingly was foretold.</p> + +<p>2. "A Voice from the Cloister," whereof I have spoken before.</p> + +<p>3. "A Prophetic Ode,"—happily hindered from proving true, only because +the Rifle movement drove away those vultures, Louis Napoleon's hungry +colonels, from our unprotected shores. There are also in the poem some +curious thoughts about the Arctic Circle, its magnetic heat, and +possible habitability; also others about thought-reading and the like; +all this being long in advance of the age, for that ode was published by +Bosworth in 1852. Also, I anticipated then as now—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"To fly as a bird in the air<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Despot man doth dare!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His humbling cumbersome body at length<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Light as the lark upsprings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Buoyed by tamed explosive strength<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And steel-ribbed albatross wings!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With plenty of other curious matter. That ode is extinct, but will +revive.</p> + +<p>4. So also with "A Creed, &c.," which bears the imprint of Simpkin & +Marshall, and the date 1870. Its chief peculiarities are summed up in +the concluding lines:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So then, in brief, my creed is truly this;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conscience is our chief seed of woe or bliss;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +<span class="i0">God who made all things is to all things Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Balancing wrongs below by rights above;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Evil seemed needful that the good be shown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Good was swift that Evil to atone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While creatures, link'd together, each with each,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of one great Whole in changeful sequence teach,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life-presence everywhere sublimely vast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And endless for the future as the past."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For I believe in some future life for the lower animals as well as for +their unworthier lord; and in the immortality of all creation. Some +other poems and hymns also are in this pamphlet.</p> + +<p>5. My "Fifty Protestant Ballads," published, by Ridgeway, will be +mentioned hereafter.</p> + +<p>6. "Ten Letters on the Female Martyrs of the Reformation," published by +the Protestant Mission.</p> + +<p>7 and 8. "Hactenus" and "A Thousand Lines," most whereof are in my +"Cithara" and Miscellaneous Poems.</p> + +<p>9. A pamphlet about Canada, and its closer union to us by dint of +imperialism and honours, dated several years before these have come to +pass.</p> + +<p>10. Sundry shorter pamphlets on Rhyme, Model Colonisation, Druidism, +Household Servants, My Newspaper, Easter Island, False Schooling, &c. +&c. Not to mention some serial letters long ago in the <i>Times</i> about the +Coronation, Ireland, and divers other topics. Every author writes to the +<i>Times</i>.</p> + +<p>11. As a matter of course I have written both with my name and without +it (according to editorial rule) in many magazines and reviews, from the +<i>Quarterly</i> of Lockhart's time to the <i>Rock</i> of this, not to count +numerous reviews of books <i>passim</i>, besides innumerable fly-leaves, +essayettes, sermonettes, &c. &c., in the <i>Rock</i> and elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p> + +<p>12. I was editor for about two years of an extinct three-monthly, the +<i>Anglo-Saxon</i>: in one of which I wrote nine articles, as the +contributions received were inappropriate. I never worked harder in my +life; but the magazine failed, the chief reason being that the monied +man who kept it alive insisted upon acceptance when rejection was +inevitable.</p> + +<p>13. Some printed letters of mine on Grammar, issued in small pamphlet +form at the <i>Practical Teacher</i> office; and sundry others unpublished, +called "Talks about Science," still in MS.</p> + +<p>14. "America Revisited," a lecture, in three numbers, of <i>Golden Hours</i>.</p> + +<p>15. Separate bundles of ballads in pamphlet form about Australia, New +Zealand, Church Abuses, The War, &c. &c.</p> + +<p>Besides possibly some other like booklets forgotten.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<h4>PATERFAMILIAS, GUERNSEY, MONA.</h4> + + +<p>When I returned in the autumn of 1855 from my principal continental +tour, wherein for three months I had conducted my whole family of eleven +(servants inclusive) all through the usual route of French and Swiss +travel,—I committed my journal to Hatchard, who forthwith published it; +but not to any signal success,—for it was anonymous, which was a +mistake: however, I did not care to make public by name all the daily +details of my homeflock pilgrimage. The pretty little book with its fine +print of the Pass of Gondo as a frontispiece, nevertheless made its way, +and has been inserted in Mr. Gregory's list of guide-books as a +convenience if not a necessity to travellers on the same roads, though +in these days of little practical use: indeed, wherever we stopped, I +contrived to exhaust, on the spot all that was to be seen or done, with +the advantages of personal inspection, and therefore of graphic and true +description. The book has been praised for its interest and includes +divers accidents, happily surmounted, divers exploits in the milder form +of Alpine climbing (as the Mauvais Pas, which I touch experimentally at +the end of Life's Lessons, in "Proverbial Philosophy," Series IV.), +divers grand sights, as the Great Exhibition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> close to which we lived +for some weeks in the Champs Élysées, and many pleasant incidents, as +greetings with friends, old and new, and other usual <i>memorabilia</i>. +Among these let me mention the honest kindliness of Courier +Pierre,—always called Pere by my children, with whom he was a great +favourite—the more readily because he has long gone to "the bourne +whence no traveller returns," so he needs no recommendation from his +late employer. This, then, I say is memorable. At Lucerne, as my +remittance from Herries failed to reach me, I seemed obliged to make a +stop and to return; but Pierre objected, saying it was "great pity not +to pass the Simplon and see Milan,—and, if Monsieur would permit him, +he could lend whatever was needful, and could be paid again." Certainly +I said this was very kind, and so I borrowed at his solicitation:—it +was £100, as I find by the journal; our travel was costing us £40 a +week. Well, to recount briefly, when, after having placed in our +<i>repertoire</i> Bellinzona, Como, Milan, &c. &c., I found myself at Geneva, +and with remittances awaiting me, my first act was to place in Pierre's +hands £105,—and when he counted the notes, he said, "Sare, there is one +five-pound too many."—"Of course, my worthy Pierre, I hope you will +accept that as interest."—"Non, Monsieur, pardon; I could not, I always +bring money to help my families:"—and he would not. Now, if that was +not a model courier, worthy to be commemorated thus,—well, I hope there +are some others of his brethren on the office-books of Bury Street, St. +James's, who are equally duteous and disinterested. "Some people are +heroes to their valets; my worthy help is a hero to me:" so saith my +journal. Here's another extract, after two slight earthquakes at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Brieg, +and Turtman (Turris Magna);—"Again a bad accident. One of our spirited +wheelers got his hind leg over the pole in going down a hill: at once +there was a chaos of fallen horses and entangled harness, and but for +the screw machine drag locking both hind-wheels we must have been upset +and smashed,—as it was, the scrambling and kicking at first was +frightful; but Paterfamilias dragged the younger children out into the +road, and other help was nigh at hand, and the providential calm that +comes over fallen horses after their initiatory struggle was at hand +too, and in due time matters were righted: that those two fiery +stallions did not kick everything to pieces, and that all four steeds +did not gallop us to destruction, was due, under Providence, to the +skill and courage of our good Pierre and the patient +Muscatelli."—Railways have since superseded all this peril, and cost, +and care: and trains now go <i>through</i> the Simplon, instead of "good +horses, six to the heavy carriage, four to the light one," pulling us +steadily and slowly <i>over</i> it: thus losing the splendid scenery climaxed +by the Devil's Bridge: but let moderns be thankful. "Paterfamilias's +Diary" has long been out of print, and its author is glad that he made +at the time a full record of the happy past, and recommends its perusal +to any one who can find a copy anywhere. My friend, the late Major Hely, +who claimed an Irish peerage, was very fond of this "Diary," and thought +it "the best book of travels he had ever read."</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Guernsey.</span></h4> + +<p>Guernsey is another of the spots where your author has lived and +written, though neither long nor much. He comes, as is well known, of an +ancient Sarnian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> family, as mentioned before. As to any writings of mine +about insular matters while sojourning there occasionally, they are +confined to some druidical verses about certain cromlechs, a few other +poems, as one given below—"A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney,"—and +in chief that in which I "Raised the Haro," which saved the most +picturesque part of Castle Cornet from destruction by some artillery +engineer. Here is the poem, supposing some may wish to see it: +especially as it does not appear in my only extant volume of poems, Gall +& Inglis. It occurs (I think solely) in Hall & Virtue's extinct edition +of my Ballads and Poems, 1853, and is there headed "'The Clameur de +Haro,' an old Norman appeal to the Sovereign, 1850":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Haro, Haro! à l'aide, mon Prince!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A loyal people calls;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring out Duke Rollo's Norman lance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To stay destruction's fell advance<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Against the Castle walls:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Haro, Haro! à l'aide, ma Reine!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy duteous children not in vain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plead for old Cornet yet again,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To spare it, ere it falls!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What? shall Earl Rodolph's sturdy strength,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">After six hundred years, at length<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be recklessly laid low?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His grey machicolated tower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Torn down within one outraged hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By worse than Vandals' ruthless power?—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Haro! à l'aide, Haro!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nine years old Cornet for the throne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against rebellion stood alone—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And honoured still shall stand,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> +<span class="i0">For heroism so sublime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A relic of the olden time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Renowned in Guernsey prose and rhyme,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The glory of her land!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay,—let your science scheme and plan<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With better skill than so;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Touch not this dear old barbican,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor dare to lay it low!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"On Vazon's ill-protected bay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Build and blow up, as best ye may,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And do your worst to scare away<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some visionary foe,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, if in brute and blundering power<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You tear down Rodolph's granite tower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Defeat and scorn and shame that hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall whelm you like an arrowy shower—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Haro! à l'aide, Haro!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When my antiquarian cousin Ferdinand, the historian of "Sarnia" and our +"Family Records," saw these lines, he positively made serious +objection—while generally approving them—against my saying "six +hundred years," whereas, according to him, it was only five hundred and +ninety-three! he actually wanted me to alter it, or at all events insert +"almost,"—so difficult is it to reconcile literal accuracy with +poetical rhyme and rhythm. I seem to remember that he wrote to the local +papers about this. However, it is some consolation to know that these +heartfelt verses forced the War Office to spare Castle Cornet: the +Norman appeal by Haro being a privilege of Channel-Islanders to bring +their grievances direct to the Queen in council. As I have continually +the honour "Monstrari digito prætereuntium" in the <i>rôle</i> of a +"Fidicen," I suppose that poetries in such a self-record as this are not +positive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> bores—they can always be skipped if they are—so I will even +give here a cheerful bit of rhyme which I jotted down at midnight on the +deck of a yacht in a half-gale off Cherbourg, when going with a +deputation from Guernsey to meet the French President in 1850:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sprinkled thick with shining studs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stretches wide the tent of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blue, begemmed with golden buds,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Calm, and bright, and deep, and clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Glory's hollow hemisphere<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Arch'd above these frothing floods<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Right and left asunder riven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As our cutter madly scuds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the fitful breezes driven,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">When exultingly she sweeps<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Like a dolphin through the deeps,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And from wave to wave she leaps<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rolling in this yeasty leaven,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ragingly that never sleeps,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like the wicked unforgiven!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Midnight, soft and fair above,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Midnight, fierce and dark beneath,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All on high the smile of love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All below the frown of death:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Waves that whirl in angry spite<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a phosphorescent light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gleaming ghastly on the night,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like the pallid sneer of Doom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So malicious, cold, and white,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Luring to this watery tomb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where in fury and in fright<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Winds and waves together fight<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> +<span class="i2">Hideously amid the gloom,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As our cutter gladly sends,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dipping deep her sheeted boom<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Madly to the boiling sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lighted in these furious floods<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By that blaze of brilliant studs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glistening down like glory-buds<br /></span> +<span class="i4">On the Race of Alderney!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A few more words as to my Sarnian literaria. Victor Hugo, when resident +in Guernsey, had greatly offended my cousin (the chief of our clan) by +stealing for his hired abode the title of our ancestral mansion, Haute +Ville House: and so, when I called on him, the equally offended +Frenchman would not see me, though I was indulged with a sight of the +<i>bric-à-brac</i> wherewith he had filled his residence, albeit deprived of +access to its inmate. Hugo was not popular among the sixties at that +time. Since then, Mr. Sullivan of Jersey published on his decease some +splendid stanzas in French, which by request I versified in English: so +that our spirits are now manifestly <i>en rapport</i>.</p> + +<p>I wrote also (as I am reminded) an ode on the consecration of St. +Anne's, Alderney, when I accompanied the Bishop to the ceremony: and +some memorable stanzas about the decent expediency of the Bailiff and +Jurats being robed for official uniform, since ornamentally adopted; but +before I wrote they wore mean and undistinguished "mufti."</p> + +<p>I had also much to do on behalf of my friend Durham, the sculptor, in +the matter of his bronze statue to Prince Albert,—advocating it both in +prose and verse, and being instrumental in getting royal permission to +take a duplicate of the great work now at South Kensington.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> My cousin +the Bailiff, the late Sir Stafford Carey, dated his knighthood from the +inauguration of the statue, now one of the chief ornaments of St. +Peter's Port,—the other being the Victoria Tower, also a Sarnian +exploit.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Isle of Man.</span></h4> + +<p>Under such a title as this, "My Life as an Author," that author being +chiefly known for his poetry, though he has also written plenty of +prose, it is (as I have indeed just said) not to be reasonably objected +that the volume is spotted with small poems. Still, I must do it, if I +wish to illustrate by verse, or other extracts from my writings +(published or unprinted), certain places where the said author has had +his temporary <i>habitat</i>: now one of these is the Isle of Man,—where I +and mine made a long summer stay at Castle Mona. The chief literary +productions of mine in that modern Trinacria, whose heraldic emblem, +like that of ancient Sicily, is the Three legs of Three promontories, +are some antiquarian pieces, principally one on the sepulchral mound of +Orry the Dane:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In fifty keels and five<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rushed over the pirate swarm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hornets out of the northern hive,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hawks on the wings of the storm;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blood upon talons and beak,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blood from their helms to their heels,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blood on the hand and blood on the cheek,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In five and fifty keels!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O fierce and terrible horde<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That shout about Orry the Dane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clanging the shield and clashing the sword<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the roar of the storm-tost main!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And hard on the shore they drive<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ploughing through shingle and sand,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And high and dry those fifty and five<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are haul'd in line upon land.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And ho! for the torch straightway,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In honour of Odin and Thor,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the blazing night is as bright as the day<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As a gift to the gods of war;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For down to the melting sand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And over each flaring mast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those fifty and five they have burnt as they stand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the tune of the surf and the blast!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A ruthless, desperate crowd,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They trample the shingle at Lhane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hungry for slaughter they clamour aloud<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the Viking, for Orry the Dane!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And swift has he flown at the foe—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the clustering clans are here,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But light is the club and weak is the bow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the Norseman sword and spear:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And—woe to the patriot Manx,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The right overthrown by the wrong,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the sword hews hard at the staggering ranks,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the spear drives deep and strong:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Orry the Dane stands proud<br /></span> +<span class="i2">King of the bloodstained field,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lifted on high by the shouldering crowd<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the battered boss of his shield!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet, though such a man of blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So terribly fierce and fell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">King Orry the Dane had come hither for good,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And governed the clans right well;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Freedom and laws and right,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He sowed the good seed all round—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And built up high in the people's sight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their famous Tynwald Mound;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And elders twenty and four<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He set for the House of Keys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all was order from shore to shore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the fairest Isle of the Seas:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though he came a destroyer, I wist<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He remained as a ruler to save,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yonder he sleeps in the roadside kist<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They call King Orry's Grave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was at Castle Mona that I first met Walter Montgomery, who read these +very lines to great effect at one of his Recitations, and thereafter +produced at Manchester my play of "Alfred." He was, amongst other +accomplishments, a capital horseman, and when he galloped over the sands +on his white horse, he would jump benches with their sitters, calling +out "Don't stir, we shall clear you!" It would have required no small +coolness and courage to have abided his charge, and though I saw him do +this once, I question if he was allowed to repeat the exploit.</p> + +<p>In Douglas was also my artist-friend Corbould, visiting at the romantic +place of his relatives the Wilsons, who had to show numerous paintings +and relics of John Martin, with whom in old days I had pleasant +acquaintance at Chelsea and elsewhere. I remember that on one occasion +when I asked him which picture of his own he considered his +<i>chef-d'œuvre</i> I was astonished at his reply, "Sardanapalus's +death,—and therein his jewels." Martin's Chelsea garden had its walls +frescoed by him to look like views and avenues,—certainly effective, +but rather in the style of Grimaldi's garden made gay by artificial +flowers and Aladdin's gems, <i>à la mode</i> Cockayne. At Bishop's Court too +we had a very friendly reception from Bishop Powys, and in fact +everywhere as usual your confessor found a cordial author's welcome in +Mona.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<h4>NEVER GIVE UP, AND SOME OTHER BALLADS.</h4> + + +<p>Sundry of my short lyrics have gained a great popularity: in particular +"Never give up," whereof there are extant—or were—no fewer than eight +musical settings. Of this ballad, three stanzas, I have a strange story +to tell. When I went to Philadelphia, on my first American tour in 1851, +I was taken everywhere to see everything; amongst others to Dr. +Kirkland's vast institute for the insane: let me first state that he was +not previously told of my coming visit. When I went over the various +wards of the convalescents, I noticed that on each door was a printed +placard with my "Never give up" upon it in full. Naturally I thought it +was done so out of compliment. But on inquiry, Dr. Kirkland didn't know +who the author was, and little suspected it was myself. He had seen the +verses, anonymous, in a newspaper, and judging them a good moral dose of +hopefulness even for the half insane, placed them on every door to +excellent effect. When to his astonishment he found the unknown author +before him, greatly pleased, he asked if I would allow the patients to +thank me; of course I complied, and soon was surrounded by kneeling and +weeping and kissing folks, grateful for the good hope my verses had +helped them to. And twenty-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>five years after, in 1876, I, again without +notice, visited Dr. Kirkland at the same place, scarcely expecting to +find him still living, and certainly not thinking that I should see my +old ballad on the doors. But, when the happy doctor, looking not an hour +older, though it was a quarter of a century, took me round to see his +convalescents, behold the same words greeted me in large print,—and +probably are there still: the only change being that my name appears at +foot. I gave them a two hours' reading in their handsome theatre, and I +never had a more intensely attentive audience than those three hundred +lunatics. The ballad runs thus,—if any wish to see it, as for the first +time:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never give up! it is wiser and better<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Always to hope than once to despair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fling off the load of Doubt's heavy fetter<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And break the dark spell of tyrannical care:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never give up! or the burden may sink you,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Providence kindly has mingled the cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, in all trials or troubles, bethink you<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The watchword of life must be Never give up!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never give up! there are chances and changes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Helping the hopeful a hundred to one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And through the chaos High Wisdom arranges<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ever success, if you'll only hope on:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never give up! for the wisest is boldest,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Knowing that Providence mingles the cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of all maxims the best as the oldest<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is the true watchword of Never give up!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never give up! though the grapeshot may rattle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or the full thunderbolt over you burst,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand like a rock,—and the storm or the battle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Little shall harm you, though doing their worst:<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Never give up!—if Adversity presses,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Providence wisely has mingled the cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the best counsel in all your distresses<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is the stout watchword of Never give up!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I can quite feel what a moral tonic and spiritual stimulant these +sentiments would be to many among the thousand patients under Dr. +Kirkland's care.</p> + +<p>I recollect also now, that once when I read at Weston-super-Mare, with +Lord Cavan in the chair, a military man among the audience, on hearing +me recite "Never give up," came forward and shook hands, showing me out +of his pocket-book a soiled newspaper cutting of the poem without my +name, saying that it had cheered him all through the Crimea, and that he +had always wished to find out the author. Of course we coalesced right +heartily. Some other such anecdotes might be added, but this is enough.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Year by year, for more than a dozen, I have given a harvest hymn to the +jubilant agriculturists: they have usually attained the honour of a +musical setting, and been sung all over the land in many churches. +Perhaps the best of them is one for which Bishop Samuel Wilberforce +wrote to "thank me cordially for a real Christian hymn with the true +ring in it." There are, or were, many musical settings thereof, the best +being one of a German composer.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O Nation, Christian Nation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lift high the hymn of praise!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The God of our salvation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is love in all His ways;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He blesseth us, and feedeth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Every creature of His hand,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> +<span class="i0">To succour him that needeth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And to gladden all the land.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rejoice, ye happy people,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And peal the changing chime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From every belfried steeple<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In symphony sublime:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let cottage and let palace<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be thankful and rejoice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And woods and hills and valleys<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Re-echo the glad voice!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"From glen, and plain, and city<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let gracious incense rise;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Lord of life and pity<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hath heard His creatures' cries:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where in fierce oppression<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stalk'd fever, fear, and dearth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He pours a triple blessing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To fill and fatten earth!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gaze round in deep emotion;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The rich and ripened grain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is like a golden ocean<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Becalm'd upon the plain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we who late were weepers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lest judgment should destroy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now sing, because the reapers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are come again with joy!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O praise the Hand that giveth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And giveth evermore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To every soul that liveth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Abundance flowing o'er!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For every soul He filleth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With manna from above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And over all distilleth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The unction of His love.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then gather, Christians, gather,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To praise with heart and voice<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The good Almighty Father<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who biddeth you rejoice:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For He hath turned the sadness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of His children into mirth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we will sing with gladness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The harvest-home of Earth."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>My "Song of Seventy," published more than forty years ago, has been +exceedingly popular; and I here make this extract from an early +archive-book respecting it:—"Dr. Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, was so +pleased with this said 'Song of Seventy' that he posted off to +Hatchards' forthwith (after seeing it quoted anonymously in the +<i>Athenæum</i>) to inquire the author's name." It was published in "One +Thousand Lines." I composed it during a solitary walk near +Hurstperpoint, Sussex, in 1845, near about when I wrote "Never give up."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Of my several ballads upon Gordon (I think there were nine of them) I +will here enshrine one, printed in the newspapers of May 1884, and +perhaps worthiest to be saved from evanescence:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"If England had but spoken<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With Wellesley's lion roar,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or flung out Nelson's token<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of duty as of yore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We should not now, too late, too late,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be saddened day by day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dreading to hear of Gordon's fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The victim of delay.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"He felt in isolation<br /></span> +<span class="i4">'<i>Civis Romanus sum</i>,'<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> +<span class="i2">And trusted his great nation<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Right sure that help would come:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could he have dreamt that British power<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which placed him at his post,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In peril's long-expected hour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Would leave him to be lost?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"He lives alone for others,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Himself he scorns to save,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And ev'n with savage brothers<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Will share their bloody grave!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Woe! woe to us! should England's glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To our rulers' blame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Close gallant Gordon's wondrous story,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">England! in thy shame."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This was half prophetic at the time, and we all have grieved for +England's Christian hero ever since.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>When Lord Shaftesbury's lamented death lately touched the national +heart, I felt as others did and uttered this sentiment accordingly:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Good Earl.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Grieve not for him, as those who mourn the dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He lives! Ascended from that dying bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clad in an incense-cloud of human love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His happy spirit met the blest above;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And as his feet entered the golden door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With him flew in loud blessings of the poor;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While in a thrilling chorus from below—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Millions of children, saved by him from woe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With their sweet voices joined the seraphim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who thronged in raptured haste to welcome him!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For God had given him grace, and place, and power<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bless the destitute from hour to hour;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And from a child to fourscore years and four,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All knew and lov'd the Helper of the poor,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +<span class="i0">O coal-pit woman-slave! O factory child!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O famished beggar-boy with hunger wild!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O rescued outcast, torn from sin and shame!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye know your friend—by myriads bless his name!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We need not utter it—The Good, The Great,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These are his titles in that Blest Estate."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I was much touched and pleased with this little anecdote to the purpose. +Speaking casually to a bright-looking boy of the Shoeblack Brigade about +Lord Shaftesbury (the boy didn't know me from Adam), to find out how far +he felt for his lost friend, with tears in his eyes he quoted to my +astonishment part of the above, and told me that he and many of his +mates knew it by heart, having seen it in some paper. I never said who +wrote it (probably he wouldn't have believed me if I had) but left him +happy with some pears.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I may here add (and all this has been part of "My Life as an +Author") a couple of stanzas I wrote, (but never have published till +now) on another worthy specimen of humanity, mourned in death by our +highest:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>In Memoriam J. B.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Simple, pious, honest man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Child of heaven while son of earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We would praise, for praise we can,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy good service, thy great worth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through long years of prosperous place<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the sunshine of the Crown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With man's favour and God's grace<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Humbly, bravely, walked John Brown.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Faithful to the Blameless Prince,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Faithful to the Widowed Queen,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Loved,—as oft before and since<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Truth and zeal have ever been,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His no pedigree of pride,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His no name of old renown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet in honour lived and died<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nature's nobleman, John Brown."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Also, I will here give, as it appears nowhere else, a few lines to a +dying brother, for the sake of recording his hopeful last three words:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Dear Brother Dan's Latest Whisper.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Life unto life!' This was the whispered word<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That from my dying brother's lips I heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Faintly and feebly uttered, in the strife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Nature's agony,—'Life—unto—life!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yea, brother! for thou livest; death is dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And life rejoiceth unto life instead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No sins, no cares, no sorrows, and no pains,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But deep delights, unutterable gains,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now are thy portion in that higher sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heritage of God's own children here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who loved their Lord awhile on earth, and now<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Live to Him evermore in love—as thou!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And in this connection I will print here a psychological poem of mine, +not to be found in any other of my books:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Memory.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When the soul passes Eternity's portal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In that Hereafter of Being Elsewhere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When this poor earthworm becomes an Immortal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Risen to Life Incorruptible There;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If in some semblance of spirit and feature,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Still to be recognised one and the same,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not in its entity quite a new creature,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But as a growth of the world whence it came,—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, what a river of gladness or sadness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then must gush out from quick memory's well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite ecstasy, uttermost madness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the quick conscience greets Heaven—or Hell!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whilst he reviews old scenes and past travels,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Grained in himself and engraved on his soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the knit robe of his timework unravels<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And his whole life is unmeshed to its goal.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea, for within him, far more than without him,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Works ever following, evil or good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Happiness, misery, circling about him,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Plant a man's foot in the soil where he stood:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If he was sensual, sordid, and cruel,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sensual, cruel, and base let him be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If he have guarded his soul as a jewel,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Holy and happy and blessed be he!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">IV.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For that the seeds both of Hell and of Heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Darnel or wheat-corn, crowd memory's mart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though all sin be repented, forgiven,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet recollections must live in the heart:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still resurrected each moment's each action<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Comes up for conscience to judge it again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joy unto peace or remorse to distraction,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Growing to infinite pleasure or pain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">V.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thy many sins were the ruin of others,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though the chief sinner's own guilt may be waived:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What! shall the doom of those sisters and brothers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not be a sorrow to thee that art saved?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can utter selfishness be God's Nirwana,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blest—with our brethren of blessing bereft?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must not His Heaven seem poorer and vainer,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where one is taken and others are left?<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">VI.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, there is hope in His mercy for ever—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yea, for the worst, after ages of woe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till on this side of the uttermost Never,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Even the devils His mercy may know!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Punished and purified, Justice and Reason<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Well would rejoice if the Judge on His throne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grant His salvation to all in full season,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ruling, in bliss, all His works as His own.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">VII.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Every creature, redeemed and recovered<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Through the One sacrifice offered for all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where sin and death so fatally hovered,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mercy triumphant in full o'er the fall!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus shall old memories harmonise sweetly<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With the grand heavenly anthem above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As this sad life that was shattered so fleetly,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then is made whole in the Infinite Love."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It may count as one of my heresies in an orthodox theological sense, but +I certainly cling to the great idea of Eternal Hope; and, after any +amount of retributive punishment for purifying the "lost" soul, I look +for ultimate salvation to all God's creatures. This short and partial +trial-scene of ours is not enough to make an end with: we begin here and +progress for ever elsewhere. Evil must die out, and good must survive +alone for ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<h4>PROTESTANT BALLADS.</h4> + + +<p>Among my many fly-leaves, scattered by thousands from time to time in +handbills or in newspapers all over the world, those in which I have +praised Protestantism and denounced the dishonesty of our ecclesiastic +traitors have earned me the highest meed both of glory and shame from +partisan opponents. Ever since in my boyhood, under the ministerial +teaching of my rector, the celebrated Hugh M'Neile, at Albury for many +years, I closed with the Evangelical religion of the good old Low Church +type, I have by my life and writings excited against me the theological +hatred of High Church, and Broad Church, and No Church, and especially +of the Romanizers amongst our Established clergy. Sundry religious +newspapers and other periodicals, whose names I will not blazon by +recording, have systematically attacked and slandered me from early +manhood to this hour, and have diligently kept up my notoriety or fame +(it was stupid enough of them from their point of view) by quips and +cranks, as well as by more serious onslaughts, about which I am very +pachydermatous, albeit there are pasted down in my archive-books all the +paragraphs that have reached me. But, even as in hydraulics, the harder +you screw the greater the force, so with my combative nature, the more I +am attacked the more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> obstinately I resist. Hence the multitude and +variety of my polemical lucubrations,—mostly of a fragmentary character +as Sibylline leaves: some, however, appear in my "Ballads and Poems" +(among them a famous "Down with foreign priestcraft," circulated by +thousands in the Midlands by an unknown enthusiast),—and Ridgeway of +Piccadilly has published in pamphlet form my "Fifty Protestant Ballads +and Directorium," which originally appeared in the <i>Daily News</i>, and +<i>The Rock</i>: I have certainly written as many more, and among these one +which I will here reproduce as now very scarce, and lately of some +national importance: seeing that it was sent by my friend Admiral +Bedford Pim to every member of the two Houses of Legislature on the +Bradlaugh occasion, and was stated to have turned the tide of battle in +that celebrated case.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>"So Help Me, God!"</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'So help me, God!' my heart at every turn<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of life's wide wilderness implores Thee still<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To give all good, to rescue from all ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grant me grace Thy presence to discern.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'So help me, God!' I would not move a yard<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Without my hand in Thine to be my guide,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy love to bless, Thy bounty to provide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy fostering wing spread over me to guard.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'So help me, God!' the motto of my life,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In every varied phase of chance and change,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So that nought happens here of sad or strange<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But 'peace' is written on each frown of strife.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For Thou dost help the man that honoureth Thee!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ay, and Thy Christian-Israel of this land<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That hitherto hath recognised Thy hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How blest above the nations still are we!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet now our Senate schemes to spurn aside<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(On false pretence of liberal brotherhood)<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Heavenly Father of our earthly good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because one atheist hath his God denied!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What, shall this wrong be done? Must all of us<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Groan under coming judgment for the sin<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of welcoming avowed blasphemers in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To vote with rulers who misgovern thus?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So help us, God! it shall not: England's might<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stands in religion practised and profest;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For so alone by blessing is she blest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Christian and Protestant in life and light."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To gratify an eminent friend who wished not to exclude Jews and +Mahometans from an open profession of godliness as they viewed the +question, I altered, in subsequent reprints, the last line, "Christian +and Protestant in life and light," to "Loving and fearing God in faith +and light:" though personally my sturdy Orangeism inclined to the +original. I will in this place give a remarkable extract in a letter to +me from Gladstone, to whom my faithfulness had appealed, exhorting him, +as I often have done, to be on the right side: we know how he quoted +Lucretius on the wrong: against which I wrote a strong protest in the +<i>Times</i>. I like not to show private letters,—but this is manifestly a +public one. He says: ... "I thank you for your note, and I can assure +you that I believe the promoters of the Affirmation Bill to be already +on the side you wish me to take, and its opponents to be engaged in +doing (unwittingly) serious injury to religious belief." It is strange +to see how much intellectual subtlety combined with interested +partisanship can be self-deceived, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> in a man who believes himself +and is thought by others thoroughly conscientious.</p> + +<p>Amongst other of my recent notorious ballads of the polemic sort, I +ought to name a famous couple—"The Nun's Appeal," and "Open the +Convents"—which were written at the request of Lord Alfred Churchill, +and given to Edith O'Gorman, the Escaped Nun (otherwise the excellent +and eloquent Mrs. Auffray), to aid her Protestant Lectures everywhere: +she has circulated them over the three kingdoms, and is now doing the +like in Australia and New Zealand.</p> + +<p>In reply to some excellent members of the Romish Church, who have +publicly accused me of maligning holy women and sacred retreats, my +obvious answer is that I contend against the evil side both of nunneries +and monkeries, whilst I may fairly admit some good to be found in both. +My real protest is for liberty both to mind and body, and against +coercion of any kind, material or spiritual. Given perfect freedom, I +would not meddle with any one's honest convictions: "to a nunnery go" if +thou wilt; only let the resolve be revocable, not a doom for ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> + +<h4>PLAYS.</h4> + + +<p>One of my latest publications is that of my "Trilogy of Plays," with +twelve dramatic scenes,—issued by Allen & Co., of Waterloo Place. The +first of the three, "Alfred," was put upon the stage at Manchester by +that ill-starred genius, Walter Montgomery, who was bringing it out also +at the Haymarket, a very short time before his lamentable death. He was +fond of the play and splendidly impersonated the hero-king, in the +opening scene having trained his own white horse to gallop riderless +across the stage when Alfred was supposed to have been defeated by the +Danes. The vision in act ii. scene i. was thrillingly effective; and the +whole five acts went very well from beginning to end, the audience being +preternaturally quiet,—which disconcerted me until my theatrical mentor +praised the silence of that vast crowd, as the best possible sign of +success: they were held enthralled as one man till the end came, and +then came thunder. Not thinking of what was expected of me in the way of +thanks for the ovation their concluding cheers assailed me with, I got +out of the theatre as quick as I could, and was half way to my hotel +when two or three excited supers rushed after me with a "Good God, Mr. +Tupper, come back, come back, or the place will be torn down!" so of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +course I hurried to the front—to encounter a tumult of applause; +although I must have looked rather ridiculous too, crossing the stage in +my American cloak and brandishing an umbrella! However, no one but +myself seemed to notice the incongruity, and as I had humbly obeyed the +people's will, they generously condoned my first transgression. I ought +to record that my heroine Bertha was charmingly acted by Miss Henrietta +Hodgson, now Mrs. Labouchere, who will quite recollect her early triumph +in Martin Tupper's first play. My best compliments and kindly +remembrance I here venture to offer to her.</p> + +<p>The second play, "Raleigh," is very differently constructed; for whereas +the time of action in "Alfred" was three days,—that of "Raleigh" was +sixty years: in fact with the former I dramatised a single conquest, +with the latter the varied battles of a long life. I have several times +read all my plays before audiences at my readings, and know the points +that tell. In "Raleigh" the introduction of Shakespeare, the cloak +incident, the trial scene, Elizabeth's death, and the terrible climax of +the noble victim's execution on the stage, seemed chiefly to interest +and excite the audience.</p> + +<p>I wrote "Washington" principally to please my many friends in America, +whither I was going for a second time; but it rather damped me to find, +when at Philadelphia during its Grand Exhibition, and was giving +"Readings out of my own Works" through the Star Company, that my +<i>entrepreneur</i> stoutly objected to my proposal to read this new play of +mine, with the remark,—"No, sir, our people are tired of George +Washington,—he's quite played out: give us anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> else of yours you +like." As he was my financial provider, and paid well, of course I had +to acquiesce.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the most interesting thing in the play was the account of my +discovery of Washington's heraldry: here is part of the passage; the +whole being too long to quote: one asks "Coat-of-arms?—what was this +coat-of-arms?" and Franklin answers,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"I'll tell you, friends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I've searched it out and known it for myself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When late in England there, at Herald's College<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And found the Washingtons of Wessyngton<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In county Durham and of Sulgrave Manor,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">County Northampton, bore upon their shield<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Three stars atop, two stripes across the field<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gules—that is red—on white, and for the crest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An eagle's head upspringing to the light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It's motto, Latin, "Issue proveth acts."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The architraves at Sulgrave testify,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sundry painted windows in the hall<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At Wessyngton, this was their family coat.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They took it to their new Virginian home:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And at Mount Vernon I myself have noted<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An old cast-iron scutcheoned chimney-back<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Charged with that heraldry."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In my first American Journal will be found more about this discovery of +mine—in 1851—then quite new even to Americans. Here in London, Mr. +Tuffley of Chelsea and Northampton has popularised the original +coat-of-arms with a view to ornamental jewellery for our Transatlantic +cousins.</p> + +<p>Among my twelve dramatic scenes, the most appropriate to mention in this +volume of personalia, are the two which detail certain perilous matters +affecting the lives of two ancient ancestors, the one on my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> mother's +side, the other on my father's. The latter records the historic incident +whereby John Tupper saved the Channel Islands for William and Mary +(receiving from them a gold collar and medal, now in our heraldry) and +enabling Admiral Russell to win his naval victory at La Hogue. The +former shows how nearly an Arthur Devis at Preston paid the penalty of +death owing to his strange resemblance to Charles Edward the Young +Pretender, for whom the savage Government of the time offered a reward +of £30,000 to any one who could catch him alive or dead. My mother's +ancestor was thus very nearly murdered in 1745 for his good looks, as a +life-sized portrait at Albury, and an ivory miniature here at Norwood, +help to prove. If any wish to know more about these matters, I dare say +that Messrs. Allen aforesaid have <i>one</i> copy left: if not, consult +Mudie, that virtuous philanthropist who benefits the reading public at +the cost of the private author.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<h4>ANTIQUARIANA.</h4> + + +<p>My most literary antiquarianism was an article I wrote for the +<i>Quarterly Review</i> on Coins, accepted by Lockhart and inserted in one of +the Nos. for 1843; he protested that "I could not be the Proverbial +Philosopher, as my looks were too like David's,—it must be my +father."—No, I replied, it is my father's son. However, when he read +and approved my Coin article, he began to be convinced. I give here his +letter to me on his acceptance:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I am at present terribly overburdened with MSS., +and know not whether I can send a proof of your paper for some +weeks; but I like it much, and it shall be put into type as soon as +I can manage. I assure you I am greatly pleased, and sincerely your +obliged</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">J. G. Lockhart</span>.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Sussex Place</span>, <i>February 16, 1843</i>."</p></div> + +<p>I expostulated with him as to divers omissions for space' sake, and for +some unauthorised alterations; but editors are nothing if not +autocratic, as we all know. My article (I find it noted) was written on +the numismatic works of Cardwell and of Akerman, and took me ten days in +its composition, I tried Lockhart with a second article on "Ancient +Gems," but it failed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> please. I never had an interview with him but +once, and then he seemed to me brusque and cynical at first, warming a +little afterwards. I have written also on Druidism; and the mystery of +Easter Island, which I take to be the remains of a submerged Pacific +continent, with its deified statues on the top of an extinct volcano. +And I have flung my pen into many other <i>mélées</i> of discussion both old +and new; for it may be stated as a feature in my literary life that I +have had, one after another, all the ologies on my brain, and have +personally made small collections of minerals, fossils, insects, and the +like: special hobbies having been agates picked up in my rambles on +every beach from Yarmouth to Sidmouth, and coins at Roman stations +wherever I found them; besides a host of numismatic treasures bought at +Sotheby's auction-room, but long since sold again, as well as sundry +Egyptian and other antiquities. In particular, the Roman discoveries at +Farley Heath in the neighbourhood of Albury were mainly due to my +juvenile antiquarianism, when as a student along with Harold Browne (now +Bishop of Winchester) we used to search for coins there, and found one +happy day a Gallienus: all which I recorded years after in a now scarce +booklet, "Farley Heath, and its Roman Remains," published, with +illustrations, by Andrews, Guildford. Ultimately the finds of coin (from +Nero to Honorius), some being rare and finely patinated, as well as +several small bronzes, and old British money, were given by Mr. Drummond +(who as lord of the manor employed labourers in the search for many +months) to the British Museum, where they fill a niche near the +prehistoric room.</p> + +<p>Some of our finds were very curious, <i>e.g.</i>, we were digging in the +black mould of the burnt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> huts round the wall-foundations (all above +ground of said hectagonal wall having since been ruthlessly utilised by +parochial economists in making a road across the heath), and found +amongst other spoil a little green bronze ring,—which I placed on the +finger of our guest of the day, Mrs. Barclay of Bury Hill: oddly enough +it had six angles exactly like one of gold she wore as her +wedding-guard. Again; we had picked up some pieces of pottery decorated +with human finger-tips,—just as modern cooks do with pie-crust; a son +of mine said, perhaps we shall find a dog's foot on some tile,—and just +as he said it, up came from the spade precisely what he was guessing at, +the large footprint of dog or wolf stamped fifteen centuries ago on the +unbaked clay. Again; I was leaving for an hour a labourer in whose +industry and honesty I had not the fullest faith. So in order to employ +him in my absence, I set him to dig up an old thorn bush and told him to +give me when I returned the piece of money he would find under it. To my +concealed but his own manifest astonishment, he gave me when I came back +a worn large brass of Nero, saying with a scared face, "However could +you tell it was there, sir?" I looked wise, and said nothing.</p> + +<p>Among the rarest copper coins was one of Carausius (our English Carew), +with two heads on it symbolling the ambition of our native usurper to +assert empire over East as well as West, and among more treasure-trove +was a unique gold coin of Veric,—the Bericus of Tacitus; as also the +rare contents of a subterranean potter's oven, preserved to our day, and +yielding several whole vases. Mr. Akerman of numismatic fame told me +that out of Rome itself he did not know a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> richer site for old-world +curiosities than Farley; in the course of years we found more than 1200 +coins, besides Samian ware, and plenty of common pottery, as well as +bronze ornaments, enamelled fibulæ, weapons of war, household +implements, &c., both of the old British and the Roman, the Anglo-Saxon, +and more recent periods; Farley having been a prætorian station on the +Ikenild highway. This is quite a relevant episode of my literary +antiquariana. As also is another respecting "My Mummy Wheat," a record +of which found its way into print and made a stir many years ago. It +grew from seeds given to me by Mr. Pettigrew out of an Amenti vase taken +from a mummy pit by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, and very carefully +resuscitated by myself in garden-pots filled with well-sifted mould at +Albury; it proved to be a new and prolific species of the semi-bearded +Talavera kind, and a longest ear of 8-1/2 inches in length (engraved in +an agricultural journal) was sent by me to Prince Albert, then a zealous +British farmer.</p> + +<p>Here I will add a very interesting letter to me on the subject from +Faraday, the original being pasted among my autographs. It will be seen +that he excuses having published my letter to him, and refuses to be +called Doctor:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Royal Institution</span>, <i>June 11, 1842</i>.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Sir</span>,—Your note was a very pleasant event in my +day of yesterday, and I thank you heartily for it, and rejoice with +you at the success of the crop. It so happened that yesterday +evening was the last of our meetings, and I had to speak in the +lecture-room. The subject was Lithotint: but I placed the one ear +in the library under a glass case, and after my first subject was +over read the principal part of your letter—all that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> related to +the wheat: and the information was received with great interest by +about 700 persons. Our President, Lord Prudhoe, was in the chair, +and greatly desirous of knowing the age of the wheat. You know he +is learned in Egyptian matters, and was anxious about the label or +inscription accompanying the corn. I hope I have not done wrong, +but I rather fear your letter will be published, or at least the +wheat part, for a gentleman asked me whether he might copy it, and +I instantly gave him leave, but found that he was connected with +the press, the <i>Literary Gazette</i>. I hope you will not object since +without thought on my part the matter has gone thus far. The news +is so good and valuable that I do not wonder at the desire to have +it,—Ever your obliged servant,</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">M. Faraday</span>.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">M. F. Tupper</span>, Esq.,<br /> + <span style="margin-left: 2em;">&c. &c. &c.</span></p> + +<p>"<i>P.S.</i>—I am happy to say that I am plain Mr. Faraday, and if I +have my wish shall keep so.—M. F."</p></div> + +<p>An early volume of my so-called "Critica Egotistica" has many letters +and printed communications on this subject: but as not being a +recognised agriculturist myself, I did not wish it called by my +name,—so it is only known in the markets (chiefly I have heard in +Essex) as "Mummy Wheat." Talking of declined honours in nomenclature, I +may here mention that a new beetle, found by Vernon Wollaston and urged +by him to be named after the utterly "unsharded" me (who had however +gratified that distinguished entomologist by my poem on Beetles) was +respectfully refused the prefix of my name, as scarcely knowing a +lepidopt from a coleopt. <i>Ne sutor ultra crepidam.</i> If honour is to be +given, let it be deserved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2> + +<h4>HONOURS—INVENTIONS.</h4> + + +<p>Authorship reaps honour in these latter days quite as much as it did in +the classic times of Augustus with Virgil and Horace for his intimates, +and of Petrarch crowned at the Capitol laureate of all Italy during the +vacancy of a popedom in the Vatican. Not but that, with or without any +titular distinction, authorship is practically the most noticeable rank +amongst us. Many will pass by a duke who would have stopped and waited +to have looked at a Darwin when he was in this lower sphere; and I am +quite sure that the grand presence of Alfred Tennyson would attract more +affectionate homage than that of any other ennobled magnate in the land. +As to his title, I was glad that his good taste and wisdom elected to be +called by his own honourable patronymic rather than haply Farringford or +Hazlemere: how can great names consent to be eclipsed in such obscure +signatures as Wantage or Esher, Hindlip or Glossop, Dalling or +Grimsthorpe? One gets quite at a loss to know who's who.</p> + +<p>My letter to the <i>Times</i> of December 19, 1883, headed "Literary +Honours," in praise of Tennyson's elevation to the House of Lords, and +showing how in every age all nations except our own have given honours +to authors, literally "from China to Peru," elicited plenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> both of +approval and of censure from journals of many denominations. As a matter +inevitable when Baron Tennyson was gazetted, the less euphonious Tupper +was stigmatised in the papers as desiring to be a Baron too,—at all +events, the <i>Echo</i> said so, and the <i>Globe</i> good-humouredly observed +that "he deserved the coronet." They little knew that in the summer of +1863 (as paragraphs in my tenth volume of "Archives" are now before me +to show) the same derided scribe was seriously announced as "about to be +raised to the peerage" all over England and America: see two available +and respectable proofs in the <i>British Controversialist</i> (Houlston & +Wright) for July 1863, p. 79,—and Bryant's <i>Evening Post</i> for September +17, 1863. I name these, as the reverse of comic papers,—and publishing +what they supposed true, as in fact was told me by the editors when +inquired of. At the time I repudiated the false rumour openly;—with all +the greater readiness, inasmuch as I dispute both the justice of +hereditary honour and the wisdom of hereditary legislation; to say less +of the "<i>res angusta domi</i>" which, in our Mammonite time and clime, +obliges money to support rank, even if, as in sundry late cases of +raising to the peerage, it does not purchase it.</p> + +<p>It is fair also to state as a fact, that when my father for the second +time refused his baronetcy, I, as eldest son, gave the casting vote +against myself, not to impoverish my four younger brothers,—all now +gone before me to the better world,—and that, for reasons mentioned +above, I certainly could not take it now. Let this suffice as my reply +to some recent sneers and strictures.</p> + +<p>As for letters of the alphabet attached to one's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> name, almost any one +nowadays may have any amount of them by paying fees or subscriptions; in +particular, America has given me many honorary diplomas. And for the +matter of gold medals, who can covet them, when even the creators of +baking-powder and sewing-machines are surfeited therewith. My poor +Prussian medal looks small in comparison. And then, as for knighthood, +that ancient honour has been lately so abused that vanity itself could +scarcely desire it, and even modesty now might hesitate in its +acceptance.</p> + +<p>Albeit I have thus spoken only incidentally and with seeming +carelessness about my Prussian medal, I am reminded that it will +interest readers if I here extract the Chevalier Bünsen's letter to me +on the occasion. It runs thus in its integrity:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="right">"<span class="smcap">4 Carlton Terrace</span>, <i>26th September 1844</i>.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear Sir</span>,—I owe you many apologies for not having +answered earlier your letter of the 2d of August. The fact is that +since that time I have been travelling all over England with the +Prince of Prussia. As to your work, I laid it myself before the +King, who perused it with great pleasure, when I was at Berlin. I +am now charged by His Majesty not only to express to you his thanks +for having thought of him in sending him a book replete with so +much Christian wisdom and experience, but also to present to you, +in his Royal name, the <i>gold medal</i> for science and literature, as +a particular sign of regard. The medal will be delivered to you, or +a person authorised by you, at the office of the Prussian Legation, +any morning from 11 to 1 o'clock, Sunday of course excepted.</p> + +<p>"Allow me to avail myself of this opportunity to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> renew to you my +own thanks and the expression of my high regard, and believe me, +yours sincerely,</p> + +<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Bünsen</span>.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">M. F. Tupper</span>, Esq."</p></div> + +<p>Accordingly, I called myself and received the medal from the Chevalier, +with whom afterwards I had half-an-hour's talk, chiefly about German +history, in which by good fortune I was fairly posted, perhaps with a +prescience that the ambassador might allude to it.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>An author, if he be a good man and a clever, worthy of his high +vocation, already walks self-ennobled, circled by an aureola of +spiritual glory such as no king can give, nor even all-devouring time, +"<i>edax rerum</i>," can take away. He really gains nothing by a title—no, +not even Tennyson; as in the next world, so in this, "his works do +follow him," and the "Well done, good and faithful" from this lower +world which he has served is but the prelude of his welcome to that +higher world wherein he hears the same "good and faithful" from the +mouth of his Redeemer.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Inventions.</span></h4> + +<p>It may be worth a page if I record here sundry inventions of mine, +surely bits of authorship, which I found out for myself but did not +patent, though others did. As thus:—</p> + +<p>1. A simple and cheap safety horse-shoe,—secured by steel studs +inserted into the ordinary soft iron shoes.</p> + +<p>2. Glass screw-tops to bottles.</p> + +<p>3. Steam-vessels with the wheels inside; in fact, a double boat or +catamaran, with the machinery amid-ships.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> + +<p>4. The introduction of coca-leaf to allay hunger, and to be as useful +here as in Chili.</p> + +<p>5. A pen to carry its own ink.</p> + +<p>6. The colouring of photographs on the back.</p> + +<p>7. Combined vulcanite and steel sheathing.</p> + +<p>There were also some other small matters wherein authorial energy busied +itself. But although I had models made of some, and wrote about others, +no good results accrued to me. 1. As for the horse-shoes, blacksmiths +did <i>not</i> want to lose custom by steel saving the iron. 2. For the +glass-stoppers, I had against me all the cork trade, and the +wine-merchants too, who recork old wines. 3. The steamers were never +tried on a large scale, and models are pronounced deceptive. 4. The coca +loses most of its virtues when in a dried state. 5. The pen (I had it +made in silver, a long hollow handle ending with a conical point) either +grew clogged if the ink was too thick, or emitted blots when too thin. +6. An establishment in Leicester Square has since worked on this idea. +7. I also troubled the Ordnance Office, and had an interview with Sidney +Herbert about two more futile inventions! one a composite cannon missile +of quoits tied together: another of a thick vulcanite sheathing for +ships, over either wood or iron. I have letters on these to and from +the office. Briefly, I did not gain fortune as an inventor: though I +urged my horse-shoe at least as a valuable thought, and one worth a +trial, to save our poor horses on asphalte pavements and in hard frosts. +It is a losing game to attempt to force an invention: so many vested +interests oppose, and so many are the competitors: moreover, some one +always rushes into the pool of Bethesda before you.</p> + +<p>I thought also that there might as well be "essence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> of tea," as well as +of coffee; but nothing came of it. Also amongst other of my addled eggs +of invention, I may mention that in my chemistry days as a youth I +suggested to a scientific neighbour, Dr. Kerrison, that glass might be +rendered less fragile by being mixed in the casting with some chemical +compound of lead,—much as now has come out in the patent toughened +glass. Also we initiated mild experiments about an imitation of volcanic +forces in melting pounded stone into moulds,—as recently done by Mr. +Lindsay Bucknall with slag:—but unluckily we found that the manufacture +of basalt was beyond our small furnace power: I fancied that apparently +carved pinnacles and gurgoyles might be cast in stone; and though beyond +Dr. Kerrison and myself, perhaps it may still be done by the hot-blast +melting up crushed granite.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Among these small matters of an author's natural inventiveness, I will +preserve here a few of the literary class: <i>e.g.</i>, (1.) I claim to have +discovered the etymology of Punch, which Mark Antony Lower in his +Patronymica says is "a name the origin of which is in total obscurity." +Now, I found it out thus,—when at Haverfordwest in 1858 I saw over the +mantel of the hostelry, perhaps there still, a map of the Roman +earthwork called locally Punch Castle; and considering how that the +neighbouring hills are named Precelly (Procella, storm) as often drawing +down the rain-clouds,—that Caer Leon is Castrum Legionis, and that +there is a Roman bridge over the little river there still styled Ultra +Pontem—I decided at once that Pontii Castellum was the true name for +Punch Castle. Of course, Pontius Pilate and Judas appear in the mediæval +puppet-plays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> as Punch and Judy,—while Toby refers to Tobit's dog, in a +happy confusion of names and dates. The Pontius of the Castle was Prater +of the Second Legion. (2.) Similarly, I found out the origin of "Humpty +Dumpty sat on a wall," &c., to refer to the death of William the +Conqueror (<i>L'homme qui dompte</i>), who was ruptured in leaping a burnt +wall at Rouen; being very stout,—"he had a great fall," and burst +asunder like Iscariot, while "all the king's horses and all the king's +men couldn't set Humpty Dumpty up again." We must remember that the wise +Fools of those days dared not call magnates by their real names,—nor +utter facts openly: so accordingly (3) they turned Edward Longshanks +into "Daddy Longlegs,"—and (4) sang about King John's raid upon the +monks, and the consequent famine to the poor, in "Four and twenty +blackbirds baked in a pie," &c.,—the key to this interpretation being +"a dainty dish to set before the king," John being a notorious glutton. +My friends at Ledbury Manor, where there is a gallery full of my uncle +Arthur's Indian pictures, will remember how I expounded all this to them +some years ago. In this connection of literary discovery, let me here +give my exposition of the mystic number in Revelations, 666,—which, +"<i>more meo</i>" I printed thus on a very scarce fly-leaf, as one of my +Protestant Ballads not in any book:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Here is wisdom—Let him that hath understanding count the number +of the Beast—for it is the number of a Man—and his number is six +hundred threescore and six."—Rev. xiii. 18.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Count up the sum of Greek numeral letters<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Kakoi Episkopoi'—bishops all ill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strangely I note that those mystical fetters<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bind in their number this mystery still—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Six hundred threescore and six is the total,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spelling the number and name of a man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Chief of bad bishops and lies sacerdotal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That of all wickedness stands in the van.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Antichrist! what? can a feeble old creature,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pope though they style him, be rank'd in his place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the Goliath in fashion and feature<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Warring gigantic with God and His grace?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is he so great—to be dreaded, abhorrèd,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Single antagonist, braving God's wrath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bearing foul Babylon's seal on his forehead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Chosen Triumvir with Sin and with Death?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea; the presumption of priestly succession<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Make the <i>all one</i> a whole Popedom of Time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So that each head for his hour of possession<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wears the tiara of ages of crime:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rome is infallible, Rome is eternal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rome is unchangeable, cruel, and strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leagued with the legions of darkness infernal,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crushing all right and upholding all wrong."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note</span>.—The value of the Greek letters, as numerals, in the +two words above, is as follows:—The three kappas = 60, the three +omicrons = 210, the three iotas = 30, the two pis = 160, the one +sigma = 200, the one epsilon = 5, and the one alpha = 1; in all +exactly making 666. This is "a private interpretation" of the +writer's own discovery, not to be found elsewhere, and quite as +convincing as Lateinos and the inscription on St. Peter's.</p></div> + +<p>My friend Evelyn contributed to the perfection of the discovery. It was +he who suggested Kakoi to Episcopoi, to make up the number. There are +also some who say that our eccentric Premier's name sums up ominously to +the same three sixes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> + +<h4>COURTLY AND MUSICAL.</h4> + + +<p>My several royal poems, some twenty in number, may deserve a short and +special notice; though it is far from my intention to detail any +gracious condescensions of a private nature. I may however state, as a +curiosity of literature, that the 35th of my "Three Hundred Sonnets," +published by Virtue in 1860, is headed "India's Empress," written +certainly twenty years before such a title was thought of, even by Lord +Beaconsfield in his pupa phase of D'Israeli. As very few have the +volume, long out of print, I will here produce that fortunate prophecy; +the "way chaotic" is the Sepoy Mutiny:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Our Empress Queen!—Victoria's name of glory<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Added as England's grace to Hindostan:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O climax to this age's wondrous story,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Full of new hope to India, and to Man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In heathendom's dark places! For the light<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of our Jerusalem shall now shine there<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brighter than ever since the world began:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet by a way chaotic, drear and gory<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Travelled this blessing; as a martyr might<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wrestling to heaven through tortures unaware:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our Empress Queen! for thee thy people's pray'r<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All round the globe to God ascends united,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That He may strengthen thee no guilt to spare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor leave one act of goodness unrequited."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another such curiosity of literature may this be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> considered: namely, +that the same versifier who in his youth fifty years ago saw the +coronation from a gallery seat in Westminster Abbey, overlooking the +central space, and wrote a well-known ode on the occasion, to be found +in his Miscellaneous Poems, is still in full force and loyalty, and +ready to supply one for his Queen's jubilee,—whereof words for music +will be found anon. Human life has not many such completed cycles to +celebrate, albeit I have lately had a golden wedding; alas! in a short +month after, closed by the good wife's sudden death: "So soon trod +sorrow on the heels of joy!" But I will not speak of that affliction +here and now: my present errand is more cheerful.</p> + +<p>With reference, then, to the many verses of mine which I have reason to +hope are honoured by preservation in royal albums, I wish only to say +that if some few have appeared among my other poetries in print, they +shall not be repeated here: though I may record that whatever I have +sent from time to time have been graciously acknowledged, and that I +have heretofore met with palatial welcomes.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I may say a word or two about my having for the best part of +half a century occasionally made my duteous bow at Court; which I +thought it right to do whenever some poetic offering of mine had been +received; in particular at the Princess Royal's marriage, when Prince +Albert specially invited me to Buckingham Palace, presenting me kindly +to the heir of Prussia, and bidding, "Wales come and shake hands with +Mr. Tupper" (my genial Prince will recollect it); and above all adding +the honour of personal conversation with Her Majesty.</p> + +<p>Of these thus briefly: also I might record (but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> forbear) similar +condescensions at Frogmore; as also with reference to my little Masques +of the Seasons, and the Nations—wherein Corbould was pictorially so +efficient, and Miss Hildyard so helpful in the costumes—both at Osborne +and at Windsor. In gracious recognition of these Her Majesty gave me +Winterhalter's engravings of all the royal children, now at Albury, as +well as some gifts to my daughters. The Masques will be found among my +published poems.</p> + +<p>At Court I frequently met Lord Houghton, known to me in ancient days as +Monckton Milnes; and I remember that we especially came together from +sympathy as to critical castigation, <i>Blackwood</i> or some other Scotch +reviewer having fallen foul of both of us, then young poets (and +therefore to be hounded down by Professor Wilson), in an article pasted +in an early volume of Archives, spitefully disparaging "Farquhar Tupper +and Monckton Milnes."</p> + +<p>Until these days every one wore the antiquated Queen Anne Court suit, +now superseded by modern garments, perhaps more convenient but certainly +not so picturesque. Bagwig and flowered waistcoat, and hanging +cast-steel rapier, and silken calves and buckled shoes,—and above all +the abundant real point lace (upon which Lord Houghton more than once +has commented with me as to the comparative superiority of his or +mine,—both being of ancestral dinginess, and only to be washed in +coffee)—these are ill exchanged for boots and trousers and straight +black sword, and everything of grace and beauty diligently tailored +away. When I last attended at St. James's in honour of Prince Albert +Victor's first reception, I was, among twelve hundred, one of only three +units who paid our respects in the stately fashions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> of Good Queen Anne: +and I was glad to be complimented on my social courage as almost alone +in those antiquated garments, and on my profusion of snow-white hair so +suitably suggestive of the powdered polls of our ancestors. I remember +my father in powder.</p> + +<p>On this last occasion it was, as I have said, especially to pay my +respects to the young Prince at his first <i>levée:</i> both he and his +father with great kindness cordially shaking hands with the author of +the following stanzas. The young Prince stood between his father and his +kinsman, the Duke of Cambridge.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Albert Victor! words of blessing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bright with omens of the best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truly one such names possessing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall be throned among the blest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Albert,—sainted now and glorious,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Long time in his heavenly rest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Victor,—everyway victorious<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like our Empress east and west!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Prince! to-day the Court bears witness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">How, thy Royal Sire beside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With due graciousness and fitness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dignity devoid of pride,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou (thy gallant kinsman near thee)<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dost with homage far and wide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the praise of all to cheer thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Humbly meet that glittering tide!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Prince, accept an old man's greeting,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now some threescore and fifteen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who can testify how fleeting<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life and all its joys have been:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have known thy Grandsire's favour,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And thy Parents' grace have seen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I note the same sweet savour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the Grandson of my Queen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As this is the Jubilee year, and I may not live to its completion,—for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +who can depend upon an hour?—I will here produce what has just occurred +to my patriotism as a suitable ode on the great occasion. If short, it +is all the better for music, and I humbly recommend its adoption as +<i>libretto</i> to some chief musical composer.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Victoria's Jubilee: for Music.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">(<i>Major forte.</i>)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rejoice, O Land! Imperial Realm, rejoice!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wherever round the world<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our standard floats unfurl'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let every heart exult in music's voice!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be glad, O grateful England,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Triumphant shout and sing, Land!<br /></span> +<span class="i4">As from each belfried steeple<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The clanging joy-bells sound,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Let all our happy people<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The wandering world around,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rejoice with the joy this jubilee brings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Circling the globe as with seraphim wings!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">(<i>Minor piano.</i>)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo, the wondrous story,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Praise all praise above!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fifty years of glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Fifty years of love!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Chastened by much sadness,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Mid the dark of death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But illumed with gladness<br /></span> +<span class="i4">By the sun of faith:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What a life, O Nations,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">What a reign is seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the consummations<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Crowning Britain's Queen!"<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">(<i>Finale.—Crescendo.</i>)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Riches of Earth, and Graces of Heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God in His love hath abundantly given,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More by a year than seven times seven,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Blessing our Empress, the Queen!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Secrets of Science, and marvels of Art,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Health of the home, and wealth of the mart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that is best for the mind and the heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Crowded around her are seen.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Honour, Religion, and Plenty are hers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Peace, and all heavenly messengers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While loyalty every spirit upstirs<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To shout aloud, God save the Queen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here the words end, as brevity is wisdom. But the music, as a majestic +finale, might include touches of Rule Britannia, Luther's Hymn, and the +National Anthem.</p> + +<p>I have asked my friend Mr. Manns if he will set my words to music, but +his modesty declines, as he professes to be mainly a conductor rather +than a composer; and he recommends me to apply to some more famous +musician, as perhaps Sullivan, or Macfarren, or haply Count Gleichen. +All I can say is, nothing would be more gratifying to my muse than for +either of those great names to adapt my poetry to his melody.</p> + +<p>Suitably enough, I may here insert a page as to my own musical +idiosyncrasy as a bit of author-life.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Keble is said to have had no ear for a tune, however perfect as to rhyme +and rhythm; and there are those who suppose my tympanum to be similarly +deficient, though I persistently dispute it. Living (when at Norwood) +within constant free hearing of the best music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> in the world, at the +Crystal Palace, I ought to be musical, if not always so accredited; but +I do penitentially confess to occasional weariness in over long repeated +symphonies, where the sweet little <i>motif</i> is always trying to get out +but is cruelly driven back,—in the endlessness of fugues, and what +seems to my offended ear the useless waste of tone and power in extreme +instrumentation, and in divers other disinclinings I cannot but +acknowledge as to what is called classical music. Accordingly, no one +can accuse me of being <i>fanatico per la musica</i>; albeit I am transported +too by (for example) Handel's largo in G, by the Prayer in Mosé in +Egitto, the Lost Chord, Rossini's Tell, Weber's Freischutz and Oberon, +Tannhauser, Semiramide, and all manner of marches, choruses, ballads, +and national airs. In fact, I really do like music, especially if +tuneful and melodious, in spite of Wagner's apothegm, but some +symphonies might be better if curtailed,—except only Schubert's,—but +then his best is the Unfinished, and so the shortest. In my youth I +learnt the double flageolet, and could play it fairly.</p> + +<p>All this (wherein I am but the honest spokesman for many who do not like +to confess as much) is introductory in my authorial capacity to this +short poem, not long since pencilled in the concert-room and given to +Mr. Manns as soon as clearly written. I insert it here very much to give +pleasure to one who so continually ministers to the pleasure of +thousands; and I hope some day soon to greet him Sir August, as he well +deserves a knighthood.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>A Music Lesson.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Marvellous orchestra! concert of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mingling more notes than the musical seven,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Harmonious discords of treble and base<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In strange combinations of guilt and of grace—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O whose is the ear that can hear you aright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And note the dark providence mixt with the light?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where, where is the eye that is swift to discern<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This lesson in music the dull ear should learn,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That all, from the seraphim harping on high<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down, down to the lowest, fit chords can supply<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the pæan of praises in every tone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With thunders and melodies circling the Throne!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We are each a brief note in that wonderful hymn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And to us its Oneness is hazy and dim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We hear the few sounds from the viol we play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all the full chorus floats far and away:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our poor little pipe of an instant is drown'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the glorious rush of that ocean of sound;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The player hears nothing beyond his own bars,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whilst all that grand symphony reaches the stars:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet, though our piping seems but little worth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It adds to the Anthem Creation pours forth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, whether we know it or not, we can give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not a note more or less in the life that we live.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ah me! we are nothing—or little at best—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But duty with greatness the least can invest:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One note on the flute or the trumpet may seem<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A poor petty work for ambition's fond dream,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But what if that note be a need-be to blend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And quicken the score from beginning to end?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To show forth the mind of the Master, who guides<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With baton unerring Time's mixture of tides,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The good with the evil, the blessing and bane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Amazon rushing far into the main,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until, from this skill'd combination of notes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bound earth to the heavens His overture floats!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> + +<h4>F.R.S.</h4> + + +<p>A page or two about my connection with the Royal Society may have some +small interest. When my father (who had long been a Fellow) died in +1844, I wished to give to the Society his marble bust by Behnes as a +memorial of honour to him; but my mother preferred to keep it, as was +natural. Meanwhile, however, some of my father's friends, and in +particular his old patron, Lord Melbourne, then recently elected, put me +up as a candidate, and as I find recorded in my Archive-book, vol. ii., +my certificate "was signed by Argyll, Bristol, Henry Hallam, Thomas +Brande, Dr. Paris, P.B.C.S., Sir C. M. Clarke, and Sir Benjamin Brodie: +in due time I was elected, and on the 8th of May 1845 was admitted by +Lord Northampton." At my election occurred this very strange and +characteristic incident. There was only one ball against me among +twenty-seven for me in the ballot-box; the meetings were then held at +Somerset House, the Society on a less numerous scale than at present, +and the elections easier and more frequent. When the President announced +the result, up jumped Lord Melbourne, begging pardon for his mistake in +having dropped his ball into the wrong hole!—an amusing instance of the +<i>laissez-faire</i> carelessness habitual to that good-humoured Minister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> + +<p>As I have now been more than forty years a Fellow, I ought to be ashamed +to confess that I never contributed a Paper to its learned Proceedings; +all of which as they come to me I give appropriately enough to the +famous Wotton Library, belonging to my excellent friend Evelyn, heir and +successor to the celebrated John Evelyn of the Sylva, one of the +Society's founders. That I have seldom even read them is also a pitiful +truth; for the mysterious nomenclature of modern chemistry, the +incomprehensibility (to my ignorance) of the higher mathematics, the +hopeless profundity of treatises on the tides, dynamics, electricity, +and microscopic anatomicals, are, I am free to avow, worse to me than +"heathen Greek," nay (for I <i>can</i> in some sort tackle that), more +difficult than the clay tablets of Assyria or a papyrus of Rameses II. +So I must confess to being an idle drone among the working bees.</p> + +<p>Only thrice have I ventured to ask questions of consequence, scarcely +yet answered by the pundits. One regards Spectrum Analysis: How can we +be sure that the lines indicative of gases and other elements are not +mainly due to the emanations from our own globe, swathed as it is by +more than forty miles of an atmosphere impregnated by its own salts and +acids in aerial solution? May we not be deducing false conclusions as to +the varying lights of stars and nebulæ, if all the while to our vision +they are as it were clouded by our own smoke? Telescopes have to pierce +so thick a stratum of earth's aura and ether that it is expectable they, +would show us only our own composites in those of other worlds. The +spectra are varied, I know, but so may be our wrappings of atmosphere +from one night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> to another. Let this ignorant query suffice about Dr. +Huggins' great discovery.</p> + +<p>Again, I certainly (after some knowledge of strange facts) could have +wished that Mr. Crookes's philosophical spiritualism had met with a more +patient hearing than Dr. Carpenter or Mr. Huxley offered at the time; +and that Faraday's clumsy mechanical refutation of table-turning had not +been considered so conclusive. For there really are "more things in +heaven and earth, Horatio," &c., than even your omniscience is aware of; +and without pinning faith on Madame Blavatsky, or Mr. Hume, or any other +wonder-worker from America or Thibet, there doubtless are petty miracles +in what is called spiritualism (possibly some form of electricity) that +demand more scrutiny than our materialists will have the patience to +vouchsafe: I for one believe in human testimony even as to the +miraculous.</p> + +<p>For a third and last inquiry: justly indignant at the horrors of +Continental vivisection, and especially in our own humane England at Dr. +Ferrier's red-hot wires thrust into live monkeys' brains, I have often +vainly asked <i>cui bono</i> such terrible cruelty? The highest authorities +are at variance with each other as to the practical utility in human +therapeutics of experiments upon agonised brutes; but all must be agreed +that, so far as morals are concerned, vivisection only hardens the heart +and sears the feelings and conscience of doctors who may surround the +dying-bed of our dearest, and very possibly make capital of peculiar +symptoms in their patient, by experiments transferred from dogs and +rabbits to himself! Single votes are useless against the annual list of +selected candidates, or I for one would have at all inconvenience +testified both at Oxford and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> in the Royal Society against the election +of a certain Professor whose glory lies in vivisection.</p> + +<p>For an appropriate end to these discursive sentences, let me add this +poetic morsel in my own vein. Mr. Butler of Philadelphia was quite right +in his judgment of my <i>indoles</i>: I "write by impulse on occasion." Here +is a very recent instance in point. I had lately visited Mr. Barraud's +painted-window works near Seven Dials, and when I told Mr. Herbert Rix, +our Assistant-Secretary, of what you may read below, he exhorted me to +put it into verse, which I did impromptu, and sent it to him: now thus +first printed:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I saw the artist in a colour-shop<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Staining some bits of glass variously shaped<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To map the painted window of a church,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And marvelled that the tintings all seemed wrong;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Red, green, and brown should have been interchanged<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To show the colours right. Why did he use<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His brush so carelessly, my folly asked.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Wait for the fire,—the fire will make all right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The reds and greens and browns will change again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fusing harmoniously,' so Knowledge spake;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thus a thought of wisdom came to me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Touching the truth, how kindly curative<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must be the pains and cares and griefs of life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For that the furnace of adversity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Melts to its proper good each seeming ill.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Again, I noticed how the artist chose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not clear good glass, whether of plate or crown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But common-looking stuff, bubbled and flawed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if selected for its blemishes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rather than for transparent purity.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Why not choose better glass to paint upon?'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To this he answered, 'Wouldn't do at all.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My faces mustn't look lifeless and dull,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, as instinct with motion, light and life,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Not in enamelled uniformity:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sunshine cannot sparkle where all's smooth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I choose the most imperfect panes to make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A perfect, vigorous picture.'—Then I learnt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How wonderfully Providence is pleased<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cause all evil things to help the good;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, deeper, to ordain that good itself<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can scarcely be discerned without the harm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of some companion-ill; even as gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is useless unalloyed; and Very Light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unshadowed kills, as unapproachable;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And absolute unmitigated good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alone is Godhead. Every creature here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(In this our human trial-world at least)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is full of faults and spots and blemishes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If only to set off his better self,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His talents, graces, excellent good gifts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burnt in the fire to brighter excellence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fused harmonious into perfect man."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have often thought that our Great Teacher's parables were true +pictures of things around Him; He painted from living models, +"impulsively and on occasion." The prodigal son, the unjust judge, the +rich fool, the camel unladen to pass the narrow tunnel of the needle's +eye, the lost sheep, the found piece of money and the like,—all were +real incidents made use of by His wisdom, who spake as never man spake, +and did all things well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> + +<h4>PERSONATION.</h4> + + +<p>It has several times happened to me, as doubtless to others of my +brethren, to find that I have been personated, certainly to my +considerable discredit. Take these instances. When at Brighton, a fellow +had the effrontery to collect money in my name, and I suppose he +somewhat resembled me, as I heard more than once that I had been seen +here and there, where I undoubtedly was not, and proved an <i>alibi</i>. At +Bignor, where I went to see some Roman pavements on the property of a +Sussex yeoman of my name (very possibly a German cousin) the owner +received me with more than suspicion when I said who I was,—because +"the true Martin Tupper had been his guest for a week, and brought him a +book he had written," and one of mine then was lying on the table! But I +soon made it clear that he had been deceived, and that the real Simon +Pure was now before him. Divers other cases might be mentioned; however, +perhaps the most curious is this, and I extract the whole statement from +one of my scrap-books now before me. It is headed "An anecdote to +account for certain slanders," the date being August 1865:—</p> + +<p>"I have heard it seriously asserted of me that I am a great pugilist! +and very far in conduct and manners from what one might expect, and so +forth. Now it has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> just come to my knowledge that a sporting publican +and dog-fancier, who called his public-house in the Waterloo Road 'The +Greyhound' (my crest), and has my name over the lintel, has claimed to +be the author, and is supposed to be myself! Mr. Payne (my publisher) +told me about the 'pugilist,' and said he had heard it in the clubs that +I was a match for Sayers,—as I conclude my sporting namesake is." In +America, too, I found that my double lived at Hardwick, Worcester Co., +N.Y., and that another Martin hailed from Buffalo. So, like poor Edgar +Poe, who had to suffer from the machinations of a profligate brother, +who gave Edgar's name whenever he got into a scrape, I may have +sometimes been credited with the sins of strangers. No one is free from +this sort of calumny. We all have heard of Sheridan's wicked witticism, +in that when taken up in Pall Mall for drunkenness, he gave his name +Wilberforce; and it is said that he got drunk on purpose to say so! My +venerable friend, Thomas Cooper, the pious and eloquent old Chartist, +has been similarly confused with Robert Cooper, the atheist, lecturer; +not but that Thomas had once been an atheist too. In this connection, +here is a curiously complicated case of <i>alibi</i>, which I abstract +<i>verbatim</i> from one of my Archive-books.</p> + +<p>"On Sunday, the 17th of September 1848, I was all the afternoon and +evening at my house on Furze Hill, Brighton, quietly reading and +teaching my children, &c. Next day the 'Rev. J. C. Richmond (an American +friend) called with me on the Rev. Mr. Vaughan, and in the course of +conversation the latter said to me in a good-natured tone of rebuke: +'Some of my congregation tell me they saw you yesterday afternoon +smoking a cigar in a fly on the Marine Parade.' I had hardly time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> to +deny the soft impeachment, which I might well have done with emphasis, +as a loather of cigars, and as little as possible a traveller on +Sundays, when Richmond broke out with 'That's impossible; for I saw him +myself in Shoreham Church (five miles distant), and noticed that he went +away in the middle of the sermon, as I supposed, to get home to Mrs. +Tupper.' Mr. Richmond says he could have made oath that I had been +there, and that he told several persons after church that I 'had heard +part of the sermon in the afternoon.' So, upon human and trustworthy +evidence, I could have been proved to have been in three places at +once."</p> + +<p>My fetch similarly once rescued a young lady from death on Snowdon: at +least a stranger in company once came up to me, to thank me for my +prowess in having stopped his daughter's pony, which had run away down, +the mountain!—in vain I denied it:—and he addressed me by my name, +too! Somebody must have given him my card by accident.</p> + +<p>And let me here allude (if I can without indelicacy) to another sort of +personation of more financial importance to myself. Lately, I have seen +some not very refined nor considerate paragraphs in American papers (Mr. +Bok, a Brooklyn editor, has told me that more than four hundred repeated +them) to the effect that in the battle of life I had—truly +enough—suffered reverses, and needed material help from my many +professing friends. Moreover I have heard it stated that some sort of +collection was volunteered for me. Well, this may have been the case or +not; but anyhow the fact is (and it should be announced to those who may +have given—and wonder at no acknowledgment of their kindness having +come from me) that to this hour I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> have received nothing from America +(except a few dollars sent by one lady, and some more from a +Transatlantic relative), either on account of my so-called testimonial, +or these more recent paragraphs. The annoyance in my own mind, and in +the suspicion of some others round me, is the awkward fancy that sundry +small collections may have been intercepted. Possibly some other Martin +Tupper has the spoil.</p> + +<p>Another sort of dishonest personation whereto we are all liable, whether +authors or not, is the having imputed to us divers forged or garbled +sentiments, even in the immutability of print, I have now before me a +Boston copy of my first Proverbial published by one Joseph Dowe in 1840, +which, though stated to be "from the London edition," designedly omits +all allusion to the Trinity, even my whole essay thereon, for Mr. Dowe +as a Unitarian chose to make me one! Also, I have seen my name attached +to verses I never wrote, and have been claimed both by Swedenborgians +and Freemasons as a brother, while Jesuitry has otherwise traduced me. +Artists also as well as authors are similarly misrepresented; my +son-in-law, Clayton Adams, for instance, tells me that his name has been +added to landscapes he never painted, and that they sold by auction at +high prices. Modern society should punish such cheateries severely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> + +<h4>HOSPITALITIES—FARNHAM, ETC.</h4> + + +<p>Amongst other memorabilia in no particular order, let me set down a few +visits, longer than a mere call, to sundry persons and places of note. +As these, for instance. Annually during many years I used to be a guest +from Thursday to Monday at Farnham Castle, when the good Bishop's +venison was in season. Of course, at such a table I constantly met +celebrities, but a mere list of their names would be tedious, and any +public record of private hospitalities I hold to be improper. No doubt +the kindly and courtly Bishop Sumner held high festival like an ancient +Baron, at such a rate (for those were golden times from renewed leases +for the see) as no successor with a less unlimited income could well +afford. The grandeur of Farnham Castle died with him: and my good friend +from boyhood, Bishop Harold Browne, must not be blamed if with less than +half his means he cannot compete with him.</p> + +<p>I was enabled to gratify Bishop Sumner in a way that touched his heart, +as thus. A cousin of mine, De Lara Tupper of Rio Janeiro, a rich +merchant prince there, sent me, as a present for my Albury greenhouse, +two large bales of orchids, which, however, were practically useless to +me, as I had not that expensive luxury, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> regular orchid-house. But I +knew that the dear Bishop had, and that orchid-growing was his special +hobby: accordingly all were transferred to Farnham, and I need not say +how gratefully accepted, as many roots proved to be most rare, and some +specimens quite unique. The good man gave me, <i>en révanche</i>, a splendid +Horace, in white vellum beautifully illustrated, and inscribed by him +"Gratiarum actio," now near me in a bookcase. The same South American +cousin sent me also a box of pines, oranges, and shaddocks just when +Garibaldi was our visitor at Princes Gate,—and I had the gratification +of giving many to him, not only because he mainly lived upon fruit, but +also because some of the said fruit came from the farm he and his first +wife, the well-beloved Anita, had once owned in South America. Later on, +Gladstone invited me to meet the hero at a reception in Carlton Gardens, +where I took note of Garibaldi, with his hostess on his arm, as he +walked in his simple red shirt, through a bowing lane of feathered +fashionables, whom he greeted right and left as if he had been always +used to such London high life. On that occasion I had the honour of +standing between Palmerston and Lord John Russell, who kindly conversed +with me, as also did the chief guest, specially thanking me for those +pines and oranges.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Parham</span>.</h4> + +<p>Another notable visit of some days, was one to Parham, the ancient—and +haunted—seat of my old friend both at Charterhouse and at Christ +Church, Robert Curzon, afterwards Lord de la Zouche, the great collector +of Armenian and other missals and manuscripts. With him (alas! no more +amongst us, and his son has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> dropped the "de la") I spent a joyful and +instructive time: out of doors we fished in the lake and rode about the +park among the antlered deer,—three heads and horns whereof are now in +our glass-porch entrance at Albury; indoors, there was the splendid +gallery of family armour from feudal days,—several suits of which +Curzon told me he had tried to wear on some occasion, but couldn't; most +were too small for him, though by no means a tall man; and those which +he could struggle into were too heavy. Then there was the interminable +companion gallery of full-length portraits, some of whom, probably the +wicked ancestors, <i>walked</i>! and I'm sure that when I slept in a +tapestried chamber under that gallery, I did hear footsteps—could it +be, horrible fancy! in procession? When I told Curzon this, he answered +that he had often heard them himself, from boyhood, but that familiarity +bred contempt: he said also, with a twinkle in his eye, that there <i>was</i> +a room which was usually set apart for new-married couples, as such +would probably not be so much startled as lonely maids and bachelors +might be, at the whispered conversations across the bed! Moreover, evil +wings (possibly owls or bats, looking after glow-worm candles) +occasionally flapped at the casements. But Curzon was a humorist as well +as inventive. Perhaps one secret as to ghosts at Parham lay in the fact +that in the old thick walls were concealed staircases and "priests' +chambers," which possibly might be of use, even now, to vagrant lovers +(like Mr. Pickwick at Ipswich), or perhaps sleep-walkers,—or +burglarious, thieves. Anyhow, I liked to lock my bedroom door there,—as +indeed I do generally elsewhere, if lock and key are in good agreement; +for once I couldn't get out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> without the surgical operation of a +carpenter, having too securely locked myself in. This shall not happen +twice, if I can help it. Curzon's great glory, however, was his library, +full of rarities: he showed me, amongst other MSS., his unique purple +parchments, with gold letter types, being (if I remember rightly) +Constantine's own copy of the New Testament; and, to pass by other +curios, some tiny Elzevirs uncut: imagine his horror when I volunteered +to cut these open for him!—their chief and priceless wonder being that +no eye has ever seen, nor ever can see, the insides of those virgin +pages! I know there is such a rabies as bibliomania,—and I have myself, +at Albury, a "breeches" Bible, which belonged to a maternal ancestor, a +Faulkner, of course valued beyond its worth as a readable volume; and I +might name many other instances; but to esteem a book chiefly because it +has never been cut open, did strike my ignorance as an abnormal fatuity. +Curzon was one of our Aristotelians, as before mentioned.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Other Visits</span>.</h4> + +<p>I am also mindful of a very pleasant week spent long ago at Shenstone's +Leasowes, a beautiful estate near Birmingham, now being dug up for coal +even as Hamilton is, where in those days some good friends of mine +resided, of whom (now departed like so many others) I have most kindly +recollections. The hostess, a charming and intelligent lady of the old +school, wearing her own white ringlets, used to have many talks with me +about Emanuel Swedenborg, a half-inspired genius whom she much favoured; +the host, a genial county magnate, did his best to enable me to catch +trout where Shen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>stone used to sing about them, and tried to interest me +in farm improvements: but my chief memory of those days is this. Whilst +I was there, a splendid testimonial in silver arrived in a fly from +Birmingham, well guarded by a couple of police against possible roughs, +the result of a zealous gathering from his political supporters; and +that Testimonial, "little Testy" as I called it, was a source of care +and dilemma to everybody; for care, it was immediately locked away for +fear of burglars; and as to dilemma, the white elephant was too tall for +the centre of a table, and too short to stand upon the floor. It seemed +closely to illustrate to my mind that wise text about a man's life and +his possessions. The cheerful spirit of the mansion and its inmates +seemed quite subdued by this unwelcome acquisition. When at the +Leasowes, I produced some suitable poems which were very kindly +received: here is one of them, hitherto unprinted.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>An Impromptu Sonnet.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Ticked of at the Leasowes, Aug. 24, 1857, as per order.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And so you claim a verse of me, good friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As from the inspiration of the place;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Well then,—from pastoral trash may taste defend<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Your pleasant Leasowes, and the human race!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Gentle Shepherd's day has had an end,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor even could melodious Shenstone here<br /></span> +<span class="i4">(False and inflated, we must all allow),<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Excite one glowing thought or pensive tear<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Unless indeed of wrath or pity now:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet dearly can I love these tumbling hills<br /></span> +<span class="i4">With roughly wooded winding glens between,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Set with clear trout pools link'd by gurgling rills<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And all so natural and calm and green,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That served to enervate your Poetaster<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But only strengthen now their Iron Master."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I will also record a hospitable sojourn in old days at Northwood Park,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +the splendid abode of Isle-of-Wight Ward (grandfather to my school and +college friend Ward of the Aristotle class and Oxonian persecution), +where I once spent a week in my father's time: and similarly a visit at +Lord Spencer's perfect villa near Ryde: and at other pleasant homes, +made to me frequently welcome, the chief being Wotton, the classic +mansion of one of my oldest friends.</p> + +<p>Also long ago,—see a former page,—I purposely dismissed with only a +word our lengthened visits in my father's day at Inveraray Castle with +the old Duke of Argyll, and Holkar Hall with Lord George Cavendish, as +private domesticities,—whilst a casual other few as at Ardgowan, +Rozelle, Herriard, Losely, and the like, gratefully on my memory, shall +be thus briefly recorded here: Ardgowan is the magnificent abode of my +friend Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart, after whose grandmother as my sponsor I +am named Farquhar; Rozelle, the hospitable mansion of Captain Hamilton, +where I sojourned many days, meeting the <i>élite</i> of Ayr, and among them +the aged niece of Burns in the poet's own country; Herriard House, my +old school-friend Frank Ellis's heritage under his name of Jervoise, and +Losely—"of the manuscripts," where I have often visited my late +excellent friend James More Molyneux.</p> + +<p>Of course, like everybody else who may be lifted a trifle above the +crowd, I have experienced, almost annually, the splendid hospitalities +of the Mansion House and most of the City Companies: may they long +continue, and not be spunged away by Radical meanness! all classes are +united and gratified thereby, for the poorest get the luxurious +leavings, and the feasts are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> paid for by benefactors long departed from +the scenes of their successful merchandise. All that seeming prodigality +and luxury have good uses. But I will mention (of course without the +hint of a name or place) one only instance of excessive splendour, quite +needless and to my mind vulgar. A great magnate (not a royalty, I need +hardly say) invited four guests to dine with his home party; the four +were my father and mother, my brother Dan and myself, humble guests +enough; and yet behind each of twelve chairs stood a gorgeous flunkey in +powder and bright livery, with my lord's gentleman superadded in +undertaker's evening trim, while the Earl himself wore his star and +garter! Of course too the buffet and the table were loaded, with +resplendent plate. That, scene of ostentation has been on the gray +matter of my brain ever since young manhood, and I relieve myself now of +the reminiscence for the first and last time. In another page I speak of +Prince Astor's pure gold service when I dined with him at New. York; and +I have grateful memory of the almost palatial splendour wherewith a rich +publisher entertained his guest at his castle under Arthur's Seat; but +in every case (and I might name others) my heart's aspiration has been, +"Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for +me." Mr. Vanderbilt was not happy with his millions; neither probably is +poor Jack without a shot in his locker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2> + +<h4>SOCIAL AND RURAL.</h4> + + +<p>In such a record of personals as this, it is fortunate both for the +author and his readers if he has never been one of those literary lions +who are merely histrionic creatures of society. It is a privilege not to +have to reproduce the common small-talk of ball-rooms and +garden-parties, nor to be obliged to make the most, after a +semi-libellous fashion, of after-dinner scandals, or gossip in the +smoking-room. Not having heard them he cannot well report racy +anecdotes, whereof sundry memoirs have been too full. In the happier +condition of a partial anchoritism I have escaped clubs, London seasons, +and country mansion gaieties; as a youth and to middle manhood a +stammerer, I would not willingly court the humiliations of chattering +society, and thereafter, up to to-day, a domestic country gentleman of +literary pursuits, I have avoided (as far as possible) fashionable +gatherings of every sort, social, theological, or political. Not that I +abjure—it is far otherwise—any kind of genial intercourse with my +fellows; a few friends are my delight, but I never would belong to a +club, though sometimes specially tempted by indulgence as to terms (more +than once having been offered a free and immediate entry), nor to any +society or charity that expected of me personal publicity or active +service,—albeit, once,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> and once only, I had to figure as a reluctant +chairman at Exeter Hall. Privacy has ever been my preference; whence it +will clearly be inferred how much I have had to sacrifice in the way of +self-denial when forced by circumstances to enact the "old man eloquent" +before assembled hundreds, sometimes thousands, as a public reader. +People who have made themselves acquainted with my "Proverbial +Philosophy" may remember that my Essay on Speaking contrasts the misery +of the man who cannot speak with the happiness of the emancipated +orator, and I have experienced them both; whilst it may be seen in what +I have written about silence and seclusion how cordially and perhaps +foolishly, as "wearing my heart on my sleeve," I have shown that I +greatly love to be alone, especially in what I am known to call "holy +silence;" in fact, as ill-nature may like to put it, I prefer my own +quiet company to that disturbed by the talk of other people. So much, +then, as to one cause for the scantiness in this self-memoir of expected +spicy anecdotes and perilous revelations. Not but that I could make +considerable mischief, and perhaps help my publisher in sales, if I +chose to make the most of the many celebrities, both American and +English, with whom I have had intercourse both at Albury and elsewhere. +My humble hospitalities and the constant welcome I have given to +strangers, have been like their author, proverbial; but that is no +reason why our converse, free and frank as private fellowship commands, +should be produced in print; naturally the host was ever generous, and +the guest—equally, of course—appreciative.</p> + +<p>Perhaps though, not quite always: and I am tempted here to say just one +unpleasant word about the only one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> of my many American guests, +hospitably, nay almost affectionately treated, who wrote home to his +wife too disparagingly of his entertainer, his son having afterwards had +the bad taste to publish those letters in his father's Life. One +comfort, however, is that in "The Memoirs of Nathaniel Hawthorne," that +not very amiable genius praises no one of his English hosts (except, +indeed, a perhaps too open-handed London one), and that he was not known +(any more than Fenimore Cooper, whom years ago I found a rude customer +in New York) for a superabundance of good nature. When at Albury, +Hawthorne seemed to us superlatively envious: of our old house for +having more than seven gables; of its owner for a seemingly affluent +independence, as well as authorial fame; even of his friends when driven +by him to visit beautiful and hospitable Wotton; and in every word and +gesture openly entering his republican and ascetic protest against the +aristocratic old country; even to protesting, when we drove by a new +weather-boarded cottage, "Ha, that's the sort of house I prefer to see; +it's like one of ours at home." That we did not take to each other is no +wonder. This, then, is my answer to the unkindly remarks against me in +print of one who has shown manifestly a flash of genius in "The Scarlet +Letter;" but, so far as I know, it was well-nigh a solitary one.</p> + +<p>One further curious illustration of an uncongenial guest is this: +Alexander Smith wrote a "Life Drama," full of sparkling poetic gems, +which at once made him popular, apparently with justice enough. I asked +him down to Albury, made much of him, praised warmly sundry <i>morceaux</i> +of his (which I had marked in my copy), and to my astonishment received +the brusque<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> reply, "O, you like those, do you? I shall alter them in +next edition:" as I found afterwards he did. He was a common-looking +man, with a rough manner, and a squint. As he seemed upset,—though why +I could not guess,—I tried in other ways to please him; as, by a ramble +in the woods and a drive in the waggonette: but all would not do,—his +day came to an end as gloomily as it began. Long after, I stumbled upon +the reason. I had then for the first time read Bailey's "Festus," and +found some passages therein very similar to Alexander's; thereafter, +other little bits from some other poets (I think Tennyson was one) +struck me. Little wonder, then, that I heard no more of Smith,—who +clearly had thought himself found out,—and so received my first +ignorance of his plagiaristic tendency as if I had known all about it: +and years after Aytoun had (as I was told) avenged justice by that +cleverest of spasmodic poetries, "Firmilian, by Percy Jones"—a +burlesque on Alexander Smith, and a book which the world has too +willingly let die. Let no one, however, after all this, fancy that I am +unaware of Alexander Smith's true merit. He very neatly fitted into his +mosaic word-pictures the titbits he had culled in his commonplace-book +out of many poets, and so utilised them. A self-made and self-taught +man, "elbow to elbow," as he told me, "with Jack, Tom, and Harry in a +workshop," as a designer of patterns, he had well and wisely made the +most of his scant opportunities of culture, and it is only a pity that +he did not allude to something of this in a preface.</p> + +<p>It is not for me to recall here much about the inevitable hospitalities +of an old country house, to which a not unkindly host often invited +English and foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> friends, whom something to do with authorship had +made celebrities. Do I not pleasantly remember the jolly haymaking, when +old Jerdan, calling out, "More hay, more hay!" covered Grace Greenwood +with a haycock overturned, and had greeted a sculptor guest +appropriately and wittily enough with "Here we are, Durham, all +mustered!" the "we" being besides others, Camilla Toulmin, George +Godwin, and Francis Bennoch? Do I not remember how much surprised we +were at the melodies whereof an old piano was capable when touched by +Otto Goldsmidt? Can I forget, also, how marvellously a young Canadian, +Joseph Macdougall, of Ottawa, extemporised on the same piano as only a +genius can (Mr. Assher was another), and sent me afterwards, as a +memory, a vast volume of American photographs, whereof he had +munificently prepaid the enormous sum of £6, 18s. for postage? And was +not our village stirred to its depths by the visit to Albury House of +two black gentlemen and a blue,—all in evening dress?</p> + +<p>It was President Roberts of Monrovia, attended by his secretary and +chief minister; for they came cordially to return thanks to one who had +helped a little in slave emancipation, under the influences of Elliott +Cresson, Dr. Hodgkin Garrison, and others,—and, moreover, had given a +gold medal for African literature, biennially to be competed for by +emancipated slaves;—whereof I have heard very little, since (by the +volunteered assistance of Mr. Taylor, the seal engraver) I gave it many +years ago: the medal was as large as a crown piece. President Benson, +also of Liberia, a magnificent ebon specimen of humanity, visited me +with his staff, not long before his lamented death—it was said, by +murder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> + +<p>Let me add now a word of kindly memory for some good friends long gone +to a better world, but once welcome guests at Albury. There was Benjamin +Nightingale, the enthusiastic antiquary; there was his <i>fidus Achates</i>, +Akerman, secretary to the Numismatic, whom I greatly pleased by enabling +him to catch a trout near my carriage gate; there was Chief Baron +Pollok, head of the Noviomagians: the eloquent Edwards Lester of +America, whose speech at a Literary Fund dinner to which I had treated +him was hailed by Hallam, Dickens, and others on the spot as <i>the</i> +speech of the Society: and the Warrens of Troy, N.Y., about whose casual +visit this singular thing happened. For the first and only time in life +I had had the strange luck to catch at Netley Pond three perch of nearly +a pound each, and a fine trout of about two: I little knew then the +final cause thereof: in those days we could not easily get fish in the +country, unless indeed we caught it: now my eminent Transatlantic +stranger friends came on a Friday, and proved to be Roman Catholics: +could any piscatorial luck have been more timely?</p> + +<p>When a few days after I told of my sport to a neighbour (it was Captain +Russell of the Cleveland family), a great angler, he, of course, without +imputation of my veracity, hinted that he wished I might have such luck +again, as he would then come and dine with me. I answered at once, "Come +to-morrow, and see what I may have caught." He did,—and I produced from +the same old mill-head a three-pound trout,—to his astonishment, as it +had been my own to have caught it. I have never had such luck before or +since, though always a zealous angler in an unprofessional way.</p> + +<p>Let me not forget here also the beautiful "Albury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> Waltz," composed in +my drawing-room by Miss Armstrong, and published—it must be twenty +years ago now—by Robert Cocks, New Burlington Street: wherein by +request I originated the idea of song words for the dancers. This +singing as you danced has been often done since, but I suppose no one +then thought of it but myself since King David. I need say little more +about Albury visitors:—for many years there were plenty of them,—but +if one put down a tenth part of what even the faithless memory of old +age still retains, there would be no end to such inexhaustible +recordings.</p> + +<p>And here is an Alburian anecdote which may amuse, as illustrative of the +mental calibre of some of those myriads of untutored rustics whom our +partisan governors have made politically equal with the wisest in the +land. Three young friends came to spend a day with us, and for fun +brought in their pockets the absurd noses popular at Epsom races. We +came upon some turf-diggers, and my visitors mounted their masks to +mystify them. The clodpoles looked scared and very quiet, till I went up +to one of them who knew me,—of course I was in my natural +physiognomy,—and I said to him, "My friend, these are foreigners:" and +the poor ignoramus staring at those portentous noses said seriously, +"Ees, I sees they be." Clearly he thought all "furriners" were so +featured.</p> + +<p>Another specimen of agricultural intelligence is this: A labourer in my +field one day said to me, "Master, please to tell me where Jerusalem is, +because me and my mates have been disputing about it, and I says as its +in Ireland, because the Romans goes there!" He meant the Roman +Catholics! and he might have heard also that St. John's Pat-mos was in +fact an Irish bog,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> Pat's-moss: many of our legislative constituency +being found to believe <i>that</i>.</p> + +<p>But not only is the common labourer thus dense: take these two instances +of country guests at my table. One whom I had asked to meet two +Americans told me of his disappointment at not finding them—red men! +And another (this time a provincial parson) wanted me to expostulate +with my friend Hatchard (afterwards Bishop of Mauritius) because he +meditated in his philanthropy giving a drinking fountain to Guildford. +"Only think, a drinking fountain! surely you cannot approve?" The poor +man supposed it was one of those pumping apparatuses for spirits +presided over by barmaids! It is manifest that the schoolmaster was not +so much abroad a few years ago as he has been since board schools have +arisen.</p> + +<p>Amongst other specialities of ancient Albury House, which has 1561 on a +weathercock and 1701 on a kitchen wing, is the same peculiarity which +Tennyson told me at Farringford vexes him in his own less ancient +dwelling,—and which Pindar of old declared to be the privilege of +poets. We are, and have been for generations, a very house-hive of bees: +the whole front of two gables has them under its oak floors and panelled +walls throughout,—and when guests sleep in certain rooms they have to +be forewarned that the groans at midnight are not those of perturbed +spirits, but the hum and bustle of multitudinous bees. We cannot drive +them away, nor destroy them utterly,—as often has been attempted; and +if we did, the worry would be only worsened, as in that case hornets +would come and succeed to the sweet heritage of bee-dom. When the +stuccoed front of our house was demolished, to show the oaken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> pattern +(but it had to be re-roughcast to keep out the weather), there were +pailsful of honey carried off by the labourers, of course not without +wounds and strife: but in ordinary times it is a strange fact that our +bees never sting their hosts; be careful only to remain quiet, and there +is no war between man and bee. Two years ago a great comb was built +outside an eaveboard, probably because there was no room for more comb +inside. It is curious that it should have survived two hard winters. Is +not all this apposite, as suited (let Pindar and Tennyson bear witness) +to a poet's home?</p> + +<p>In this zoological connection (for bees are zoa) let me record that +there is a legend of a fox having been killed in our drawing-room (on +the ground-floor with French windows) during some tenancy in my +absence,—only fancy the havoc of such a strife! but all had been +cleared up before our return. Also, it is memorable (and I saw it +myself) that a hard-pressed stag from Sir Gilbert Heathcote's hunt took +refuge in our harness-room,—to the extreme horror of a gardener's boy, +who thought it was a mad donkey,—and no wonder, for as those brave +barbarian sportsmen get the antlers sawn off for fear of wounds to +themselves or their nobler dogs, the poor scared creature with its +uncrowned head and loppity ears is very donkey-like.</p> + +<p>Let me give another like homely anecdote of past days.</p> + +<p>We are all now so wrapt in security as country dwellers, guarded by the +rural police everywhere, that the following ludicrous incident may seem +hardly worth a word; but in the good old days, when poor Jack was such a +highway brigand that my nurses feared to take the children off the +premises, and when burglars were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> not infrequent callers at remote +residences, what happened long ago, on a certain dark winter's night, at +Albury, may amuse. Long after all had gone to bed, we heard with +trepidation stealthy steps crunching the snow round the house, and +<i>something</i> that now and then touched the ground-floor doors and +windows, as if quietly trying to get in: at last <i>it</i> fumbled at the +ancient hanging handle of the outside kitchen-door! Now was the time for +Paterfamilias to show his pluck, in the universal scare; so, armed +<i>cap-a-pied</i>, with candles held in the rear by the terrified household, +he valorously drew the bolts and flung open the heavy oaken door,—to +greet—his children's donkey, escaped somehow from its stable, and +trying to get indoors that cold night for warmth. Laugh as we might, and +as you may, the test of courage was all the same; and if this donkey +story is pounced upon by some critic or comic as a weak link in my chain +of autobiography, I only hope he will behave as bravely if a real +ruffian tries his doors and windows by night; by no means an improbable +hypothesis in these days of communistic radicalism.</p> + +<p>The old house itself may deserve a word. It came to me as a—shall I +say?—matrimony, from my mother; if patrimony means from a father, why +not matrimony from a mother? her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, having +bought it in 1780. He was a remarkable man in his way and before his +age; a good landscape painter (as Pilkington avouches), a collector of +pictures and curiosities,—mostly sold by executors at his death, aged +eighty-nine, though a full gallery remains at Albury; a carver too, and +a constructor of cabinets,—whereof two fine specimens (inlaid with +brecciated jaspers, and made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> of ebony and cedar from his own +turning-lathe) decorate our large drawing-room; and the oldest folk in +our village still remember the good old gentleman who always had +gingerbread in his pockets for them as children, and who was known by +them as the "man mushroom," seeing he was the first who ever had an +umbrella in the place! There was, however, another and a better reason +for this name, inasmuch as he built for himself an outer painting-room +on a hilltop near which he called Mushroom Hall, because it was just +like one (as a picture in our drawing-room testifies), being a circular +turret surmounted by a flat broad dome, with overshadowing eaves all +round. This strange summer-house has long vanished.</p> + +<p>Anthony came of a good old stock paternally, as the civic archives of +Preston, in Lancashire, testify; and his mother was Ann Blackburne, of +Marrick Abbey, Yorkshire,—the title-deeds whereof, old slip parchments +and maps from Henry II. to Henry VIII., I found in a chest at Albury, +and years after transmitted them to Lord Beaumont, the present owner; +albeit, as a boy, I had been allowed to cut off the seals and paste them +in a copy-book! All these deeds, and the history thereof, I had printed +in Nichols's Antiquariana.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The prominent feature of our village, so far as religion is concerned, +has for nearly fifty years been the fact of its being the headquarters +of the party originated by Edward Irving,—a full history whereof, +impartially and ably written by Mr. Miller of Bicester (whose +hospitality I have enjoyed for some days at Kineton), will be found at +Kegan Paul's, if any wish to read it. I have always lived on kindly +terms with my neighbours, though not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> quite of their faith; excellent +are many of them, and I am glad to number such among my friends, +specially as on neither side we meddle with each other's peculiar +opinions. I have known nearly all their twelve apostles, men of mark and +learning (especially John Tudor, a great Hebraist, and who was skilled +even in Sanscrit and the arrow-headed characters), and eleven of them +are among the dead, one only surviving in a vigorous old age to meet +(may it be so) the Lord at His coming.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2> + +<h4>AMERICAN BALLADS.</h4> + + +<p>My American Ballads, perhaps after "Proverbial Philosophy," the chief +cause of my Transatlantic popularities, had their origin at Albury. The +first of these and the most famous, as it induced several friendly +replies from American poets, was one whereof this below is the first +stanza. I wrote it in 1850, and read it after dinner to four visitors +from over the Atlantic to their great delectation, and of course they +sent MS. copies all over the States. It begins—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>To Brother Jonathan.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ho! brother, I'm a Britisher,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A chip of heart of oak,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wouldn't warp or swerve or stir<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From what I thought or spoke;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you—a blunt and honest man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Straightforward, kind, and true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I tell you, brother Jonathan,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That you're a Briton too!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I would copy more here, but as the whole ballad (equally with the two +just following) is printed in my Miscellaneous Poems and still extant at +Paternoster Square, I refer my reader thereto if he wants more of it. +The next of note was one headed "Ye Thirty Noble Nations," and is +remarkable for this strange fact, viz., that I composed about the half +of those eighteen eight-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>line stanzas in a semi-slumber. I was as I +thought asleep, but I got out of bed and pencilled the ballad (or most +of it, for I added and amended afterwards) straight off, and went to bed +again, of course to sleep profoundly; when I got up next morning and +found the MS. on my table, it seemed like a dream, but it wasn't. Those +who are curious may look out this piece of "<i>quasi</i> inspiration" in that +poem-book aforesaid. But here is the opening verse for those who cannot +get the volume in bulk:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ye thirty noble Nations<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Confederate in one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That keep your starry stations<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Around the Western sun,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have a glorious mission,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And must obey the call,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A claim!—and a petition!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To set before you all."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The claim being love for Mother Britain; the petition for freedom to the +slave. It was published in 1851.</p> + +<p>A third is chiefly noticeable for this. America had since my last +address to her as "Thirty Nations" added three more States; and I was +challenged to include them: which I did as thus; here are three of the +Stanzas in proof:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Giant aggregate of Nations,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Glorious Whole of glorious Parts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unto endless generations<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Live United, hands and hearts!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be it storm or summer weather,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Peaceful calm, or battle jar,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand in beauteous strength together,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sister States, as Now ye are!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Charmed with your commingled beauty<br /></span> +<span class="i2">England sends the signal round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Every man must do his duty'<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To redeem from bonds the bound!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then indeed your banner's brightness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shining clear from every star<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall proclaim your joint uprightness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sister States, as Now ye are!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So a peerless constellation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May those stars together blaze!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Three and ten-times threefold Nation<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Go ahead in power and praise!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the many-breasted goddess<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Throned on her Ephesian car,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be—one heart in many bodies,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sister States, as Now ye are!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There are also several other like balladisms, and sundry sonnets, all of +which I had from time to time to greet my American audiences withal. And +thus before I paid my visits over there, the land was salted with ore +and the water enriched with ground-bait, so that when the poetaster +appeared he was welcomed by every class as a promoter of International +Kindliness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2> + +<h4>AMERICAN VISITS.</h4> + + +<p>A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I +sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where +my wife and daughters arranged them and kept them safely, till on my +return after three months travel I pasted them duly into this big book. +If I were to record a tithe of the myriad memorabilia there entered, the +present volume now in progress would not afford space even for a tithe +of that: and after all, the result would only appear as a record of +numerous private hospitalities (which I object to making public), of +sundry well-appreciated kindnesses, compliments, and tokens of honour +from stranger friends in many cities, and the numerous incidents that a +tourist visitor ordinarily experiences; most of which, although +paragraphed in a gossiping fashion through hundreds of the 3000 American +papers, are not worth recording here. In fact, I look at this enormous +volume with despair,—the more so that there is its other equally bulky +brother about my second visit,—and so intend to give only some samples +of both. The world is too full of books, and does not call out for +another American Journal. The main social interest of my two visits +consisted in the contrast shown between the one in 1851 and that in +1876, just a quarter of a century after; between in fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> the extreme +drinking habits of one generation and the extreme temperance of another: +mainly due, amongst other causes, to the overflowing prosperities of the +middle of this century and the comparative adversities of its declining +years. "Jeshurun once waxed fat, and kicked,"—but since then he has +become one of the "lean kine:" wines and spirits were formerly in +abundance as well as hard dollars, but have now been replaced by the +cheaper water and discredited paper. Moreover, such shrewd and caustic +writers as the Trollopes and Dixon and Charles Dickens have done great +good service to their sensible and sensitive American brothers,—who, +far from resenting strictures which for the moment stung, took the best +advantage of their utterance in self-improvement. My first visit was +hospitably redolent of all manner of seductive drinks,—wherein, +however, I was (as they thought) too temperate; my second was as +hospitably plentiful so far as eating went, but iced water (wherein I +was temperate too) appeared solitarily for the universal beverage: +though even in the most teetotal homes this English guest was always +generously allowed his port or Madeira or even his whisky if he wished +it. Temperance was a fashion, a <i>furore</i>, on my second visit, as its +opposite had been on my first: and on each occasion, I persisted in a +middle course, the golden mean,—which I know to be proverbially a +wisdom though not at present universally so accepted.</p> + +<p>It is hopeless for me to look through the multitudinous large quarto +pages of my first diary and its letters, comments, paragraphs, &c.; they +are only too full of compliments and kindnesses from friends in many +instances passed away: and I will simply record two or three of the more +public hospitalities which greeted me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p> + +<p>One of these was a grand dinner with the Maryland Historical Society at +Baltimore, May 13, 1851, my late friend Mr. Kennedy in the chair as +president, while Sir Henry Bulwer and myself supported him right and +left, some hundreds of other guests also being present. Of course all +was very well done, luxuriously and magnificently; but perhaps the best +thing I can do (if my reader's patience and my present tired penmanship +will approve it) is to extract from a newspaper, the <i>Baltimore Clipper</i> +of the above date, a <i>précis</i> of my speech on the occasion. Some +distinguished gentleman having proposed my health,—"This brought to his +feet Mr. Tupper, who, having expressed his thanks in an appropriate +manner, and acknowledged his superior gratitude to the Author of all +good, alluded to that international loving-kindness which he avowed to +be one main errand of his life; and he very happily brought in Horace's +prophetical description of England and America in their relation of +mother and child, 'O matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior.' He followed by +relating some striking incidents of the good feeling which pervades the +old country in favour of her illustrious offspring. One we cannot fail +to give was that the Royal Naval School at Greenwich had inserted his +well-known ballad 'To Brother Jonathan' in a collection published for +the use of the Royal Navy. The speaker then paid an eloquent compliment +to the literature of America—her poets, statesmen, historians, and +divines. He rejoiced that 'Insular America and Continental England' were +so intimately and inseparably intermingled in the authorial productions +of the human mind, as well as bound together by the strongest ties of +nature and religion, of lineage, laws, and language. Adverting to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> +wise piety of such associations as the one before him, he exhorted to +keep together the records of the past, that they may sanctify the +present and be an encouragement to good and a warning against evil for +the future. He commented severely upon the vandal act of the British +troops under General Ross in burning the national archives at +Washington. In this connection he introduced the beautiful lines from +Milton:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The great Emathian conqueror bid spare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Went to the ground.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In conclusion, Mr. Tupper related an interesting fact, which in his mind +suggested what should be to Americans a pleasing idea—possibly a +discovery—as to the origin of the national flag. On making a pilgrimage +just lately to Mount Vernon, he was forcibly struck by the circumstance +that the ancient family coat-of-arms of the illustrious Washington +consisted of three stars in the upper portion of the shield, and three +stripes below; the crest represented an eagle's head, and the motto was +singularly appropriate to American history, 'Exitus acta probat.' Mr. +Tupper said he could not but consider this a most interesting +coincidence. He thought the world might well congratulate America upon +being the Geographical Apotheosis of that great unspotted character, +who, while he yet lived, was prospectively her typical impersonation. +The three stars by a more than tenfold increase have expanded into +thirty-three; the glorious Issue has abundantly vindicated every +antecedent fact; and your whole emergent eagle, fully plumed, is now +long risen from its eyrie and soars sublimely to the sun in heaven." I +may venture as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> end to all this to quote a bit from my home letter. +"At 6 o'clock, and thereafter till 12, I was the honoured guest at the +enclosed splendid banquet. Our English ambassador sat on one side of the +chairman and I on the other; the newspaper will save me all the trouble +of a long account; but it was altogether one of the best triumphs I have +ever achieved: see the papers. My dinner was very light, terrapin soup, +<i>paté de foie gras aux truffes</i>, and sweetbread: with a deluge of iced +water, and very little wine. My two speeches raised whirlwinds of +applause, and took the company by storm. It was a most important +opportunity for me, and, by God's help, I met it manfully. All the +principal people of Maryland were there, besides our own minister; with +Lady Bulwer in a side room and that nice young fellow Lytton; and there +were many other distinguished strangers. You should have heard the +shouts and cheers which greeted the points of my speech, and the after +congratulations crowded about me. I begin to feel that if I had had +common chances I should have been an orator. When I kindle up, my +steam-horse goes off, and carries all his audience with him. While I was +speaking, the people moved up <i>en masse</i>, and they gave me three cheers +upstanding when I had done."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Another memorable event was a grand dinner given to Washington Irving +and myself, as chief guests amongst others, by Prince Astor at his +palatial residence in New York. As for the profusion of gold plate, +glittering glass, innumerable yellow wax-candles in ormolu chandeliers, +and general exhibition of splendid and luxurious extravagance, and all +manner of costly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> wines and rarest gourmandise, I never have seen its +like before or since; and more than this (if I may state the fact +without much imputation of vaingloriousness), the intellectual treat +was, to my <i>amour propre</i> at least, of a still more exquisite character, +when our host protested to his company in a generous and genial speech +that, if he could make the exchange, he would give all his wealth for +half the literary glory of Washington Irving and Martin Tupper! We +whispered to each other we heartily wished he could. I strangely missed +visiting Irving at his own home, though urgently invited to it; but +somehow other pressing engagements hindered, and so it was not to be.</p> + +<p>On the same day with the Astorian dinner, Mr. Davis, a man of high +social position, had urged me to dine with him, but I could not come as +engaged till the evening. Now he, a local poet himself, had asked me in +divers stanzas of fair rhyme; and so, not willing either to beat him in +versification or to let him beat me, I made this epigrammatic reply in +dog-Latin, which was taken to be rather 'cute:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"Certes, amice Davis,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ibo quocunque mavis,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sed princeps Astor primo<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Me rapuit ad prandium;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cum me relinquit, imo<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In me videbis handyum."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This skit was well appreciated. I met at his house divers celebrities, +as indeed I did at many other splendid mansions, especially at the +Mayor's, Mr. Kingsland: I hear he is the third personage in rank in the +United States, and he lives with the grandeur of our London Lord Mayor. +I went with him on the 22d of March<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> 1851 to one of the most magnificent +affairs I ever attended. Here is an extract from my home-letter journal +of same date:—</p> + +<p>"Mr. Kingsland, the Mayor, came early to invite me to a grand day, being +the inauguration of the Croton Waterworks. Went off with him at 10 from +the City Hall in a carriage and four followed by forty new omnibuses and +four, some with six horses, and caparisoned with coloured feathers and +little flags, besides a number of private carriages; a gay procession, +nearly a mile long, containing all the legislature and magnates of New +York State and of the city—several hundreds." They visited in turn +divers public institutions, and at most of them I had to speak or to +recite my ballads, especially at a Blind Asylum, where, after an address +from a blind lady (the name was Crosby), "at the request of the Governor +of the State and the Mayor, I answered on the spur of the moment in a +speech and a stave that took the room by storm," &c. &c. And so on for +other institutions, and to the opening of the Croton Aqueduct. But there +is no end to this sort of vainglorious recording. As Willis says in his +<i>Home Journal</i> at the time, "Mr. Tupper is among us, feeling his way +through the wilderness of his laurels, and realising his share of +Emerson's 'banyan' similitude,—the roots that have passed under the sea +and come up on this side of the Atlantic rather smothering him with +their thriftiness in republican soil." I suppose by thriftiness he meant +thrivingness.</p> + +<p>My first acquaintance with N. P. Willis arose in this, way. He had (as I +have mentioned before) been in the habit of quoting month after month in +his own paper passages from my "Proverbial Philosophy," believing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> that +book to be an obscure survival of the Shakespearean era, and that its +author had been dead some three centuries. When he came to town, I +called upon him at his lodging near Golden Square, walking in plainly +"<i>sans tambour et trompette</i>" but simply announcing the then +young-looking author as his old Proverbialist! I never saw a man look so +astonished in my life; he turned pale, and vowed that he wouldn't +believe that this youth could be his long-departed prophet; however, I +soon convinced him that I was myself, and carried him off to dine in +Burlington Street. Afterwards we improved into a friendship till he went +the way of all flesh in Heaven's good time.</p> + +<p>Perhaps another notable matter to record is that President Fillmore +invited me to meet his Cabinet at dinner in the White House, and that I +there "met and conversed immensely with Daniel Webster, a colossal +unhappy beetle-browed dark-angel-looking sort of man, with a depth for +good and evil in his eye unfathomable; also with Home Secretary Corwen, +a coarse but clever man, who had been a waggon-driver; and with Graham, +Secretary of the Navy, and with Conrad, Secretary at War, both gentlemen +and having lofty foreheads; and with many more, including above all the +excellent President," &c. &c. It was no small honour to meet such men on +equal terms.</p> + +<p>If I allowed myself to quote more from my first visit to America, it +could only amount to variations of the same theme,—the great kindness +of all around me to one, however humble, who had shown himself their +friend both by tongue and pen. My books and my ballads had made the way +to their affections, and so the author thereof reaped their love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p> + +<p>A little before my departure on this first visit this notable matter +happened, and I will relate it in an extract from my last letter +homeward.</p> + +<p>"The happy thought occurred to me to call on Barnum, as I had brought +him a parcel from Brettell; and, through him, to leave a card of respect +for Jenny Lind. Barnum received me most graciously, and favoured me with +two tickets for Jenny's concert to-night, whereof more anon. Meanwhile I +thought of sending to Jenny, through Barnum, a pretty little copy of +'Proverbial Philosophy,' with a pretty little note,—whereof also more +anon. Called on Edwards by good providence, and found that J. C. Richmond +had misled me—he isn't to be married till next week. A nice visit to +Major Kingsland and his good wife:—I find that my oratory has gone +everywhere, and has made quite a sensation. Think of my stammering +tongue having achieved such triumphs.—I do hope you get the papers I +send. A card at Lester's, Union Hotel, as to Mary M. Chase.—Dined.—A +full feast of reason with George Copway, the Redman chief, a gentleman, +an author, and a right good fellow. Meeting also Gordon Bennett, the +great New York Heraldist, who sat next me at dinner, when we had plenty +of pleasant talk together; also Squier, the celebrated American Layard, +who has discovered so much of Indian archæology, a small, good-looking, +mustachioed, energetic man: also Tuckerman, the amiable poet: also +Willis, a good sort of man, just now much calumniated for having shown +up English society in his books,—but a kindly and a clever every way. +Mrs. Willis called and carried off Willis, and I took Tuckerman under my +wing to the monster concert at Castle Garden. The immense circular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> +building, full of heads (it holds 8000!) and lighted by 'cressets' of +gas, put me in mind of Martin's illustration of Satan's Throne in +Milton! The concert, as per programme, was a cold and dull affair +enough,—though Lind did terrible heights and depths in the Italian +execution line,—but after the concert came this beautiful episode. +Barnum hunted me out from the two or three acres of faces,—because the +fair and melodious Jenny had expressed to him an urgent wish to see me. +When I got to her boudoir, where Barnum introduced me, I really thought +she would have cried outright,—as feeling herself a stranger in a +foreign land, and in the presence of an old unseen book-friend; for it +seems,—as she told me in beautiful slightly broken English,—that my +poor dear 'Proverbial Philosophy,'—which I never thought she had seen +till I gave it to her,—has been to her 'such a comfort, such a comfort, +many days;' and she was 'so glad, so ver glad,' to see me,—and she +looked so unhappy,—though the immense hall was still echoing with those +tumults of applause,—and she clasped my hand so often, and would hardly +let it go, and made me sit and talk with her, for I was 'her friend,' +and really seemed like a child clinging to its elder brother. I was +quite sorry to leave her,—and when, putting aside all idle musical +compliments, I tried to cheer her by the thought,—how nobly and +generously for many good purposes she was using the melodious gift of +God to her, poor Jenny only looked up devoutly, and shook her head, and +sighed, and seemed unhappy. However, it was time to go, so with another +hearty shake-hands, and 'my love to <i>dear</i> England,' Jenny Lind and I +took leave. This testimony as to my book's good use for comfort,—she +will 'read more now she sees me,'—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>is very pleasing,—it is much to do +poor Jenny good, who does good to so many others. I think I've forgotten +to say that great old Webster, the Secretary of State, avows that he +'always after hard work refreshes his mind' with that book: and—I might +fill volumes with the same sort of thing. God has blessed my writings to +millions of the human race! And from prince to peasant good has been +done through this hand, incalculable.—God alone be praised."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2> + +<h4>SECOND AMERICAN VISIT.</h4> + + +<p>After the long interval of five-and-twenty years, filled up with many +more such volumes and fly-leaves, I called again by pressing invitation +on my American constituency, and found them as warm and generous and +hospitable as before. This time I was six months a guest among +them,—literally so, for I found myself passed on from home to home, and +almost never took my bed at an hotel. The chief feature of this visit +was that I posed everywhere as a public "reader from my own works," and +met with generally good success, in spite of the terrific winter weather +manfully encountered half the time. Everybody knows what extremities of +cold are endured both in the North-Eastern States and in Canada. At +Baltimore I have seen the snow piled almost man-high on each side of the +middle lane dug for the tramway,—in New York men skated to their +offices; at Ottawa the thermometer was 25° below zero, and at Montreal +it was everywhere deep snow (glorious for sleighing), icicles yard long +outside the windows,—and of course smaller audiences to a frozen-up +lecturer. Yet many came nevertheless, and I am pleased to remember among +them good Bishop Oxenden and his family. In spite, then, of positively +Arctic influences, as I had to do it, I did it bravely; and sent home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> +needful dollars, and came back with a pocket full too. All this is +surely part of an author's lifework; so I am writing appositely.</p> + +<p>Among notabilia of this second visit, which was crowded like the former +with abundance of private hospitality and of public honours,—I may +record these briefly. Dr. Talmage, my kind and liberal host for two +lengthened visits, gave a grand reception on October 26, 1876, to +William Cullen Bryant and myself, which was attended by Peter Cooper, +Judges Neilson and Reynolds, Mayor Schroeder, Professors Crittenden and +Eaton, with some hundred more; the chief features of the evening being +Bryant's poetical recitations and mine. On another occasion I read my +Proverbial Essay on Immortality at the Tabernacle before 7000 people at +Dr. Talmage's special request: and of course at Chickering Hall, the +Brooklyn Theatre, and other places I had to give Readings to large +audiences. The Lotos Club and other genial hosts gave me complimentary +dinners. Mr. Hulbert, the well-known editor, made a <i>partie carrée</i> +(only four of us to consume some of the rarest delicacies) for Lord +Rosebery, Mr. Barnum and myself: and in fact my journal overflows with +elaborate hospitalities. It was the Centennial Year, and at Philadelphia +I found abundant welcome, especially as an inmate of the genial homes of +Mr. Roberts, the eminent Dr. Levis, the excellent Mrs. Fisher, and of +Mr. Pettit, the clever artist who painted my portrait complimentarily. +Of course I did the Great Exhibition thoroughly, and was quite surprised +at its splendour and extent; I think that the thirty-three States were +represented by no fewer than 180 ornamental edifices full of special +products and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> treasures. At Niagara I stayed twice for a week each, with +the kindest of hosts, the Rev. Mr. Fessenden and his good wife, and saw +the great cataract in all the magnificence of winter as well as autumn. +Also at the pleasant homes, of Mr. Lister in Hamilton, at Toronto, +Kingston, and above all Montreal, my new but old book friends were full +of liberal greetings, and everywhere I had to exhibit myself as a Reader +from my own works; a specialty not common, as combining both author and +orator. At Toronto, the ministers, Mr.—now Sir John—Macdonald, and +Dr.—now Sir Charles—Tupper were my principal welcomers; and I dined +then with the Cabinet, as in 1851 I had with Lord Elgin's in (I think) +the same hall. At Ottawa I found myself full of friends, and visited +Lord Dufferin. At Montreal the wealthy merchant, Mr. Mackay of Kildonan +(since departed and gone up higher), was my generous host: and there in +one of the hardest winters known I often made acquaintance with the +splendid gallop of his sleighs, all furs and colour and delightful +excitement: on one occasion having nearly had nose and ears frost-bitten +till my neighbour with his fur gloves and snow rubbed life into them +again. With Dr. Dawson of M'Gill University I had plenty of geological +talk, especially about the new found Eozoa of the St. Lawrence +stratum,—and with his clever son, and my cousin, Professor Selwyn. +Thereafter I went south, the welcome guest of other cousins, the +Vaughan-Tuppers of Brooklyn, among my most hospitable friends over +there: and we routed out all about our family in America, as recorded +for ten generations in Freeman's "History of Massachusetts." And I +feasted at Mr. Trocke's on trout from "Tupper Lake" in the +Adirondacks,—the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> coming from an ancestor, not as after me, though +sometimes thought so; and I met with many points both of family and of +authorial interest. Then I was entertained by the New England Society, +which, amongst abounding luxuries, still produces as a characteristic +dish the frugal pork and beans of Puritan times. And the Century and +other Clubs made me free of them. And of course Longfellow, Bryant, +Fields, Biglow, O. W. Holmes, and many others, opened their houses and +hearts to me. And I met and dined in company with General Grant and all +sorts of other celebrities,—and so did all I hoped to do. Going south, +Brantz Mayer at Baltimore, my cousin the Rev. Dr. Tupper (Bishop of the +Baptists), and many others are memorable. Stay, I will give a casual +extract from my home-letter, No. 39, of my second visit, giving several +names.</p> + +<p>"Jan. 18, 1877, evening. Took an oyster tea at Brantz Mayer's, and read +to a party several things by request, especially as to the souls of +animals. Judge Bond called for me there in his carriage, and took me (as +invited by the President) to a great assemblage of Baltimore magnates +(inaugurating the John Hopkins University), where I had casually quite +an ovation, meeting literally hundreds of friends: I cannot pretend to +remember many names, but these will remind me of others: General +McClellan, General Ellicott (cousin to our Bishop), Carroll, the State +Governor, no end of professors, among them Sylvester, who knew my +brother Arthur at the Athenæum, plenty of judges, presidents of +institutions, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and many fine figure-heads +of elderly magnates; each and all knew me as an early book friend, and I +had quite to hold a court for two hours, receiving each as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> introduced, +and having to say something pretty to him. Mr. Weld (of Lulworth), +married to a rich Baltimorean, takes to me monstrously, and with Mr. +President Gilman is going to manage a Reading here for me on my return +from the South. He took me after the great event to the Maryland Club +(making me a member for a month), and we had a glass of wine together, +meeting again several of the bigwigs migrated like ourselves for +something better than iced-water! for the odd thing is that, although +the eating luxuries were profuse at this grand banquet,—whole salmons, +bolsters of truffled turkey, oysters in every form, and plenty of +terrapines, canvas-back ducks, and other costly comestibles,—not a drop +of anything but water (except indeed tea and coffee) was to be had, the +excuse being that at least some of the party would be sure to take too +much; so all are mulcted for a few as usual." But my American journals +are full of that sort of thing, and this honest extract may serve as a +sample. I never guessed how crowded up by popularities a poor author may +be till I had crossed the Atlantic and reaped the kindness of Greater +Britain.</p> + +<p>After all this, I went down South,—where I have seen brilliant +humming-birds flying about, some two or three days after I had waded +through deep snow northwards; my chief host, and a right worthy one, +being a good cousin, S. Y. Tupper, President of the Chamber of Commerce +at Charleston, S.C. With him and his I had what is called over there a +good time, and indited several poetical pieces under his hospitable +roof, in particular "Temperance" (see a former page). Also I wrote there +another stave of mine which caused great discussion in the States, +because I, reputed a Liberian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> and Emancipator, was supposed to have +recanted and turned to be South instead of North; but I was only just +and true, according to my lights. Here is the peccant stave, only to be +found in Charleston and other American papers of February 1877, +therefore will I give it here:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>To the South</i>.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The world has misjudged you, mistrusted, maligned you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And should be quick to make honest amends;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let me then speak of you just as I find you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Humbly and heartily, cousins and friends!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let us remember your wrongs and your trials,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Slander'd and plunder'd and crush'd to the dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Draining adversity's bitterest vials,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Patient in courage and strong in good trust.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You fought for Liberty, rather than Slavery!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Well might you wish to be quit of that ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But you were sold by political knavery,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Meshed in diplomacy's spider-like skill:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you rejoice to see Slavery banished,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">While the free servant works well as before,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Confident, though many fortunes have vanished,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soon to recover all—rich as before!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Doubtless, there had been some hardships and cruelties,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cases exceptional, evil and rare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to tell truth—and truly <i>the</i> jewel 'tis—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Kindliness ruled, as a rule, everywhere!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Servants, if slaves, were your wealth and inheritance,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Born with your children, and grown on your ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And it was quite as much interest as merit hence<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Still to make friends of dependents all round.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes, it is slander to say you oppressed them;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Does a man squander the price of his pelf?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was it not often that he who possessed them<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rather was owned by his servants himself?<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Caring for all, as in health so in sicknesses,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He was their father, their patriarch chief;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Age's infirmities, infancy's weaknesses<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leaning on him for repose and relief.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When you went forth in your pluck and your bravery,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Selling for freedom both fortunes and lives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where was that prophesied outburst of slavery<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wreaking revenge on your children and wives?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nowhere! you left all to servile safe keeping,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And this was faithful and true to your trust;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Master and servant thus mutually reaping<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Double reward of the good and the just?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Generous Southerners! I who address you<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shared with too many belief in your sins;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I recant it,—thus, let me confess you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Knowledge is victor and every way wins:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For I have seen, I have heard, and am sure of it,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You have been slandered and suffering long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Paying all Slavery's cost, and the cure of it,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the great world shall repent of its wrong."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I need not say what a riot that honest bit of verse raised among the +enthusiasts on both sides. I spoke from what I saw, and soon had reason +to corroborate my judgment: for I next paid a visit on my old Brook +Green school-friend, Middleton, at his burnt and ruined mansion near +Summerville: once a wealthy and benevolent patriarch, surrounded by a +negro population who adored him, all being children of the soil, and not +one slave having been sold by him or his ancestors for 200 years. +According to him, that violent emancipation was ruin all round: in his +own case a great farm of happy dependants was destroyed, the inhabitants +all dead through disease and starvation, a vast estate once well tilled +reverted to marsh and jungle, and himself and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> reduced to utter +poverty,—all mainly because Mrs. Beecher Stowe had exaggerated isolated +facts as if they were general, and because North and South quarrelled +about politics and protection. Mrs. Stowe, I hear, has learnt wisdom, as +I did,—and now like me does justice to both sides. There is no end to +extracts from my journals, if I choose to make them; but I think I will +transcribe four stanzas which I gave to Williams Middleton in February +1877, on my departure, as they bring together past and present:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ancient schoolmate at Brook Green<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Half a century ago<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Nay, the years that roll between<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Count some fifty-eight or so),—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, the scenes 'twixt Now and Then,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life in all its grief and joys,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meeting Now as aged men<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Since the Then that saw us boys!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There's a charm, a magic strange,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thus to recognise once more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Changeless in the midst of change<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mind and spirit as of yore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even face and form discerned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Easily and greeted well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While our hearts together burned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">At school-tales we had to tell.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Mostly dead, forgotten, gone,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Few old Railtonites of fame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Here and there we noted one),<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet we find ourselves the same!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sons of either hemisphere<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We can never stand apart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With to me Columbia dear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And my England in your heart.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You, of good old English stock,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I—some kindred of mine own<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pound themselves on Plymouth Rock,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Five times fifty years agone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, I come at sixty-six,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All across the Atlantic main,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With my kith and kin to mix,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And to greet you once again!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I may here record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an +alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps +luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from +bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful +scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I +noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed +the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing some large +dragon's teeth, and with them sundry flint arrow-heads, suggestive of +man's antiquity; that I lamented over the desolation of my friend's +mansion and estate, and in particular to have seen how outrageously the +Federals had destroyed his family-mausoleum, scattering the sacred +relics of his ancestors all round and about. This was simply because he +had been a Confederate magnate, and had owned patriarchally a multitude +of slaves, born on the spot through two centuries. He and his kind +brother, the Admiral,—my friendly host at Washington,—have joined the +majority elsewhere; but I heard from him and others down South the truth +about American slavery.</p> + +<p>For remainder rapid notice. Paul Hayne the poet is remembered well; and +the fine old great-grandmother with eighty-six descendants of my name; +and thereafter came the inauguration of President Hayes, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> account +whereof I wrote to the English papers; and hospitalities at the White +House, and records of plenty more Readings and receptions; and all about +Edgar Poe at Baltimore, and my acquaintance with Henry Ward Beecher, and +my final New York hospitalities, and my pamphlet "America Revisited," +written on board the return steamer the <i>Batavia</i>,—and so an end +hurriedly.</p> + +<p>This was my last farewell to my million friends, published in Bryant's +paper;—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Valete!</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A last Farewell—O many friends!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I leave your love with saddened heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so my grateful spirit sends<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This answering love before we part:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I thank you tenderly each one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I praise your goodness, dear to tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, well-remembered when I'm gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Alike will yearn on you as well.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A last Farewell—O my few foes!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I fear'd you not, by mouth or pen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to the battle bravely rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A man to fight his fight with men:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though the gauntlet I have run<br /></span> +<span class="i2">You shall not say he fail'd or fell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truly recording when I'm gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He fought and won his victories well.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My last Farewell—O brothers both!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No foes at all, but friends all round;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Albeit now homeward, little loth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To dear old England I am bound—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accept this short and simple prayer<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(A cheerful verse, no parting knell),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To every one and everywhere<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My thankful blessing, and Farewell!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2> + +<h4>ENGLISH AND SCOTCH READINGS.</h4> + + +<p>I have another vast volume before me, recounting my English and Scotch +Reading Tours, with full details of innumerable home kindnesses and +hospitalities, from Ventnor in the South to Peterhead in the North, +which I need not particularise. I gave twenty-one "Readings from my own +Works" southward, in a dozen towns with a regular <i>entrepreneur</i>, who +was my <i>avant courier</i> everywhere, making all arrangements, placarding, +advertising, hiring halls, engaging reporters, and the like; when all +was ready, I used to come forward, as the General does at a review,—and +then succeeded the sham-fight and division of the spoils of war—if any; +for, to say truth, our partnership did not prove lucrative, so we parted +with mutual esteem, and I resolved to accomplish all the rest of my +projected tour alone; a great effort and a successful one, for I +"orated" all through Scotland, from Ayr to Peterhead (far north of +Aberdeen), often to very large audiences (as at Glasgow, where the +number was said to be three thousand) and always to fair ones, the +Scotch being much more given to literature than the West of England. I +could give innumerable anecdotes of the splendid as well as kindly +welcome I received from great and small,—for as I now had no attending +agent I was all the more eagerly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> treated as a solitary guest,—and I +found myself handed on from one rich host to another all through the +land, with numerous book friends everywhere ready and willing to make +all arrangements freely at each town and city. So the tour paid better +every way, albeit the toil and excitement of being always to the front, +either on platforms or at dinner-parties, was excessive though not +exhausting. It is astonishing what one can do if one tries, and if the +sympathy of friends and a really good success are at hand to cheer one. +I wish there was space here to say more about all this; but the great +book before me would print up into several volumes. I will only, add, as +below, an interesting extract from this diary, just before I had parted +with my worthy agent aforesaid:—"He has told me some curious anecdotes +about eminent <i>artistes</i> whom he has chaperoned, <i>e.g.</i> Thackeray came +to Clifton to give four readings on the Georges; the first reading had +only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew +is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing +ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood +gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him. +Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty +benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last +moment refuses to sing (probably paying forfeit) because he is always +afraid of something giving way in his throat. Dickens, though with +crowded audiences, was not liked, nor nearly so good as Mr.—— +expected: he carried about with him a sort of show-box, set round with +lights and covered with purple cloth, in the midst of which he appeared +in full evening costume with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> bouquet in button-hole, and, as Mr.—— +said, 'very stiff.' Mr.—— has just engaged Madame Lemmens Sherrington +and six others for sixty-three concerts at a cost of £4000, for he says +that good music—after low humour—is the best thing to pay. May his +spirited speculation prosper!" Thus much for my quotation of Mr.—— 's +experiences.</p> + +<p>It may interest a reader if I give, quite at haphazard, a list of one of +my readings: "Welcome; Adventure; Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow; +All's for the Best; Energy; Success; Warmth; Be True; Of Love; The Lost +Arctic; The Way of the World; Cheerfulness." All these may be found in +my Miscellaneous Poems and "Proverbial Philosophy." I varied the +programme—of about an hour and a half each (sometimes two)—frequently +through my fifty readings on this side of the Atlantic, as well as +through my hundred over there. How strange that the stammerer should +have so become the orator!—I thank God for this.</p> + +<p>Before a final end to this brief record of my home-readings, I will add +another page of short extracts from this diary: "Though I continually +read for nearly two hours at a stretch (and that sometimes twice a day +too) I take no intervals, and hardly anything but a sip of water. Energy +and electrical effort are stimulants enough." "I always exert myself +quite as much for few as for many; perhaps more so." "No one ever can +read well or hold his audience if he doesn't feel what he reads." "Some +of the clergy are no great friends of mine; one told me to-day that +'perpetual dearly beloved brethren had spoilt him for eloquence, and he +didn't care to hear mine.'" This was at Salisbury, in a coffee-room. +"Cathedral towns are always dullest and least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> sympathetic with +lecturing laymen; for example, at Bristol, Salisbury, Worcester, +Gloster, and the like. Are the clerics jealous of lay spouters? +Dissenting ministers and Presbyterians seem far more genial." "I +travelled about fifteen hundred miles by rail, besides coaches and +carriages. My aggregate of paying hearers was about sixteen thousand, +the bulk being old book-likers. The gain was nearly four times as much +as the cost, good hospitality having been the rule." "I read publicly +(private readings additional, as often asked after dinners, &c.) +twenty-nine proverbial essays and thirty-eight poems; repeated according +to popularity by request to two hundred." I only do not name some of my +generous Scotch and English hosts for fear of seeming to have forgotten +others by omission; and the list is too lengthy for full insertion; as +also is the long story of my adventures and experiences in the +hospitable North.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Miscellaneous Poems</span>.</h4> + +<p>Before dismissing thus curtly, my great Scottish exploit (which, by the +way, anticipated by three years my second American visit, but I would +not disjoin that from my first) I ought to give some account of the +publication of my Miscellaneous Poems by Gall & Inglis at Edinburgh, and +of some few of the hospitalities connected therewith, though not +revealing domesticities, as against my wholesome rule.</p> + +<p>An odd thing happened to me at Mr. Inglis's dinner-table, where I met +several literary celebrities. I had just read, and was loud in my +praises of a then anonymous work, "Primeval Man Unveiled," and I asked +my neighbour, an aged man, if he knew that extraordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> book? +Whereupon the whole table saluted the questioner with a loud guffaw; for +I was speaking to its author, whom I had innocently so bepraised. +However, my mistake was easily forgiven, as may be imagined. I found +that the said author was Mr. Inglis's near relative, Mr. Gall,—so my +new publisher and I were immediately <i>en rapport</i>.</p> + +<p>There are two simultaneous editions of this book of my poetry—one +called the Redlined and the other the Landscape; the first on thick +paper, and with eight steel engravings, the latter having every page +decorated in colours with beautiful borderings of scenery. The volume +contains about one-half or less of all the mass of lyrics I have +written, some of the pieces having been in earlier books of my poetry, +as Ballads and Poems, Cithara, Lyrics of the Heart and Mind, Hactenus, A +Thousand Lines, &c. &c.; and they date, though not printed in systematic +order, from my fifteenth year to beyond my sixtieth. Fly-leaf lyrics +have been continually growing ever since now to my seventy-sixth.</p> + +<p>Here are a few further random, extracts from my Scotch +diary:—"<span class="smcap">Arbroath</span>, <i>Sunday, Nov. 2, 1873</i>.—What a comfort it +is for once to feel utterly unknown; for even my luggage has only a +monogram, and here at the White Hart I am No. 15, and a commercial gent +to all appearance: really, it is quite a relief to be some one else than +Martin Tupper."</p> + +<p>"Read J. S. Mill's autobiography; poor wretch! from his cradle brought up +as an atheist by a renegade father, he can have been hardly more +responsible for his no faith than a born idiot. However, in these +infidel last times, and with our very broad-church and no-church +teachings, a man has only to be utterly godless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> (so he be moral) to +make himself a name for pure reason. I'd sooner be the most +unenlightened Christian than such a false philosopher. Let a Goldsmith +say of me, 'No very great wit, he believed in a God,' for I refuse to +deny one, like the Psalmist's fool." "I throw myself so into my +readings, that I almost forget my audience, till their cheering, as it +were, wakes me up,—and I feel every word I say: if I didn't, that word +would fall dead. There is a magnetism in earnestness,—an electric +power; I am in a way full of it when reciting, and I am aware of it +flowing through the mass of my audience." "It was a touching thing to me +to hear the aged Mr. B—— conduct his family worship, singing like an +old Covenanter the harmonious Puritan dirgy hymn, reading the Bible most +devoutly, and praying (as only Presbyterians can pray) from the heart +and not from a formal liturgy, earnestly and eloquently; he prayed also +for me and mine, and I thank God and him for it." "My host at Ayr drove +me in his waggonette to see the mausoleum at Hamilton Palace, with its +wonderful bronze doors after Ghiberti, and its inlaid marble floor, much +of which is of real verd antique in small pieces. Then we went down +among the dead men, and inspected the coffins of nearly all the Dukes of +Hamilton. It is an outrage to have expended so much (£100,000) on this +senseless mausoleum, and to have left close by and within sight of the +great Grecian palace those filthy crowded streets of poverty and +disease—the wretched town of Hamilton—as a contrast to profuse +extravagance. The last Duke, the very Lord Douglas who was in the same +class with me at Christ Church, and is supposed to have personated me in +Tom Quad, has a very graceful temple of Vesta all to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>self, with his +bust in the middle: his father lies, of all heathenish absurdities, in a +real antique Egyptian sarcophagus, into which it is said he was fitted +by internal scoopings, the Duke being taller than its former tenant, the +Pharaoh. All this done, we drove through some rugged parts of the High +Park, to see magnificent oaks, much like some at Albury, in hopes of +coming upon the famous wild cattle, grey, with black feet, ears, tail, +and nose, and stated to be untameable. To our great satisfaction we did +see a herd of thirty-four feeding quietly enough; had we been walking +instead of driving we might have fared poorly as hunted ones: though I +confess I saw at first no fierceness in the lot of them; but when the +herd sighted us, and began ominously to commence encircling our gig, +under the guidance of a terrible bull, we turned and fled, as the +discreeter part of wisdom; Captain Hamilton, my host, telling me that if +they charged us we must jump out and swarm up a tree! I was glad to be +out of such a fearful escapade as that." "As to diversities in the +Scotch Church, after seeing many clerical specimens of each kind, I +judge that (generally) the Established Scotch gives itself the superior +airs of the Established English; the Frees are the most intellectual; +the U.P.s most pious; the Scottish Episcopal getting excessively high; +and some other varieties growing far too broad and pantheistic. I don't +wonder to hear Papists say that Protestantism is breaking up; no two +parsons are agreed on all points, some on none."</p> + +<p>As for social hospitalities, I found them either splendid or kindly—or +both—everywhere; and will only name Captain Hamilton of Rozelle, Sir +Michael Shaw Stewart of Ardgowan, Mr. Boyd of Glasgow, Mr. Gall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> and Mr. +Nelson of Edinburgh, Mr. Arthur of Paisley, and such other millionaire +hosts as James Baird, William Dickson, and the like, as among my +wealthiest and kindest welcomers.</p> + +<p>Of course, when a guest for a week at Rozelle, I paid due homage to +Burns in his own territory; visiting his natal cottage, his funeral +cenotaph, Alloway Kirk, the Auld Brig, &c. &c.—all these in company +with the millionaire iron-master and most enthusiastic admirer of +Tam-o'-Shanter, Mr. James Baird. When he took me to his magnificent +castle hard by, he said to me "Ye're vera welcome to ma hoose,"—and I +entered to inspect his gallery of pictures: among them I noticed, with +surprise at such an incongruous subject for a painting, an ugly red +factory in course of building, and a man on a ladder leaning against it, +with a hod on his shoulder. To my inquiry about this, he replied, "Yon's +mysel',—I'm proud to say; that's what I was, and this is what I am." He +had made, while yet a workman, some discovery about cold blast or hot +blast (I don't know which) and gained enormous wealth thereby. He is the +man who gave half a million of money to the Scotch Established Church.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2> + +<h4>ELECTRICS.</h4> + + +<p>I have something of interest to say about the first laying of the +electric telegraph across the Atlantic. Sir Culling Eardley invited a +number of savants, among them Wheatstone and Morse, and others, both +English and American, to a great feast inaugurating the completion of +the cable: and I, amongst other outsiders, had the honour of being +asked. I had written, and after dinner I read, the verses following, +which had the good and great effect of originating the first message +(see the seventh stanza) which was adopted by acclamation and sent off +at once; being only preceded, for courtesy-sake, by a short friendly +greeting from Queen to President, and President to Queen. The heading +runs in my book as "The Atlantic Telegraph."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"World! what a wonder is this,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Grandly and simply sublime,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the Atlantic abyss<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Leapt in a nothing of time!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even the steeds of the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Half a day panting behind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the flat race that is run,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Won by a flash of the mind!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo! on this sensitive, link—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It is one link, not a chain—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man with his brother can think<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spanning the breadth of the main,—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Man to his brother can speak<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Swift as the bolt from a cloud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where its thunders were weak<br /></span> +<span class="i2">There his least whisper is loud!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea; for as Providence wills,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now doth intelligent man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conquer material ills,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wrestling them down as he can,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lay one weak little coil<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Under the width of the waves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Distance and Time are his spoil,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fetter'd as Caliban slaves!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ariel?—right through the sea<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We can fly swift as in air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Puck?—forty minutes shall be<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sloth to the bow that we bear:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here is Earth's girdle indeed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Just a thought-circlet of fire,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Delicate Ariel freed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sings, as she flies, on a wire!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Courage, O servants of light,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For you are safe to succeed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lo! you are helping the Right,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And shall be blest in your deed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lo! you shall bind in one band,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Joining the nations as one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brethren of every land,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blessing them under the sun!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This is Earth's pulse of high health<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thrilling with vigour and heat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brotherhood, wisdom and wealth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Throbbing in every beat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But you must watch in good sooth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lest to false fever it swerve,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Touch it with tenderest truth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the world's exquisite nerve!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let the first message across—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">High-hearted Commerce, give heed—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not be of profit or loss,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But one electric indeed:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Praise to the Giver be given,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For that He giveth man skill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glory to God in the Heaven!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Peace upon earth, and goodwill!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another Electric poem of mine called "The First Message," also in Gall's +edition, was sent over by telegraph to America. What a miserable muddle, +by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel's +Message;—preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly +spoilt that sublime trilogy by making "Peace upon earth, goodwill +towards men," read "Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well +pleased." How clumsy and how ungrammatical, <i>in</i> whom! The whole dear +Bible has been terribly damaged by their 36,000 needless alterations in +the New Testament (not 100 having been really necessary), and I know not +how many more myriads in the Old, but happily their Version falls dead, +and will soon be as forgotten as Dr. Conquest's "Bible with 20,000 +emendations," whereof I now possess a somewhat scarce copy in the +library at Albury. I have less than no patience with those principally +clerical revisers; albeit for their chairman, Dr. Ellicott, I retain a +pleasant memory from Orkney recollections in old days.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But this is a digression, wrung from me by my righteous wrath against +those who have done their worst to spoil for us The Angel's Message, the +first word uttered by the telegraphic wire under the sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<p>Returning to the subject of Electrics I have something of interest to +say which will be news to my readers. One day when casually dipping into +Addison's <i>Spectator</i> at Albury, I made the following discovery which I +recorded in the newspapers at the time, and give the extract now fully +as thus:—</p> + +<p>In the 241st No. of Addison's <i>Spectator</i>, bearing date Thursday, +December 6th, 1711, and as signed "C." (one of the letters of the mystic +Clio), by the great Joseph Addison himself, occurs the following +remarkable anticipation of our presumably most modern discovery. Those +who have access to the London edition of the <i>Spectator</i> of 1841, +published by J. J. Chidley, 123 Aldersgate Street, can verify the +verbatim faithfulness of the following extract from page 274:—</p> + +<p>"Strada, in one of his Prolusions (Lib. II. prol. 6), gives an account +of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a +certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two +several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the +other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time, and +in the same manner. He tells us that the two friends, being each of them +possessed of one of those needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing +it with four-and-twenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the +day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the +needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it could move +round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty +letters.</p> + +<p>"Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they +agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain +hour of the day, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> to converse with one another by means of this +their invention.</p> + +<p>"Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them +shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately +cast his eye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind to write anything to +his friend, he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words +which he had occasion for, making a little pause at the end of every +word or sentence, to avoid confusion.</p> + +<p>"The friend in the meanwhile saw his own sympathetic needle moving of +itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By +this means they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed +their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains, +seas or deserts.</p> + +<p>"If Monsieur Scudery, or any other writer of romance, had introduced a +necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making a +present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the +reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them +corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and +watchers, or separated by castles and adventures.</p> + +<p>"In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be revived or put in +practice, I would propose that upon the lover's dial-plate there should +be written not only the four-and-twenty letters, but several entire +words which have always a place in passionate epistles, as flames, +darts, die, language, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the +like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of +writing a letter, as it would enable him to express the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> useful and +significant words with a single touch of the needle.—C."</p> + +<p>Thus far Addison, a hundred and seventy years ago, and Strada (whoever +he may be, for ordinary biographical dictionaries ignore him), perhaps +fifty before him, and the two unknown experimentalists, perhaps twenty +beyond that, making in all two hundred and forty or fifty years ago as +the date of electrical invention: whereof we see no further mention in +the <i>Spectator</i>. But is it not also among the "Century of the Marquis of +Worcester's Inventions"?—as is possible; the scarce volume is not near +me for reference. Let the curious reader who can, turn to it and see. +Meanwhile, how strangely Addison and Strada have anticipated the +dial-plate, and the needles, and the letters, and the short forms for +common words, all so familiar to our telegraphists. Verily there is +nothing new under the sun.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Extract from my Archive-book, No. 8. Date October 15, 1856.</p> + +<p>"I was again an electric guest, this time at the Great Albion dinner +(Liverpool) to Mr. Morse, whom I had met at Erith and in America. A day +or two afterwards I sent him a letter of invitation to Albury, enclosing +the sonnet below; and not knowing his London address I posted it to my +brother Charles in London for him to read and forward. Lucky enough that +I did so, for Mr. Morse had just sailed for America: so Charles had both +prose and poetry telegraphed to him in New York,—and the Company would +not charge any money for it! This is perhaps the only time a sonnet +ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> travelled by telegraph, and certainly the only time it ever so +travelled gratis."</p> + +<p>Here it is, for which I had a very complimentary and grateful note from +"Samuel F. B. Morse, as an ardent admirer," &c. As never in print till +now, I trust it will be acceptable to my readers. Mr. Morse's published +speech was religiously high-minded and true-hearted, as indicated in the +sonnet.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>To Professor Morse, in pleasant memory of October 10, 1856,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>at the Albion.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A good and generous spirit ruled the hour;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Old jealousies were drowned in brotherhood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Philanthropy rejoiced that skill and power,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Servants to science, compass all men's good;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And over all Religion's banner stood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Upheld by <i>thee</i>, true Patriarch of the plan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which in two hemispheres was schemed to shower<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mercies from <span class="smcap">God</span> on universal man.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Yes, this electric chain from East to West<br /></span> +<span class="i2">More than mere metal, more than Mammon can,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Binds us together kinsmen, in the best<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As most affectionate and frankest bond,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brethren at one, and looking far beyond<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The world in an electric union blest."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2> + +<h4>THE RIFLE: A PATRIOTIC PROPHECY.</h4> + + +<p>There is an extinct pamphlet, now before me, published by Routledge in +1860, entitled "The Rifle Movement Foreshown in Prose and Verse from +1848 to the Present Time,"—from my pen,—which proves that, in +conjunction with my friend Evelyn and a few others, I may justly claim +to have originated that cheap defence of England, at Albury, more than a +dozen years before it was thought of anywhere by any one else. Take the +trouble to read the following longish extract from the fifth edition of +the above, and please not to omit the leash of ballads wherewith it +ends.</p> + +<p>"And now, next, about this Rifle pamphlet. Every page carries its date +honestly, and several very curiously. In some of the editions there +appears a rifle ballad of mine, written in 1845, and published in 1846 +(in the first issue of my Ballads and Poems—Hall & Virtue) with the +strange title "Rise Britannia, <i>a Stirring Song for Patriots in the Year +1860</i>:" an anticipation by fourteen years of the actual date of the +Rifle Movement. In all the editions, the papers on 'Cheap Security' +(being Talks between Naaman Muff (a Quaker), Till (a commercial gent), +Dolt (a philanthropist), Funker (an ordinary unwarlike paterfamilias), +and a certain Tom Wydeawake (patriotic but peculiar)) contain detailed +allusions, though written several years before any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> definite existence, +to the National Rifle Association, and to exactly such annual prize +gatherings of riflemen as those at Wimbledon Common and Brighton Downs, +and this latest at Blackheath. The discouragements of Tom Wydeawake and +his few compeers were remarkable. He himself might fairly have claimed +the honours of origination, discussed some two or three years ago, but +he left them to others—<i>Sic vos non vobis</i>, &c."</p> + +<p>"Without mentioning names, several—since distinguished as prominent in +Rifledom—were once, to my certain knowledge, and still to be evidenced +by their extant letters, bitterly opposed to the whole movement,—and I +cannot conclude these remarks better or more appositely than by adding +here, with real dates, the three following ballads, which tell their own +tale briefly and suggestively." I print them here, as they are now to be +found nowhere else.</p> + +<p>The first, published in newspapers during June 1859 (following several +others of a like character, with my name or without it), was the origin +of the Volunteers' motto—being headed</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Defence not Defiance.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nearer the muttering thunders roll,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blacker and heavier frowns the sky,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet our dauntless English soul<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Faces the storm with a steady eye;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hands are strong where hearts are stout;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our rifles are ready—look out!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No one wishes the storm to roll here—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No one cares such a devil to raise,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in brotherhood, not in fear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Only for peace an Englishman prays,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet he may shout in the midst of the rout,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our rifles are ready—look out!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Keep to your own, like an honest man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And here's our hand, and here's our heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let the world see how wisely you can<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Play to the end a right neighbourly part,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if mischief is creeping about,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our rifles are ready—look out!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No defiance is on our lips,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nothing but kindliness greets you here;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still, in the storm our dolphin ships<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Round the Eddystone dart and steer,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on shore—no doubt, no doubt—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our rifles are ready—look out!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not Defiance, but only Defence,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hold we forth for humanity's sake,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, with the help of Omnipotence,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We shall stand when the mountains quake:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only in Him our hearts are stout;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our rifles are ready—look out!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>A Rhyme for Albury Club.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A rhyme for the Club, for the brave little Club<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That stoutly went forward when others held back,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, reckless of many a sneer and a snub,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Steer'd manfully straight upon Duty's own tack,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though quarrelsome peacemongers did their small worst,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In spite of their tongues and in spite of their teeth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We stood up for England among the few first,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With rifles and targets on Surrey Blackheath!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Time was when Tom Wydeawake, ten years agone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Toil'd to arouse dull old Britain betimes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By example—he shouldered his rifle alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By precept—he showered his letters and rhymes,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With bullets he peppered old Sherborne's hillside,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With ballads and articles worried the Press,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The more he was sneer'd at, the stronger he tried,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And would not be satisfied short of Success.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And now is his Fancy the front of the van,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And England an archer, as in the past years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stout middle age carries arms like a man,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And all the young fellows are smart Volunteers:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Herbert, and Elcho, and Spencer, and Hay,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Mildmay, and all the best names in the land<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On a national scale achieve grandly to-day<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What Wydeawake schemed with his brave little band!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then cheers for the Queen! for the Club! and the Corps!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For Grantley, and Evelyn, and Sidmouth, and all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Franklin, and Mangles, and six dozen more,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The first to spring forth at Britannia's call!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And long may we live with all peaceably here—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For olive, not laurel, is Glory's true wreath—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if the wolf comes, he had better keep clear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of a Club of crack shots upon Surrey Blackheath!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>July 1860.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the third is a small record of our Easter Monday's Review, 1864, +alluding to the present universality of the Rifle Movement contrasted +with its originally small beginnings on the same spot.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Surrey Blackheath.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Surrey Blackheath! old scene of beginnings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Humble enough some dozen years back,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gather to-day's rich harvest of winnings,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sprung of that sowing in Memory's track;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Reap your revenges in honour and pleasure;—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thousands of riflemen arm'd to the teeth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crowds by ten thousands, in holiday leisure,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Throng the wild beauties of Surrey Blackheath!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We were the first our rifles to shoulder,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">First to wake England (though voted a bore);<br /></span> +<span class="i0">First in this nation who roused her, and told her<br /></span> +<span class="i2">She must go arm'd to be safe, as of yore!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Those were the days before corps and their drilling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When the true patriot was check'd with a snub,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, on Blackheath, devotedly willing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stood your first riflemen—Albury Club!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes, we stood <i>here</i>, in spite of their coldness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Duty's first marksmen—whate'er should betide,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conquering Success—the sure fruit of boldness—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">World-witnessed now by this field-day of pride!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though they laugh'd at Tom Wydeawake's fancies,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Olives and laurels combine in his wreath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, the world's peace—in England's and France's—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sprung of that sowing on Surrey Blackheath!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>March 5, 1864.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Lord Lovelace will remember how much he opposed our rifle-club,—as in +those days illegal, and so the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey might not +sanction it: but now his Lordship is our leading volunteer. Besides the +three ballads above, I wrote seven others which rang round the land, and +some of them, as "Hurrah for the Rifle," and "In days long ago when old +England was young," have been sung at Wimbledon and other gatherings.</p> + +<p>It may be worth while, seeing the ballads are hopelessly out of print, +if I here transcribe a few stanzas from divers other staves I penned in +the early days of Rifledom. First, from "Rise, Britannia," before +mentioned, which was "written and printed in 1846, and then headed, by a +strange anticipation, a stirring song for patriots in the year 1860:" +reproduced in my now extinct "Cithara," in 1863: I wrote it to be sung +to the tune of "Wha wouldna fecht for Charlie:" even as afterwards I +adapted my "In days long ago when old England was young" to "The +roast-beef of old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> England," published with my own illustration by Cocks +& Co.:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rise! ye gallant youth of Britain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gather to your country's call,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On your hearts her name is written,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rise to help her, one and all!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cast away each feud and faction,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Brood not over wrong nor ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rouse your virtues into action,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For we love our country still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hail, Britannia! hail, Britannia!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Raise that thrilling shout once more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise, Britannia! rule, Britannia!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Conqueror over sea and shore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After three stanzas which I will omit, the last is</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rise then, patriots I name endearing,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Flock from Scotland's moors and dales,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the green glad fields of Erin,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From the mountain homes of Wales,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise! for sister England calls you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rise! our commonweal to serve,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise! while now the song enthrals you<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thrilling every vein and nerve,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hail, Britannia! hail, Britannia!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Conquer, as thou didst of yore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise, Britannia! rule, Britannia!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Over every sea and shore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another noted alarum, sounded in January 1852, commences thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Englishmen, up! make ready your rifles!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who can tell now what a day may bring forth?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Patch up all quarrels, and stick at no trifles,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let the world see what your loyalty's worth!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Loyalty?—selfishness, cowardice, terror<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Stoutly will multiply loyalty's sum,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When to astonish presumption and error<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soon the shout rises—the brigands are come!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After four stanzas of happily unfulfilled prognostication, the last is—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> +</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Up then and arm! it is wisdom and duty;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We are too tempting a prize to be weak:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lo, what a pillage of riches and beauty,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Glories to gain and revenges to wreak!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Run for your rifles, and stand to your drilling;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let not the wolf have his will, as he might,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If in the midst of their trading and tilling<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Englishmen cannot—or care not to—fight!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>One only stanza more, the last of another also in 1852.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Arm then at once! If no one attack us<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Better than well, for the rifle may rust;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if the pirates be coming to sack us,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Level it calmly, and God be your trust!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only, while yet there's a moment, keep steady;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Skilfully, duteously, quickly prepare,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then with a nation of riflemen ready,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nobody'll come because no one will dare!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In those days of a generation back, so great was the scare everywhere of +Napoleon's rabid colonels a-coming that I remember my brother Arthur +counselling me to sink our plate down a well for safety; and Mr. +Drummond in a pamphlet exhorted the creation of refuges round the coast +by getting the owners of mansions to fortify them as strongholds, +filling the windows with grates and mattresses, and loopholing +garden-walls for shots at marauders on the roads!</p> + +<p>Yet, so sleepy was the British Lion that neither Drummond nor I, nor +even the <i>Times</i>, which I invoked, could wake him up for many years: and +the Volunteer movement did not take effect till Louis Napoleon kindly +urged Palmerston to check his rabid colonels by a bold front of +preparation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p> + +<p>I am minded to finish with a mild anecdote which carries its moral. Now, +understand that I never pretended to be a crack shot, though I did make +fair practice through "the Indian twist," the sling supporting one's +arm; if I hit the target occasionally, I was satisfied. But it once +happened (at Teignmouth, where I was a casual visitor) that, seeing a +squad of volunteers practising at a mark on the beach, I went to look +on, and was courteously offered a shot, being not unknown by fame to +some of them. The target was at some 500 yards (say about a third of a +mile), so it was not likely I could hit it, with a chance rifle, perhaps +carelessly sighted; yet, when I did let fly, to the loud admiration of +the others and to my own astonishment (which of course I did <i>not</i> +reveal), the marker signalled for a bull's eye! Entreated to do it +again, this prudent rifleman modestly declined, for he remembered Sam +Slick's lucky shot at the floating bottle; it was manifestly his wisdom +not to risk fame won by a fluke. So the moral is, don't try to do twice +what you've done well once.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2> + +<h4>AUTOGRAPHS AND ADVERTISEMENTS.</h4> + + +<p>A word or two about autographs, surely a topic suitable to this book: in +fact, I have sometimes preferred to spell it authorgraphs: most public +men are troubled nowadays with this sort of petty homage, and I more +than suspect that some collectors make merchandise of them; "my valuable +collection" being often the form in which strangers solicit the +flattering boon. Once I had a queer proof as to the money value of my +own,—as thus: I went quite casually into an auctioneer's in Piccadilly, +to a book-sale; a lot of some half-dozen volumes were just being knocked +down for next to nothing (such is our deterioration in these newspaper +days) when the wielder of Thor's fateful hammer, dissatisfied at the +price, asked for the lot to look at,—and coming amongst others to a +certain book with handwriting in it, said, "Why, here's one with Martin +Tupper's autograph,"—on which a buyer called out, "I'll give you +eighteenpence more for that,"—suggestive to me of my auction value,—as +I have sometimes said. If, however, the more than hundreds (thousands) I +have been giving for these fifty years, really have so easily gratified +friends known or unknown, I am glad to be in that way so much a gainer. +Americans in particular ask frequently, and sometimes with wisely +enclosed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> stamped and addressed envelopes, which is a thing both +considerate and praiseworthy; but a very different sort and not easily +to be excused are those who send registered albums by post for one's +handwriting, expecting to have them returned similarly at no small cost. +Longfellow told me of this kind of young lady taxation, and mentioned +that he once had to pay twelve shillings for a registered return quarto. +I dare say that our popular Laureate has had similar experiences.</p> + +<p>The most "wholesale order" for my signature was at New York in 1851, +when at a party there my perhaps too exacting hostess put a large pack +of plain cards into my hand, posted me at a corner table with pen and +ink, and flatteringly requested an autograph for each of her 100 guests! +of course, even this was graciously conceded,—though rather too much of +a good thing, I thought.</p> + +<p>There is wisdom (some have hinted to me) in preferring a card to a sheet +of paper; not only because "I promise to pay" might possibly be written +<i>ab extra</i> over one's signature, but also because (and far more +probably) any special "fad," political, social, or religious, might be +added above—to all seeming—your written approbation: <i>e.g.</i>, I was +told in America that my autographed opinion in favour of Unitarianism +had been so seen at Boston. Some zealots for a "cause" even go so far as +that. My safe course is to write "the handwriting of so-and-so," where +from total ignorance of my correspondent I cannot honestly say "I am +truly yours."</p> + +<p>Other forms of authorial homage are to be met with in the way of +complimentary photographs, and oil or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> water-colour portraits. Like all +other book celebrities, I have had to stand for minutes or sit for days, +dozens of times; and seeing that, wherever I have been on my Reading +Tours, on this side of the Atlantic or the other, photographic "artists" +have continually "solicited the honour," the result has been that I used +to keep "a book of horrors," proving how variously and oftentimes how +vulgarly one's features come out when the impartial sun portrays them. +As with the contradictory critiques about one's writings, so also is it +with the conflicting apparitions of comeliness or ugliness in the +heliotyped exploits of different—some of them +indifferent—photographers. Several, however, have succeeded well with +me; as Sarony in New York, Elliott & Fry of Baker Street and Brighton, +Negretti & Zambra at the Crystal Palace, and divers others; but one need +not reckon up "our failures," as Brummell's valet has it.</p> + +<p>As to the several oil portraitures of me, there is extant a splendid +full-length of myself and my brother Dan, with large frilled collars and +the many-buttoned suits of the day, when we were severally ten and nine +years old, now hanging at Albury, painted by my great-uncle, Arthur +William Devis, the celebrated historical painter: this has been +exhibited among works of the British old masters in Pall Mall. Also, +there is one by T. W. Guillod, in my phase as an author at twenty-seven; +another is by the older Pickersgill, so dark and lacking in Caucasian +comeliness that the engraving therefrom in one of my books makes me look +like a nigger, insomuch that some Abolitionists claimed me as all the +more their favourite for my black blood! On the other hand, Mr. Edgar +Williams has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> made me much too florid; while recently that rising young +artist, Alfred Hartley, has caught my true likeness, and has depicted me +aptly and well, as may now be seen in the picture-gallery of the Crystal +Palace. Then Mr. Willert Beale (Walter Maynard by literary <i>nom de +pinceau et de plume</i>, for he is both a painter and an author) has lately +portrayed me in crayons, life-sized, an unmistakable likeness; and years +ago Monsieur Rochard, in a large water-coloured drawing, made me look +very French, quite a <i>petit-maitre</i>, in which disguise I was engraved +for some book of mine: all the above, except Rochard's, having been done +complimentarily. In America Mr. Pettit's life-sized oil portrait is the +most noticeable.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Two queer anecdotes I must give about another form of author-worship to +which we poor vain mortals are occasionally exposed, viz., what Pope +called in Belinda's case "The Rape of the Lock." I can remember (as once +by Lady—— in London) more than one such ravishment attempted if not +accomplished; but most especially was I in peril at the Philadelphian +Exhibition when three duennas who guarded some lady exhibitors (too +modest to ask themselves) pursued a certain individual, scissors in +hand, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, in vain hope of sheared +tresses; had they been, like many of our American sisters, both juvenile +and lovely, very possible success might have crowned their daring; or, +instead of the three seductive graces, had they posed as three +intellectual muses, I might have succumbed; but a leash of fates obliged +a rapid retreat. And for a second queer anecdote take this: a 'cute +negro barber had persuaded me to have my hair cut, to which sug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>gestion, +as it was hissing hot weather, I agreed. He had a neat little shop close +to a jeweller's; next morning I passed that shop and noticed my name +placarded there, surrounded by gold lockets, for that cunning nigger and +his gilded friend were making a rich harvest of my shaved curls. Sambo +can be as sharp as Jonathan, when a freeman, if he likes.</p> + +<p>"Interviewing" is another sort of homage nowadays to popular authorship; +in America it is very rife,—and I never came to any city but, +immediately on arrival, two or three representatives of opponent editors +would call, and very courteously request to be allowed to turn me inside +out, and then to report upon me: I only remember one or two cases (which +I will not specify) wherein my inquisitor was not all I could have +wished, or treated his patient victim more unkindly than perhaps a +venial native humour might make necessary. Almost always the scribes +were fair and gentlemanly. And in next morning's papers it was a +pleasing excitement to find that one's extorted opinions on all manner +of topics—social, religious, and political—were published by tens of +thousands in conflicting newspapers, which took partisan views of the +<i>obiter dicta</i> of an illustrious being. I have many of these recorded +conversations and comments thereon pasted down in the scrap-books +aforesaid. In England, also, one does not escape; and indeed the +pleasure of being examined for publication is here less mixed; for on +this side of the Atlantic it has been found dangerous to report what +might be damaging to a man socially or financially; although, however, +no judicial notice is taken of ridicule or false criticism; and therein +an author (however little he may care for it) can be libelled to any +extent and without all remedy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Not but that some of the society papers +have treated my unworthiness generously enough,—in particular, Edmunds' +<i>World</i>, which, with too great severity and too little justice, has been +taught to tell all truths charitably, if smartly,—and therefore I was +glad to welcome his pleasant accredited interviewer, Mr. Becker, a year +or two ago at Albury, who compliments me, not quite accurately perhaps, +on "good looks and a passion for heart's-eases." Also, the gentleman who +represents the <i>Glasgow Mail</i> did his work wisely and kindly: and Mr. +Meltzer of the <i>New York Herald</i>; and I might name some others, not +excepting my Sydenham friend, Mr. Leyland, who lately wrote a very +pleasant paper about me at Norwood for a Philadelphian journal.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">As to Advertising.</span></h4> + +<p>A word about advertisements, surely an authorial topic. The absurdly +extravagant profusion in which thousands of pounds are now being +continually flung away in advertising, is one which was never approved +by me, and as long as my books remained in print, at my suggestion they +all got sold without it. At present there are almost none in the market +except Proverbial Philosophy, my Poems, Stephan Langton, and Dramas, and +these still live and sell as before, after a silent life of many years. +I suppose advertising must answer, or it would not be persisted in; and +certainly the newspapers (that chiefly live thereby) exhort all to crowd +their columns, if they wish to win fortune: but how the perpetual and +reiterated obtrusion of such single words as Oopack, or Syndicates, or +Beecham's Pills, or Argosy Braces, or Grateful and Comforting, &c. &c., +can prove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> seductive baits, I do not see nor feel: the shameless amount +of space they fill in our newspapers, and especially the impertinent way +in which they intrude upon us while reading, as interleaved into books +and magazines, so entirely disgusts me that I have often declared I +would rather go without "tea, coffee, tobacco, or snuff" (this is a +phrase, for the two latter I abominate) than deign to patronise those +persistent advertisers A, B, C, D, or E. And yet I do know a splendid +church at Eastbourne wholly built of pills,—and Professor Holloway's +ointment has produced a palatial institute, and another wholesale +advertiser tells me he spends £30,000 a year on notices and paragraphs, +to gain thereby £50,000,—and so one cannot but acquiesce in Carlyle's +cynical dictum, so cruelly alluded to by Dean Stanley in his funeral +sermon at Westminster, that there are in our community "26,000,000, +mostly fools," otherwise how can folks be weak enough to be forced to +pay for "goods," or "bads," merely by dint of reiteration?</p> + +<p>There is, however, one form of advertisement which I have found to +pay,—and that is not praise, but abuse. A certain article, written as I +was told by Alaric Watts, and stigmatising my readers as idiots, and +their author as a bellman, was said to have actually sold off 3000 +copies at a run; and Hepworth Dixon's attack in some other paper—I +forget the name—was so lucrative to me in its results that I entreated +him at Moxon's one day to do it again.</p> + +<p>Once I took it into my head to collect and publish a page of adverse +criticisms (if I can find a copy it shall be printed here) to excellent +sale-effect as regarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> my tales. And I remember hearing at a +publisher's, that when a book didn't sell through puffing, their Herald +of Fame upstairs was directed to abuse it, and in one case a society +novel by a lady of title was prosecuted (by management) for libel, in +order to get off the edition. That publishing-house used to advertise in +"five figures"—that is, upwards of £10,000 a year, and was +professionally antagonistic to another, from which it had sprung +originally. The critical organs of the one house always used to run down +the publications of the other. And I daresay other Sosii are aware of +the like mutual warfare going on even now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2> + +<h4>KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.</h4> + + +<p>As to my several efforts in print to hinder cruelty to animals, beside +and beyond what a reader may already find in my published books, let me +chiefly mention these two fly-leaves, widely circulated by the Humane +Society in Jermyn Street; to wit, "Mercy to Animals," and my "Four +anti-Vivisection Sonnets." The latter I must preface with an interesting +anecdote. Before Louis Napoleon was Emperor, I accompanied a deputation +from Guernsey to Cherbourg, met him, had pleasant speech with him, and +gave him a book ("Proverbial Philosophy"), thus making his personal +acquaintance; which many years after I utilised as thus. The horrors of +that infernal veterinary torture-house at Alfort, where disabled cavalry +horses were on system vivisected to death, had been known to us by +letters in the <i>Times</i>, of course denouncing the criminality: I remember +reading that one poor old horse survived more than threescore +operations, and used to be led in daily strapped with bandages and +plaisters amid the cheers of the demoniacal students!—and this excited +me to make a strong personal effort to stop the outrages at Alfort. +Accordingly I wrote from Albury a letter to the Emperor (if I kept and +can find a copy I will print it here) as from one gentleman to another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> +fond of his horse and dog, exhorting him to interfere and hinder such +horrors. I told him that I purposely did this in a private way, and not +through any newspaper or minister, because I wished him to cure, +<i>proprio motu</i>, a crying evil whereof he was ignorant and therefore +innocent: leaving the issue of my appeal to his own generous feeling and +to Providence, but otherwise not expecting nor requesting any reply. I +therefore got none; but (whether <i>post hoc</i> or <i>propter hoc</i> I do not +know) the result was that vivisection at Alfort was suspended at once, +though how long for is unknown to me. As, after all this, many may like +to see my four sonnets before-mentioned, I have no room to place here +more than one: it is fair to state that they are easily procurable for a +penny at the S. P. C. A. office in Jermyn Street. They were written by me +in the train between Hereford and London, at the request of a lady, the +chatelaine of Pontrilas Court, for a bazaar at Brighton.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If ever thou hast loved thy dog or horse,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or other favourite affectionate thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If thou dost recognise in God the source<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of all that live, their Father and their King,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand with us on this rescue;—for the force<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of sciolists hath legal right to seize<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such innocents to torture as they please,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Alive and sentient, with demoniac skill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ungodly men! hot with the lawless lust<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of violating Nature's holiest fane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breaking it open at your wicked will,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet shall ye tremble!—for the Judge is just;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Him those victims do not plead in vain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On you for æons crowd their hours of pain."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When I was last at Boston my spirit was stirred by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> what I have poetised +below: it has only appeared in some American papers, but I hope will be +acceptable here.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Omnibus Hack.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Worn, jaded, and faint, plodding on in the track,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I praise your great patience, poor omnibus hack;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In whose sad gentle eyes my spirit can trace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The gloom of despair in that passionless face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While way-wearied muscles, strain'd out to the full<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cruelly check'd by the pitiless pull,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With little for food, but of lashes no lack,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Force me to pray for you, omnibus hack!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes I—if I can pity you, omnibus hack,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For nerves all atremble and sinews awrack,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How should not his Maker, the Father above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be just to His creature, and grant him His love?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why may not His mercy give somewhat of bliss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In some better world to compensate for this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By animal pleasure for animal pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Receiving their lives but to give them again?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And which of us isn't an omnibus hack,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With galls on his withers and sores on his back,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Buckled to circumstance, driven by fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And chain'd on the pole of a oar that we hate—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yon ponderous Past which we drag fast or slow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the coarse-mended Present, this dull road we go,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hard-curb'd on the tongue and no bearing-rein slack,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah! who of us isn't that omnibus hack?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet great is the comfort considering thus<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That God doth take thought as for him so for us;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That we shall find rest, reward, and relief<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Outweighing, outpaying all pain and all grief;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That all things are kindly remembered elsewhere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The shame and the wrong and the press and the care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The evils that keep all better aback,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And make one feel now but an omnibus hack.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"An omnibus hack?—and only a drudge?—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is Duty no more in the eyes of the Judge?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He set thee this toil; His providence gave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These bounds to His freedman; yes, free—not a slave!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And if thou wilt serve Him, content with thy lot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cheerfully working and murmuring not,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be sure, my poor brother—whose skies are so black—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art His dear child, though an omnibus hack!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>My "Mercy to Animals," a simple handbill, has done great good, as it has +prose instructions about loading, harnessing, &c. It also is to be had +for a penny at Jermyn Street aforesaid: here is the first verse:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O boys and men of British mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With mother's milk within you!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A simple word for young and old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A word to warn and win you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You've each and all got human hearts,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As well as human features,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So hear me, while I take the parts<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of all the poor dumb creatures."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For my own part I have done it all my life. Those of my book-friends who +have my Miscellaneous Poems may refer in this connection to verses +therein on "A Dead Dog" and "A Dead Cat," and to those on "Cruelty." +Also in "Proverbial Philosophy," especially as to the "Future of +Animals," and their too shameful treatment in this world, one good +reason for a compensative existence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2> + +<h4>ORKNEY AND SHETLAND.</h4> + + +<p>I took my family to these Northern Isles of the Sea in 1859, sailing +from Aberdeen in a once-a-week steamer; some of our passengers were +notable, as Dasent of the Norse Tales (since Sir George) and his sons, +Day the Oxonian in Norway, Ellicott, now Bishop of Bristol, Biot +Edmondstone, and some others, inclusive of our noble selves. It was a +dark night and a dense fog, and we had perilously to thread our careful +way through the herring-fleet, fog-horns blowing all night, whilst our +distinguished party bivouacked on deck, every cabin having been secured +by folks crowding to the Kirkwall fair; and so we enjoyed a seagoing +experience which, however cold and dark, was warmed and brightened by +the conversation of clever friends all night through.</p> + +<p>Next day, jumping into a boat on the top of a wave (it was very rough +weather), I and a few others landed at Wick, and witnessed the +extraordinary scene of a herring harvest being cured. Much as at +Cincinnati they say pigs walk in, and come out at the other end of a +long gallery salted and smoked,—live herrings are within some three +minutes killed, cleaned, pickled, and tubbed by the fishermen's wives +and daughters in their brightest caps and jewellery, for the whole scene +is a fair and a festival.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>In due time we arrived at Kirkwall, where we stayed a fortnight, in the +course of which we were soon invited to Mr. Balfour's castle at +Shapinshay. I call to mind in that mediæval-looking stronghold (but it +is a modern structure) his splendid banqueting-room, lighted by the +illuminated points of twelve stags' heads, each having twelve tynes, +thus 144 of them, ranged on the sides of that baronial hall: the castle, +of grey granite in the Norman style, having its own gasometer, all the +light was gas; this struck me as a remarkable feature inside: on the +outside was one quite as memorable. Those sterile-looking isles of the +North Sea are so swept by stormy winds as to be absolutely treeless: +insomuch that it is jocularly said, that for cutting down a tree at +Kirkwall, the penalty is <i>death!</i> simply because no trees exist there. +Well, the wealthy Baron of Shapinshay conquers nature thus; he has dug +round the castle vast hollow gardens (not a continuous moat) in which +flourishes a profusion of flowers and shrubs and even trees,—till +arboriculture is cut shear off, if it dares to look over the mounds. I +put it thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When to the storm-historic Orcades<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wanderer comes, he marvels to find there<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A stately palace, towering new and fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bedded in flowers, though unbanked by trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A feudal dream uprisen from the seas:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And when his wonder asks,—Whose magic rare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath wrought this bright creation?—men reply,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Balfour's of Balfour: large in mind and heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not only doth his duteous care reclaim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All Shapinshay to new fertility,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But to his brother men a brother's part<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Doing, in always doing good,—his fame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is to have raised an Orcade Arcady,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rich in gems of Nature as of Art."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>At Kirkwall we could not help noticing what a fine race of men and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> +women, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, many of these Northerners are; at +St. Magnus Cathedral they trooped in looking like giants, seeming taller +perhaps because the pews are on a dead level with the floor. Of course +we duly did all the sights of the place, in the way of the ruinous +bishop's palace and so forth, and received hearty welcomes from both +high and low, the isolation of those parts conducing to the popularity +of strangers; to say less of any greed for the cash of tourists.</p> + +<p>I made there good acquaintance also with Aytoun, the poet of Dundee and +Montrose, of whom it is rememberable that he used to read all through +Scott's novels every year. I thought it a marvellous feat, but at any +rate he told me so. He was sheriff of all those northern regions; and +writer, amongst other things, of "Hints for Authors" in <i>Blackwood</i>, +which for their wit and sense ought to be reprinted: but when I urged it +in Princes Street, I found such a booklet was not to be—nor "Firmilian" +either—which is a pity, as both are admirable for humour. He was a +zealous florist and fruitist; the white currants trained by him upon +walls were as large as grapes.</p> + +<p>Among these Isles of Thule palpable evidences of the Gulf Stream are +frequent; besides that it warms the northern seas so well that snow and +ice are not too common there as in much lower latitudes they are with +us—it is the fact that most of the seafaring men have for snuff-boxes +the large brown circular beans from Mexico floated on tropical seaweed, +full of hand coral, and found on the island beaches westwardly. Another +notable matter in these Orcades is the strange disproportion between the +sexes, eleven women to one man, as Mr. Hayes, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> Lerwick banker, told +me; this being due to the too frequent drowning of whole boat's crews: +hence, one often sees women at the oar. A pleasanter thing to mention is +the Fair Isle hosiery, the patterns whereof in the woven worsted are +distinctly Moorish, just like those at Tangiers; said to be a survival +of some wreck from the Spanish Armada cast upon the shore, with of +course its crew and contents, the local manufacture of said patterns +having been kept up ever since, with dyes derived from seaweeds, and +from flowers. I frequently observed how diligent in knitting the island +women were (reminding me of those notable spinsters of Herodotus) +working the needles all the while they tended cattle, and with the pile +of some costly shawl upon their heads while they fidget at the fringe; +its various devices being of natural unstained wools, white, grey, or +brown. In those interesting islands I can dimly recall many other +noticeable things and people, everywhere having received the warm +welcome which is usually the privilege of a bookwright all the world +over; visiting the Stones of Stennis with Mr. Petrie, the Celtic tower +of Scalloway with Aytoun, and divers similar antiquities, as Maeshow and +other refuges of the Picts and Troglodytes.</p> + +<p>At Lerwick two of the boatmen who took us to shore from the steamer +surprised me by quotations from my old book—even the common folk being +full of literature. They are so separate from the great world, and have +so little to do, that they cannot help being hard readers,—even of me. +A haberdasher told me that though there are in the short summer plenty +of simple wild-flowers, there is naturally a dearth all the year round +of the brighter and more highly-coloured culti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>vated kinds; and so these +being scarce and female vanity rather common, there is a large trade in +artificial fuchsias, pinks, and roses, &c., thus constantly making +chapel and church quite gay; the same ladies who so bedizen themselves +on the Sabbath going about all the week carrying burdens of peat, +bare-footed and kilted to the knee on account of the bogs, among which +they have to chase those small shaggy equines, the Shetland ponies. By +the way Mr. Balfour at Oronsay had a special breed of his own, and +showed us a pair of little darlings which he valued at £100 apiece. The +true race, stunted and shaggy from climate, is rare in these days; and I +suspect may be picked up cheaper at Aldridge's than at Shapinshay.</p> + +<p>On our return voyage we skirted the whole north of Scotland, having had +the rare chance of the steamer which once a year is chartered to take +back the herring-fishers from Thurso to the Hebrides. But first Sir +George Sinclair most hospitably entertained us at Thurso Castle, whose +grim battlements frown flush over the Arctic Sea: all within the walls +luxurious warmth, and without them wrecks and desolation. So also with +the garden; on one side of the high wall greenhouses and flower-beds in +the Italian style,—on the other, in strange contrast, the desolate wild +ocean, which you see through windows of thick plate-glass let into the +walls. At Thurso town I conversed with the local genius, Robert Dick, +made of world-wide fame since by that kind-hearted and clear-minded +author, Samuel Smiles, the said genius being a noted self-taught +naturalist, who as a small baker struggled with poverty through life, to +be inconsistently rewarded after death by a national monument; his +fellow-townsmen let the living starve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> to deify him when dead. Cervantes +and his like have met the same fate elsewhere. Leaving Thurso for the +Hebrides, in company with no fewer than 700 Gaelic fishermen, we passed +the magnificent cliffs of Cape Wrath in a pleasant calm,—which next day +when we had reached Stornoway turned to a furious storm: had we +encountered it with those 700 loading the deck it would infallibly have +wrecked us,—as it did many other vessels on that night.</p> + +<p>Sir James Matheson was our great host at Stornoway, who treated me and +mine with magnificent hospitality. If I had wished to shoot a buck or to +catch a salmon (the kilted gillie stood ready with his tackle), I might +have done so and welcome; but there was no time to spare for anything +but a visit to the prehistoric temple of Callanish, where the stones +strangely enough are set in the form of a cross instead of the ordinary +circle; and to a Pictish tower, and other antiquities,—which I +preferred to sport.</p> + +<p>Sir James's piper always wakes the guests a'mornings, parading round the +terraces with his bagpipes, and after dinner, as usual at the feasts of +Highland magnates, he marches round the table in kilt and flying tartans +with his drone-like dirge or furious slogan,—being rewarded on the spot +with whisky from the chief.</p> + +<p>Here I will cease my quick reminiscence of that pleasant northern +travel, though I might recount many noticeable matters about Skye and +its dolomite Cuchullins, Staffa, Iona, and Oban, where The MacDougal +allowed us to see and handle (an unusual honour) the famous brooch of +Lorne, the loss of which saved The Bruce's life, when he broke away from +his captor, the then MacDougal; leaving tartan and shoulder-brooch in +his grasp.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL.</h2> + +<h4>LITERARY FRIENDS.</h4> + + +<p>Among the many literary men and women of my acquaintance there are some +(for it is not possible to enumerate all) of whom I should like to make +some mention; and, <i>place aux dâmes</i>, let me speak of the ladies first. +In my boyhood I can recollect that astronomical wonder of womankind, +<i>Mrs. Mary Somerville</i>, a great friend of my father's; she seemed to me +very quiet and thoughtful, and so little self-conscious as to be humbly +unregardful of her genius and her fame. Strangely enough I first met her +in the same drawing-room in Grafton Street (she lived and died at +Chelsea) where I acted a silent part years after in some private +theatricals with <i>Miss Granville</i> (met during my American visit in her +then phase of a German Baroness), herself an authoress and a cantatrice, +daughter of Dr. Granville, the well-known historian of Spas. I +recollect, too, in those early times, <i>Mrs. Jameson</i>, then a celebrated +writer, and a vivacious leader of literary society; and much nearer this +day, <i>Mrs. Beecher Stowe</i>, whom I found too taciturn, and as if scared +at the notice she excited, quite to realise one's expectation of a +famous lioness. With her I have since broken a lance in the interest of +Byron, whom I considered maligned in the matter of his "sweet sister," +and accordingly wrote on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> his behalf a vindicatory fly-leaf of poetic +indignation. Another lance, too, have I broken in favour of <i>Ouida</i>, as +against a newspaper critic who had tried to crush her "Moths;" I had met +her before that, and did my little best in her defence, receiving from +her from Italy a charming letter of acknowledgment. "Ouida" is not +generally known to have been the nursery name of "Louisa" de la Ramenay, +just as "Boz" was of Dickens. Both "Ouida" and <i>Miss Braddon</i>, whom also +I have seen as Mrs. Maxwell, remind me of that great and not seldom +unfairly judged genius, Georges Sand. There remains a worthy duplicated +friendship of later years, <i>Mr.</i> and <i>Mrs. Carter Hall</i>, of whose +geniality and kindness I have often had experience; also <i>Mr.</i> and <i>Mrs. +Grote</i>, my learned and agreeable neighbours at Albury; also <i>Lady +Wilde</i>, admirable both for prose and poetry on Scandinavian subjects, +and her eloquent son <i>Oscar</i>, famous for taste all the world over; and +as another duplicate the Gaelic historian and cheerful singer, <i>Charles +Mackay</i>, with his charming daughter, the poetess.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Of celebrated men whom I have not previously mentioned in this volume, +there is <i>Rogers</i>, the poet, with whom I once had an interview at his +artistic house in St. James's Place; <i>Carlyle</i>, of course, well known to +me by books, but personally only in a single visit, when I found him in +Cheyne Row cordially glad to greet me;—after a long talk, taking my +leave with a hearty "God bless you, sir," his emphatic reply, as he saw +me to the door, was, "And good be with you!"</p> + +<p>It was a coincidence, proving (as many things do) the narrowness of the +world, that he was living very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> near to the house where in my young days +I had wooed my cousin.</p> + +<p>Near at hand also (in Cheyne Walk) I have visited <i>Haweis</i>, the eloquent +preacher of St. James's, Marylebone; he lives in the picturesque +old-fashioned house that was Rossetti's, and when I called there last +Mr. Haweis showed me the strangest and most unwieldy testimonial that +any public man surely ever received, in the shape of a ton-weight bell +hung in its massive frame and placed in his sanctum, which, when +touched, gave out melodious thunder. This giant-gift had been sent to +him from Holland in recognition of his musical genius, especially in the +matter of campanology. And this word "musical" reminds me of Mr. +Haweis's noble self-sacrifice in giving up his idolised violin that he +might concentrate all his energies on religious teaching; when I asked +to see his famous "Straduarius," worth three hundred guineas, and found +it unstrung, I expressed my disappointment at not having had the chance +of hearing its dulcet tones drawn out by himself, but it lies dumb, +though he is eloquent. Of course I have visited the great <i>Tennyson</i> at +Farringford, and remember him showing me the tree overhanging his garden +fence, which "Yankees" climb to have a look at him. <i>Browning</i> also, +<i>tantum vidi</i>, I met at Moxon's, a grandly rugged poet; contrasted with +the Laureate he seems to me as Wagner is to Mendelssohn. <i>Mortimer +Collins</i> has given us "a happy day" at Albury, coming in <i>à pied poudre</i> +on one of his dusty walks through Surrey, as recorded in his book; how +he enjoyed his tumbler of cool claret and the ramble with my son through +the Albury woods as a most genial Bohemian! <i>Dickens</i> I have met several +times, and he gave me good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> hints on my first American visit; a man full +of impulsive kindliness and sincerely one's friend. His son <i>Charles</i> +also I have occasionally met, the worthy successor to his illustrious +father: I may here state that many of the articles and poems in +<i>Household Words</i> are from the pen of my youngest daughter. <i>Richard +Owen</i>, too, now worthily K.C.B., our most famous comparative anatomist, +I am privileged to number among my true friends; he was one of those who +stood sponsor to me when I was to receive a civil service pension. Also +I knew for many years my late Surrey neighbour, <i>Godwin Austen</i>, the +geologist; and I have met <i>Pengelly</i>, with whom I searched Kent's +Cavern; and <i>Dr. Bowerbank</i>, the great authority as to sponges, and my +then hobby choanites; he gave me certain microscopic plates of Bacilli +which I was glad to transfer to my worthy and eminent friend, <i>Stephen +Mackenzie</i>, Physician and Lecturer to the London Hospital. <i>Matthew +Arnold</i> also, with whose celebrated father I was in early youth nearly +placed as a pupil, I have sometimes encountered; and <i>Shirley Brooks</i>, +<i>Albert Smith</i>, and <i>Mark Lemon</i>, once a chief of <i>Punch</i>, who acted +Falstaff without padding; and the genial <i>John Tenniel</i>, our most +exquisite limner in outline; the venerable <i>Thomas Cooper</i> also, now in +his old age the zealous preacher of a faith he once as zealously +attacked: an excellent man, and vigorous both in prose and verse. My old +friend from boyhood, <i>Owen Blayney Cole</i>, must not be forgotten; year +after year for some forty of them he has sent me reams of his poetry. +<i>Edmund Yates</i>, than whom a kindlier, cleverer, and better-hearted man +does not exist, I have known for years; his father and mother having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> +been frequent guests at our house in Burlington Street; and I +sympathised indignantly with him in his recent editorial trouble wherein +he was used so hardly. I remember also how he dropped in upon me at +Albury one morning just as I happened to be pasting into one of my +Archive-books a few quips and cranks anent my books from <i>Punch</i>: he +adjured me "<i>not</i> to do it! for Heaven's sake, spare me!" covering his +face with his hands. "What's the matter, friend?" "<i>I</i> wrote all these," +added he, in earnest penitence, "and I vow faithfully I'll never do it +again!" "Pray, don't make so rash a promise, Edmund, and so unkind a one +too: I rejoice in all this sort of thing,—it sells my books, +besides—'I'se Maw-worm,—I likes to be despised!'" "Well, its very +good-natured of you to say so; but I really never will do it again:" and +the good fellow never did—so have I lost my most telling advertisement. +I must also not forget to praise that humorous novelist, the late <i>Frank +Smedley</i>,—a remarkable instance of the triumph of a strong and cheerful +mind over a weak and crippled body, with whom I have many reminiscences +as a brother author. It was wonderful to see how he enjoyed—from his +invalid chair—"the dances and delights" he could not take part in; and +one day I remember finding him unusually exhilarated, as he was just +come from a wedding-breakfast,—"rehearsing, rehearsing," he laughingly +shouted. Poor fellow,—the victim of an accident in infancy, he lived +strapped and banded with steel springs,—but as a gracious compensation +Heaven gave him a seeming unconsciousness of his helpless condition, and +added the happy mind to make the best of this world while looking +forward to a better. And let me not neglect to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> record, however +slightly, a few more recent authorial friendships much valued by me +among my Norwood neighbours. I will begin with <i>J. G. Wood</i>, perhaps our +best naturalist, especially in matters entomological. Never were there +more humorous no less than instructive lectures than his, illustrated +admirably as they are by his own graphic chalk-sketches on the spot: and +if any one wishes to be convinced that animals have souls, let him read +the said Rev. J. G. Wood's "Man and Beast." Next will I mention <i>Dr. +Cuthbert Collingwood</i>, famous as a naturalist and voyager among the +China seas, a poet also, well proved by his "Vision of Creation," and a +thoughtful writer on religion and metaphysics. There is <i>Dr. Zerffi</i>, +too, whose varied orations on history and other topics have filled our +Crystal Palace with his advanced wisdom for fifteen years. There is +<i>Birch</i> the sculptor, author of the "Godiva" and "The Last Call," +exhibited here, and well appreciated by me as another <i>Durham</i>,—really +a metempsychosis of character. Among literary ladies here I may mention +as my friends <i>Madame Zerffi</i>, <i>Miss Mary Hooper</i>, and <i>Miss Ellen +Barlee</i>,—all noted in their several departments, the first as an +eloquent lecturer like her husband, the second known by her domestic +essays, and the third for religious writings. I will add as casually +encountered by me hereabouts <i>George MacDonald</i>, whose magnificent +presence in the pulpit is as memorable as his conversation at the +dinner-table, and the interest of his books; and <i>Lord Ronald Gower</i>, +creator of that finest group of modern statuary "the Apotheosis of +Shakespeare," exhibited at the Crystal Palace, where, as well, as by +correspondence, I have had with him much pleasant intercourse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p> + +<p>And here may come a brief memory I wrote lately of Colonel Fred. Burnaby +for an American editor.</p> + +<p>"I am asked to give a short note of personal reminiscence about my +lately departed friend, Colonel <i>Fred. Burnaby</i>, with whom I was +intimate for three years before his death. Every one has read his +popular life, and heard of his many exploits; how alone in mid-air he +navigated a balloon across the Channel; how he accomplished, in spite of +State telegrams to the contrary, his adventurous and patriotic ride to +Khiva in dead winter and defying perils of all sorts; how he stood six +feet four in his stockings (with another foot to be added to that +magnificent specimen of manhood when in jack-boots and in his plumed +helmet); how he was strong enough to bind a kitchen poker round his +neck, to crack cobnuts in his fingers, and to carry a pair of Shetland +ponies upstairs under his arms,—how also the genial giant, quite the +Arac of Tennyson's Princess, was the gentlest and kindest and least +dangerous of knights-errant (unless, indeed, his just wrath was aroused +by anything mean or insolent, when doubtless he could be terrible), and +how he was the idolised of men, especially his own brother giants of the +Royal Regiment of Blues, and naturally was also the adored of women +wherever he showed himself. This Admirable Crichton had every social +accomplishment, but as he was also gifted with a knowledge of many +tongues, even to Turkish and Arabic, beyond the more familiar French, +German, Italian, and Spanish, of course he must dare all sorts of +perilous travel, if only to prove that he was no carpet-knight, no mere +'gold stick' at court, or silver-casqued statue at the Horse Guards. So +he fearlessly risked his life in all ways on every possible occasion +which the War Office routine gave him on holiday.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Khiva and Kars, and of late at last the fatal Mahdi war, had +fascinations for him of danger which his thirst for active service (too +much refused to him as obliged officially to be a stay-at-home) had not +power to resist; and we all know how gallantly, if indeed too rashly, he +fought and fell on what his Viking blood loved best as a deathbed, the +field of battle. For he came of an old Teutonic family, and on his +mother's side was also a direct descendant, as he told me himself, of +our heroic and gigantic King Edward III., whom he is said greatly to +have resembled, as the portrait at Windsor Castle proves. We were +talking about ancestry and the anecdote came out naturally enough.</p> + +<p>"In politics a strong Conservative, he, with characteristic antagonism, +chose radical Birmingham for his coveted seat in Parliament, but alas! +he has not lived to hazard the election. He was a neat, fluent, and +epigrammatic speaker, as potent with his tongue as with his sword; and +as for the pen (albeit his handwriting must have puzzled compositors), +the myriads of readers who have enjoyed his stirring books in print, can +testify how brilliant and eloquent he was for the matter of authorship. +He told me of a new novel—of the satirico-political sort—which he had +written for the press, but as yet we hear nothing definite of its +publication.</p> + +<p>"My own personal acquaintance with the familiar 'Fred. Burnaby' was +confined to several hospitable dinner-parties at the house of his +relative, Lady W——, my near neighbour and friend at Norwood, about +which I might anecdotise to any extent; but I never allow myself to +record private conversation nor to reveal domesticities. All such are +sacred in my memory, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> on principle I despise the modern +mischief-maker whose reminiscences are practically reminuisances. On a +certain public occasion, however, Burnaby stood by me, to my great +pleasure and advantage, and let me record his kindness thus. When I gave +my lecture on Flying at the Royal Aquarium, he most appropriately took +the chair, and made some excellent remarks. Altogether, let my +testimony, however brief, however inadequate, to the merits of Fred. +Burnaby be this: I lost in his too sudden death a friend, as I had +hoped, for many years to come, and my regrets are for him as one of the +noblest of mankind. Let me add a word further, as the worthy witnessing +of one, quite a kindred spirit, whose acquaintance I made some long time +back, and look for great things from his energy and enterprise, and +multifarious talents,—<i>Charles Marvin</i>, then the famous Eastern +Pioneer, who in his book on Asia, says: "Yes, our Burnabys, our Bakers, +our MacGregors, our Gordons—these are the real pillars of the Empire. +These are the men who confer provinces upon England, who risk their +lives to guard them. When the world is a little older, and the working +man's vote is worth more than the statesman's opinion, then the splendid +achievements of such men will be more generously appreciated: and the +warm English feeling expended to-day on torpid, stupid, unpatriotic +party politicians will be directed towards heroes whose steady undaunted +patriotism, in face of public indifference and bureaucratic disdain, +conveys a moral as grand as their careers."</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">A Dining-out Anecdote.</span></h4> + +<p>As I have before said, not having been much given to society, nor +therefore a professional parasite of Amphi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>tryon (though sometimes +tempted to his side as "a lion," but more often vainly, for I always +refused if I could), I have an instructive anecdote to give about a +celebrated conversationist, whom I will not name nor indicate even by +initials. One evening I found myself compelled to accompany him to a +great man's banquet—<i>nota bene</i>, it was after I had well recovered +speech—and so I found myself at his chambers perhaps ten minutes too +soon. He called to me from his dressing-room, bidding me to amuse myself +till he was ready. Now, on the study table were laid several books, +open, with weights to keep them so: and I glanced from one to another to +while away the time. Then up came his brougham, and off we went. At +dinner my "diner-out" started a topic, whereof innocently enough I +remembered instantly a suitable epigram. Not long after another subject +gave me occasion to tell a witty story, which somehow came to me at the +moment. My "friend" asked me with a keen glance where I had read it, and +at once I recollected those open books and understood the position, +resolving mischievously to outflank the manæuverer. Accordingly, at each +opportunity, with seeming innocence, I "wiped his eye," as they say at a +<i>battue</i>, and certainly reaped the anecdotic "<i>kudos</i>" Mr. So-and-so had +cunningly contrived and hoped to achieve for himself. I confess it was +vicious of me, but who could help taking the benefit of such a chance? +Hosts should beware of wits who cram their jokes and anecdotes. Years +after I met the same gentleman at another entertainer's table, where I +found him in my presence not quite the livener-up they had expected, and +he seemed a little shy of me; probably he thought me an omniscient, for +I never told the poor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> man I had found him out. I fear he has departed +to a world where genuine truthfulness is more accepted as a virtue than +in this.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">A Mormon Guest.</span></h4> + +<p>Quite recently I have had a visit from a young American, who brought me +a letter from a so-called cousin—at all events a namesake—in the Far +West, asking me to tell her about her German ancestry. My visitor was +good-looking, well-dressed, fair-spoken, and gentlemanly; also well-bred +and well-to-do. I will not indicate his name, but I may state that he is +a near relative of the eminent electrician who illuminates so +magnificently the fountains at South Kensington. Of course, as pleased +with his manners and deportment, I kept him to luncheon; and finding +that he hailed from Utah, naturally asked if he knew Salt Lake City and +the Mormons there. Certainly; he lived not a hundred miles from the +city, and those were his own people: as a Mormon himself from infancy, +he had nothing but good to say of them, and we in England had been very +much misled by Mrs. Stenhouse and other travellers. As to plurality of +wives, not two per cent. of their whole 200,000 had more than one wife. +His own father, a rich merchant and a church-hierarch, a "stake" of the +tabernacle (much as we should say a pillar), had but one—his own dear +mother—and he scarcely knew any one with more. It was quite a European +misjudgment that many followed Brigham Young's doctrine, which never had +been Joseph Smith's,—and the present chief, Taylor, had but one. He +showed us many cabinet photographs of Salt Lake City, his own family, +leading Mormons, and the like: especially of the Old Tabernacle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> like a +monstrous tortoise, and one from a finished drawing of the new, of even +more tasteless architecture, being the most gigantic piece of +perpendicular ever perpetrated, and full of unsightly windows. When +asked about the golden book,—well he had never seen it, but believed in +it thoroughly; because all the twelve apostles had seen it and he +trusted their testimony. Eleven of those apostles were now dead, one +only surviving. (Just as with our friends of Mr. Irving's sect at +Albury, which arose in the same year as Mormonism.) We had never set +eyes on the originals of our own Scriptures—in fact, they did not +exist—but believed the witnessing of others, as he did. He himself was +not a missionary, but would go if he was sent by the Church; though he +mightn't like it, he was bound to, obey, authority, &c. &c.</p> + +<p>I had plenty more talk with him, and found him intelligent, modest, and +in every way a remarkably agreeable young fellow: and I added to my +mental <i>repertoire</i> of better judgments that on Mormonism,—even as +heretofore Mr. Sinnett has taught me not utterly to despise Buddhism, +Dr. Wilkinson to revere Swedenborgianism, and a few other people I might +name who are true believers, to be charitable as to other sorts of +strange isms: once I met a very religious clergyman who still held by +Johanna Southcote; and we have all heard how Lady Hester Stanhope had an +Arab horse always ready saddled for Messiah when He is to ride into +Jerusalem; and how some other person had a gold spoon and fork laid +daily at his table for the sudden coming of a Divine Guest! Our personal +lesson is to be tolerant of all manner of innocent enthusiasms, to hear +both sides and bear with all opinions,—some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>times finding to our +astonishment that black sheep may after all be whiter than they looked, +and that uncharitable prejudice is but another name for ignorant folly. +Before taking leave of my Mormon guest, I ought to report that he was +teetotal, handsome, taciturn rather than talkative, a hunter among the +Rockies, an author himself, and of course an old book-friend, so I made +him happy with some autographic poetries.</p> + +<p>With reference to "Joe Smith's" own theological creed, there is a very +neat and notable <i>précis</i> of it on p. 171 of a bright little book I have +lately read, titled "Frank's Ranche, or my Holiday in the Rockies," +easily accessible. That creed is so good that when I read it aloud to my +homeflock they said, "Why, we believe all that!"—and as to the evil +matter of many wives, not only did the original Joseph repudiate that +doctrine, but his namesake son, still a chief among the Mormons, does +the same, and so far has seceded from the Brigham heresy: which a son of +mine says is not bigamy, but Brighamy.</p> + +<p>A few forgotten anecdotes may here find place: take these twelve as +samples of many more such trivials which memory may have at the bottom +of her well, if she only dipped for them.</p> + +<p>1. A banknote experience: when a very small child I used to be taken to +the Postford paper-mill at Albury by my nurse, who had a follower (or a +followed) in the foreman there. While they talked together, I was +deputed to amuse myself by making banknote paper, as thus: a spoonful of +pulp put into a shallow tray of wire and shaken deftly made a small +oblong of paper duly impressed with Britannia and water-marked: being +then dried on a flannel pad. Many years after, when I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> preparing for +Oxford under Mr. Holt at Postford House, there was discovered a secret +cupboard in the wall of his drawing-room which was found to contain +several forged plates for printing banknotes: and this discovery +accounted for the recent suicide of a Mr. H——, a previous owner of the +paper-mill, who evidently feared exposure and conviction. No one now is +allowed to make banknote paper, except the honourable firm of Messrs. +Portal, which has the monopoly thereof: but when I was a child, any one +might do it, and if there was a forger handy, fraud was possible to any +extent. Our "Newland's Corner" on Merrow Downs is so called from Abraham +Newland, whose name is printed on old banknotes as F. May is on new +ones, and who owned Postford Mill. Hence the word "Sham-Abram" for a +forged note.</p> + +<p>2. A noted piscatorial editor wishes me to record now I once caught a +trout with its own eye—as thus: I was whipping the Tillingbourne, and +hooked a fish foul, for it dropped off leaving an eye on the hook. In my +vexation I made a cast again over the same spot where I had thrown, and +actually caught that eager wounded fish with its own eye.</p> + +<p>3. When I was a guest of Captain Hamilton at Rozelle, Ayr, he told me +that he and all the crew had seen the sea-serpent!—but that his admiral +had interdicted all mention of it in the log for fear of ridicule: on +which I told him what I had seen of the same sort. When crossing the +great Herring Pond in the <i>Arctic</i>, the passengers were all summoned on +deck from dinner to see that mystery of the deep, the sea-serpent. It +was very rough at the time, and certainly within a little distance some +apparent monster hundreds of feet long was rolling on the top of the +waves: <i>but</i> as some por<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>tions of it spouted, we soon saw there nothing +but a school of whales, the big bull leading and the cows and calves +following in a line. This looked like the real thing,—but wasn't. From +other evidence, however, and the Rev. J. G. Wood supplies one, I do +believe there are such monsters of the deep whose nest is in the +Sargasso Sea.</p> + +<p>4. Here is a curious item of my biography. When I was in Canada in 1851, +at an hotel in Kingston, the waiter comes to tell me that two persons +wanted to see me on special business. Admitted, there appeared a very +decent man and woman dressed in their best, and with ribbons and +flowers. What might they want with me? Please, Mr. Tupper, that you +would marry us! My good man, I can't, I'm not a clergyman. Oh but, sir, +you write religion, and we like your books, and we've come across from +New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, +I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated +advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair +departed sorrowfully. If I <i>had</i> read the service over them, possibly +their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with +Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. Moreover, +there's no penalty from one State to another: and even on board ship the +captain may read services, and on land the Consul marries.</p> + +<p>5. A picture story. I am invited to a dinner where a rich New Yorker has +asked some connoisseur friends to inspect his new purchase, a Raffaelle +Madonna and child, for which he has just given a fabulous amount of +dollars. I was asked for special judgment as an artistic Englishman. +Well: the drawing was perfect; but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> didn't like the colouring: I knew +the picture, having seen the original somewhere on the Continent: but +this couldn't be a copy, as it was less than life-size; so, while most +of the other guests praised profusely, I requested to withhold my +opinion of its merits till I could examine it in daylight,—which, as I +was to sleep in the house, was easy next morning. When my eager host +appeared, I took him alone after breakfast into his study, and proved to +him what, alas! I had too truly suspected, that however well painted +with the over-accuracy of a miniature and absolutely correct as was the +drawing,—his prize Raffaelle was after all only an oil-coloured +engraving! This he wouldn't believe, triumphantly showing me the ancient +canvas at the back: but when I told him that between that canvas and the +paint he would find paper, and when a penknife scratch under the +frame-edge proved it,—he naturally stormed at the dealer who had taken +him in, until I suggested a disgorging of the dollars, and promising my +own silence as to the discovery, left him a wiser man and a grateful.</p> + +<p>6. How often the poor letter H has crushed oratory and destroyed +eloquence! Do I not remember how notably a late Lord Mayor raised the +echoes of the Egyptian Hall to an explosion of laughter, by commencing +grandiloquently, "When hi survey the dignity of my 'igh position," &c. +&c.; and similarly what a disastrous effect a certain preacher caused in +church by the announcement, "This is the hare, come let us kill him?" +But we all know the mysteries of H and W: Æsop Smith wrote a fable about +them, whereof this is the finale: "H," said King Cadmus, "one of my +oldest friends! never can I spare your respectable presence; your +ancestor is the throat-uttered Heth of Moses; even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> as you, dear W, are +descended from the stately digamma of Homer. Believe me, I value both of +you all the more for graceful ambiguities: mystery is priceless to your +king, and your usage is obscure: therefore do I lay upon you higher +honour. Henceforth, ye vowel magnates, and you my faithful commons +consonants, take heed that no one be accounted literate or eloquent who +places these my oldest friends in a dilemma. Their right use is a +mystery; so be it; but woe be unto those whose innate want of taste +profanes that mystery. Honour be to H, and worship be to W; and let +those who misuse their secret excellences dread the vengeance of King +Cadmus!"</p> + +<p>7. Yet a seventh whimsical anecdote rises to the surface. When Prince +Albert was made a fellow of Lincoln's Inn, and dined in the New Hall, I +was present at the banquet. There was a roast joint and one bottle of +port to each mess of four barristers: one would think a supply more than +ample: however, some thirsty souls wanted more wine for the great +occasion, and the complaint found utterance ludicrously thus. When the +National Anthem was sung, some young lawyer who gave the solos, with a +good tenor voice and no end of dry humour, raised a gale of laughter and +applause by singing very devoutly—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Long to reign over us<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Happy and glorious,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Three half-pints 'mong four of us,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i6">God save the Queen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of course, plenty more bottles were the result,—and the genial Prince +Albert laughed as heartily as the rest of us.</p> + +<p>8. Yet another anecdote, in these days of professional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> mendicancy not +uninstructive. One day when calling on the Rev. Robert Anderson, at +Brighton, a begging visitor came in, calling himself a Polish refugee, +and speaking broken English: Mr. Anderson in his kindness was just about +to open his purse, when I said to both of them, "I happen to know a +little Polish, and wish to ask a few questions:" accordingly, I rapped +out at intervals, with an interrogating air, the opening lines of the +Antigone of Sophocles! on which that "banished lord," stammering out +that he had been out of Poland so many years that he had forgotten the +language, bowed himself from the room as a—discovered, impostor.</p> + +<p>9. The recent lamentable fire at Kegan Paul's, wherein so much authorial +wealth was cremated,—and especially no fewer than six of the works of +that clever authoress, Emily Pfeiffer,—reminds me of an irrevocable +loss sustained by "Proverbial Philosophy" owing to Oudinot's capture of +Rome in 1849: for it so happened that the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna +had, as instructress to his nieces, a lady who afterwards became Mrs. +Robinson of South Kensington Museum: she, a great admirer of the work, +translated my book for them into Italian, and had it printed at Rome, +where unluckily both the whole MS. and the finished sheets were all +burnt in the city's bombardment. I have since asked Mrs. Robinson if she +could possibly reproduce it: but—the occasion passed, there is now +neither time nor need for it, and so my Italian version has no +existence, except possibly as photographed on the "blue ether" whither +Professor Tyndall hopes to go. A similar fatality, we may remember, +affected Sir Isaac Newton through his little dog Diamond: and my friend +in old days, Gilbert Bur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>nett, the botanist, had to rewrite his index, a +heartrending labour, because a careless housemaid lit a fire with it.</p> + +<p>10. And this further reminds me of the perils to which an author's MSS. +are perpetually exposed; <i>e.g.</i>, before I put a spring lock on my study +at Albury (where, by the way, I wrote several of my early Proverbial +chapters with a child on my knee) I used to find my papers regularly put +out of order by the maid arranging the room; and upon my cautioning her +not to destroy anything, I was horrified by the unconscious Audrey's +instant reply, "O sir! I never burns no papers but what is spoilt by +being written on." Again, I remember to have cautioned my Suffolk +friend, Mrs. Crabtree, who had a fine library, not to keep her servants +short of firepaper, as they might possibly help themselves out of bound +books; whereat she was indignant, as if I was traducing a favourite +menial: however, I went round with her, unfortunately proving the +delinquency by exhibiting several handsome volumes with middle leaves +torn out!—Once more, in the prehistoric days when we sported with loose +powder and shot and paper wadding, I was a guest for some days in +September with James Maclaren at Ticehurst, and recollect his horror at +finding that the luncheon sandwiches were wrapped in some of his most +precious MSS.—for he was writing a treatise on finance, and these +leaves were covered with calculations—and that his shooting-party were +ramming down their charges with the recorded labour of his brains! It +was at Maclaren's that I once tasted squirrel; his woods were infested +with the pretty creatures, which the keeper shot, and after keeping the +skin gave the carcase to the cook: it tasted like very nutty rabbit: but +I protested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> it was a greater outrage than lark-pudding, which I had +recently seen at the Judges' Sentence dinner at Newgate, and said it was +a shame to eat the sweet songsters. At Maclaren's I learnt the origin of +"high" as applied to eatables. His game-larder was a tower of many bars, +the lowest containing a to-day's shooting, the next yesterday's, and so +forth, always moving up; hence the stalest were at the top, and so most +serviceable as least fresh. Trench on words would approve this reason +for "high" game.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">11. <i>Providence.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo! we are led; we are guided and guarded<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Carefully, kindly, by night and by day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Punish'd belike, or haply rewarded,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As we go wrong or go right on the way;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wisdom and Mercy, twin angels of kindness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Take by both hands the child lost in the night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leading him safely, in spite of his blindness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Guiding him well through the dark to the light.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All things are ordered,—the least as the greatest;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Motes have their orbits as fixt as a star,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thou may'st mark, if humbly thou waitest,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Providence working in all things that are:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nothing shall fail in its ultimate object,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Good must outwrestle all evil at last;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God is the King, and creation His subject,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the great future shall ransom the past.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay, and this present,—perplexing, degrading—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">None may despise it as futile or worse;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Swift as it flieth, dissolving and fading,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis the wing'd seed of some blessing or curse.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Telescope, microscope,—which hath most wonder?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Infinite great, or as infinite small?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Musical silence, or world-splitting thunder?—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He that made all things inhabits them all.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">IV.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea; for this present,—each inch and each second<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hath its own soul in a thought or a word;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ev'n as I watch, God's finger hath beckon'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ev'n as I wait, God's whisper is heard!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trifles, some judge them, that finger, that whisper,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But on such pivots vast issues revolve;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those are the watchful reminders of Mizpah,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Jazer and Bethel, Life's secret to solve!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">V.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Mizpah,—for carefulness, honour, uprightness;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Jazer,—by penitence, meekness, and faith;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bethel,—in foretastes of gladness and brightness,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These are the keynotes to life out of death:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Providence bidding, and prudence obeying,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou shalt have peace from beginning to end,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thankfully, trustfully, instantly praying,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Walking with God as thy Father and Friend."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>12. Apropos to my mention of Mortimer Collins' visit to Albury on +another page, I make this extract from his "Pen Sketches by a Vanished +Hand," vol. i. pp. 167, 168:—</p> + +<p>"<i>A Walk through Surrey.</i></p> + +<p>"At Albury I called upon a poet,—one whom critics love to assail, but +who derides critics and arrides the public. Pleasant indeed is the fine +old house, with emerald lawn and stately trees, wherein he resides. Not +Horace in his Sabine farm, nor Catullus at Tiburs, had a more poetic +retreat than the author of "Proverbial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> Philosophy" at Albury. But, like +Catullus, the advent of May had set the poet longing for a flight far +away:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Jam cœli furor æquinoctialis<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Jucundis Zephyri silescit auris;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Jam mens prætrepidans avet vagari<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Jam læti studio pedes vigescunt.'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he was about to take wing for sea-side resorts, and the soft +cyclades of the Channel, beloved by Victor Hugo.</p> + +<p>"Right hospitable was he; a bottle of cool claret cheered the dusty +wayfarer, and an hour's pleasant talk was even more cheering. Hence I +walked through Albury Park towards Gomshall."</p> + +<p>The exquisite bit from Catullus will best excuse my otherwise +egotistical quotation.</p> + +<p>A few more anecdotes about literary men and things may here find place. +Take these respecting <i>Thackeray</i>, and <i>Leech</i>, both of which immortal +humorists were my schoolfellows at the Charterhouse; but, as I have +said, they having the misfortune to be merely lower-form boys, and your +present scribe ranging as a dignified Emeritus, of course there was then +a great gulf between us, pleasantly to be bridged over in after life. +Thackeray's career has long been fully detailed in public, and I can +have little to add of much consequence; but I call to mind how that +quiet small cynic—so gigantic in all senses afterwards—used to +caricature Bob Watki and the other masters on the fly-leaves of his +classbooks, to the scandal of myself and other responsible monitors; +these illustrated classics having since been sold by auction at high +prices. But "My School-Days" have recorded all that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p> + +<p>As to Leech, who probably adorned his books similarly, he, being a +day-boy and allowed for safety to scuttle out of the playground before +school broke up, came not equally under our surveillance in those days; +but long years after, when that genial and witty friend and true +gentleman was my guest at Albury, I had great delight in his company, +and he helped cleverly to illustrate (along with divers other artists) +my "Crock of Gold" and "Proverbial Philosophy," and in part "The +Anglo-Saxon." I remember a characteristic little anecdote about him, as +thus:—</p> + +<p>We went angling together to Postford Pond, on a fine hot day, thinking +less of possible sport than of sandwiches and sherry, and an idle lounge +on a sloping bank in the shade, and haply (though for myself I am no +smoker) the calmly contemplative cigar. As we lay there, in +<i>dolce-far-niente</i> fashion, all at once Leech jumped up with a vigorous +"Confound that float! can't it leave me at peace? I've been watching it +bobbing these five minutes, and now it's out of sight altogether—hang +it!" With that hearty exclamation of disgust pulling up a brilliant +two-pound perch, the glory of the day! Next week's <i>Punch</i> had a +pleasant comic sketch of this petty incident, thereby immortalised by +the famous "bottled leech."</p> + +<p>It always struck me that Tenniel and he were a well-matched pair, in +kindliness, cleverness, and good looks; and I never can think of one +without the other—<i>arcades ambo; par nobile fratrum</i>.</p> + +<p>Thackeray lived to have his full revenge of Dr. Birch, in our day the +reigning tyrant of Charterhouse; and Russell well deserved his +castigation both by pen and pencil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<p>Let me also give a brace of home sketches of Longfellow. I have had two +principal interviews with him in his beautiful home at Cambridge, +Massachusetts, at the wide interval between those visits of twenty-five +years. Of the first of these I record a few words from my American MS. +journal in 1851, adding some unwritten thoughts and recollections. On +April 16th, then, in the year just named, Longfellow wrote to me +cordially, and with much kindly appreciation, and soon after, calling on +me at Boston, took me off in his carriage over the flooded lowlands to +the ancient (for America) University of Cambridge, where the Queen +Anne-like colleges are nestled in fine old elms. He treated me, of +course, most hospitably, and had asked several friends to meet the +traveller; but one, a chief guest, was otherwise engaged, and so I +missed Lowell, to my great disappointment. It is not my "form" to detail +private conversation, nor to describe the Lares and Penates of sacred +domesticity; but I may reveal generally that I spent several golden +hours of intellectual communion with the Abbott Laurences, Ticknor, +Fields, Prescott, and Everett—illustrious names, which will +sufficiently indicate the reception they gave me. At this time of day I +cannot remember the thousand "winged speeches" that flew about that +genial board, and, as I failed, from conscientious motives, to record +them in my journal, I will not invent, after thirty-four years have +passed over my memory, with their crowds of other words and fancies. Be +this enough: I recollect to have asked Longfellow why he wrote +Excelsi<i>or</i>, and not the more grammatical Excelsi<i>us</i>, as the title to +one of his most famous poems. The reason is a curious one; he wrote +those stirring verses, by request, on the motto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> for the New York +coat-of-arms, which is legended not quite accurately, Excelsi<i>or</i>. And +when, in the same line of thought, I inquired why he named a German +story "Hyperion," with no apparent reason from classical associations, +he pertinently enough answered me by pronouncing the name <i>huper-iown</i>, +("going higher"), the story being a tale of progress in human character.</p> + +<p>And now to leap over twenty-five years, at which interval I paid my +second visit to America in 1876, when again I had the privilege of being +Longfellow's guest in the same historic abode where Washington had once +his headquarters. My kind-hearted host insisted on my occupying the same +arm-chair I had before, and which since, he said, had been the throne of +Dickens and Thackeray, and every book-celebrity that had visited +Cambridge. Among invited guests unable to come was Oliver Wendell +Holmes, but I soon after made up for this loss by having a long talk +with that shrewd and amusing writer at Boston; and once more, alas! no +Lowell, whom I missed again, though I had waited for him that quarter of +a century! Longfellow, out of compliment (so he kindly said) to his +English guest, had specially provided pheasants and Stilton cheese, +among such more Transatlantic delicacies as wild venison (from Tupper +Lake, in the Adirondacks), and canvas-back ducks from Baltimore; to say +less of terrapin soup, whereof the unhatched eggs of tortoises are the +<i>bonne-bouche</i>! After dinner he gave me an apple from Beaupré, +Evangeline's farm, the pips whereof I sent to Albury for planting. +Longfellow was much interested to hear that my collateral ancestor had +married Martha, the heiress of "the Vineyard" in Rhode Island. Mr. +Fields, on this festive occasion, recited some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> Mark Twain's humour, +and I had to give sundry of my American ballads, and the host himself +his exquisite "Psalm of Life;" my "Venus," in reply to his "Mars," +having appeared, and been praised by him, some years before. And this +meagre record is all I care, or have space, to give of that feast of +reason and flow of soul.</p> + +<p>With <i>Charles Kingsley</i>, however seldom we met, I had strong sympathy in +many ways, as a man of men, to be loved and admired; but chiefly we +could feel for each other in the matter of stammering,—a sort of +affliction not sufficiently appreciated. Kingsley conquered his +infirmity, as I did mine, and rose to frequent eloquence in his public +ministrations: privately his speech would often fail him, and was his +"thorn in the flesh" to the end.</p> + +<p>I remember a most pleasant day spent with him about the fishponds and +cascades of Wotton,—and I noted how skilfully he threw the fly some +five-and-twenty feet under the bushes, to the wonder of a gaping trout, +soon to find its lodging in the creel: and our kind host may still +recollect, as I do, how charming was our intercourse that day with the +genial author of "Yeast," "Alton Lock," "Hypatia," "Westward ho!" and +other of our favourites. I have met Kingsley later, in his cloistered +nest, as Canon of Westminster, and remember how heartily he expressed +his abundant charity for all sorts of miserable sinners, especially +about one of whom I came to speak, for there never lived a more +universal excuser of human imperfection than Charles Kingsley. His bust, +very like him, is in a side chapel of the Abbey, near the west door. +With the learned and eloquent Canon Farrar, too, I have held converse in +the same Broad Sanctuary, though but briefly. Harrison Ains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>worth has +often crossed my orbit. In particular, as a very early contributor to +his magazine (wherein, by the way, my "Flight upon Flying" originally +appeared, to be afterwards reproduced at the Royal Aquarium a year or +two ago), I was among his invited guests at Kensal Manor house, for the +inauguration of his magazine, meeting Douglas Jerrold, Blanchard, Albert +Smith, and others of like note. Also, at Lord Mayor's feasts we have +periodically met, and at Literary Fund dinners. I may mention that when +we came near one another a few years since, at the Mansion-House, an +American friend with me was startled at the resemblance between +Ainsworth and myself: in fact, our photographic portraits have often +been mutually sold for each other, and I remember in a shop window +seeing my name written under a photo clearly not myself, however like; +and my daughter with me said "It must be a mistake, for you never had +such a waistcoat as that," it being a brilliant plaid: so we went in to +set matters right, and the shopman, in correcting the mistake, observed +he didn't wonder, we were so alike: furthermore, on the outside cover of +a cheap edition of Ainsworth's "James II.," his portrait is the very +counterpart of one painted, by Rochard, long years ago, of myself.</p> + +<p>I was well acquainted, fifty-five years ago, with three eminent men, who +afterwards became viceroys, as their fellow classman and collegian at +Christ Church. At that time two of them were only younger sons in their +"pupa" or pupil phases of Ramsay and Bruce, and wore the same commoner's +gown as myself; the third, though a "tuft" by courtesy, had not yet come +to his heritage. All these three succeeded one another in the high +position of a Governor-General of India, and were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> famous architects of +our imperial greatness. I remember on either side of me in Biscoe's +memorable Aristotle class before mentioned, the young Ramsay, afterwards +Dalhousie, that great pro-consul who annexed a third of our Indian +Empire; and the young Bruce, afterwards Elgin, famous from Canada to +China; the former slim, ascetic, and reserved; the latter a perfect +contrast, being stout, genial, and outspoken; while Canning, tall and +good-looking, with curly dark hair and florid complexion, is mentionable +also for his fluency of speech and cordiality of manner—hereditaments, +doubtless, of his distinguished father. Of Lord Elgin I have many +pleasant memories, especially when he hospitably received me at Toronto, +whither he had recently migrated from Montreal (as I thought unwisely), +because the French Canadians there had insulted him. In this connection +I may give an anecdote to the point. Soon after my return from America +in 1851 I dined with my neighbour at Albury, Henry Drummond, the +humoursome M.P., always not a little good-naturedly mischievous. He knew +that I had not approved of Lord Elgin's petulant removal of his +viceroyal establishment from Montreal to Toronto, and cunningly resolved +to draw me out before witnesses on the matter. Now I had taken in to +dinner an elderly Scotch lady unknown to me, and sat next to her of +course. Soon my lively host somewhat unfairly asked me about my visit to +Canada, and what I thought of the then notorious flight of the Governor +to far distant Toronto,—forcing me to express my disapproval, which +naturally as an honest man I did, on which my left-hand neighbour, a +lady of rank whom I knew, whispered "Mind what you are saying, you took +in his mother." Accordingly, I had frankly to turn and say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> "And I'm +sure Lady Elgin will agree with me, and you too, Mr. Drummond, for no +captain should fly from his post because he's laughed at." This candid +speech was fortunately applauded all round the table, and not least by +the friendly Countess and the baffled mischief lover.</p> + +<p>Lord Elgin most kindly interested himself in the restoration of the +Brock monument at Queenstown Heights, which had then recently been +damaged by gunpowder, and is since rebuilt: my good reason for asking +his aid being that Sir Isaac Brock was my near relative (his mother +bearing my name), and that he had saved Canada by his death in victory.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI.</h2> + +<h4>A FEW OLDER FRIENDSHIPS.</h4> + + +<p>It is only fair and right that I make special mention of some +friendships of many years, connected more or less with literary matters. +Among such names in the past occurs one, if not very eminent, to me at +least very kindly, that of Benjamin Nightingale, an antiquarian friend +for nearly forty years. We first became acquainted in Sotheby's auction +room, where I perceived at once his generous nature, by this token: we +had been competing for a miscellaneous lot of coins, which he +bought,—and then lifting his hat he asked me which of them I had +specially wanted; these I indicated, of course thinking that he meant me +to buy them of him,—but he immediately insisted upon giving them, if I +would allow him. This fair beginning led to better acquaintance, often +improved under our mutual roof-trees. It was his ambition to be my +Boswell, as he has sometimes told me; and probably there are bundles +somewhere of <i>his</i> MSS. and of <i>our</i> antiquarian letters (he wrote very +well), about which I have vainly made inquiry of a near relative, who +knew nothing about them. Some day they'll turn up.</p> + +<p>Nightingale was much pleased to find himself recorded in my "Farley +Heath," as to both verse and prose. He has been in the Better World some +twelve years,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> and his widow gave me the collections he called his +Tupperiana.</p> + +<p>I confess that the following poem wherein my genial friend figures,—and +which many judges have liked as among my best balladisms, is one reason +for this record of B. N.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Farley Heath.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Many a day have I whiled away<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Upon hopeful Farley Heath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In its antique soil digging for spoil<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of possible treasure beneath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Celts, and querns, and funereal urns,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And rich red Samian ware,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sculptured stones and centurions' bones<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May all lie buried there!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How calmly serene, and glad have I been<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From morn till eve to stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My men, no serfs, turning the turfs<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The happy livelong day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With eye still bright, and hope yet alight,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wistfully watching the mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the spade brings up fragments of things<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fifteen centuries old!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pleasant and rare it was to be there<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On a joyous day of June,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the circling scene all gay and green<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Steep'd in the silent moon;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When beauty distils from the calm glad hills,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From the downs and dimpling vales;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every grove, lazy with love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whispereth tenderest tales!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O then to look back upon Time's old track,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And dream of the days long past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Rome leant here on his sentinel spear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And loud was the clarion's blast;—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> +<span class="i0">As wild and shrill from Martyr's Hill<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Echoed the patriot shout;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or rush'd pell-mell with a midnight yell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The rude barbarian rout!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes; every stone has a tale of its own,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A volume of old lore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And this white sand from many a brand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Has polish'd gouts of gore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Holmbury Height had its beacon light,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Cantii held old Leith,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Rome stood then with his iron men<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On ancient Farley Heath!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How many a group of that exiled troop<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Have here sung songs of home,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Chanting aloud to a wondering crowd<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The glories of old Rome!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or lying at length have basked their strength<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Amid this heather and gorse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or down by the well in the larch-grown dell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Water'd the black war-horse!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look, look! my day-dream right ready would seem<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The past with the present to join,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For see! I have found in this rare ground<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An eloquent green old coin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With turquoise rust on its Emperor's bust—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some Cæsar, august lord,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the legend terse, and the classic reverse,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Victory, valour's reward!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Victory—yes! and happiness,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Kind comrade, to me and to you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When such rich spoil has crown'd our toil<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And proved the day-dream true;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With hearty acclaim how we hail'd by his name<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Cæsar of that coin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And told with a shout his titles out,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And drank his health in wine!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And then how blest the noon-day rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Reclin'd on a grassy bank,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With hungry cheer and the brave old beer,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Better than Odin drank;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the secret balm of the spirit at calm,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And poetry, hope, and health,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ay, have I not found in that rare ground<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A mine of more than wealth?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another long-time friend also of the antiquarian sort was Walter +Hawkins, with whom I was intimate for many years. His private collection +of coins and curiosities was even larger and costlier than +Nightingale's, and was given by his administratrix to the United Service +Museum, where I believe the bulk of it (perhaps morally mine) still +remains in cases not yet unpacked. He died suddenly, to my great +financial loss; for he was very fond of me, offering himself sponsor and +giving his name to a son of mine; and as a rich old bachelor he used, to +make humorously half promises of benefits to come. In fact, he had +called in his lawyer to take instructions for a new will, and partly at +least had erased or destroyed the old one of a twelve years agone, when, +one raw and wintry morning, he insisted upon seeing a lady from and to +her carriage without his hat (punctilio being his <i>forte</i> and his +fault), caught cold, took to his bed, and was dead in four days! +Accordingly a relative with whom he had not been on the best of terms +for years, administered to his half will, and succeeded to his +possessions. Such is life and its futile expectations.</p> + +<p>Walter Hawkins had many peculiarities: one was this. At great cost he +was long building for himself a tomb at Kensal Green, which he would not +let me see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> till it was finished: he then triumphantly exhibited to my +astonished eyes a domed marble temple with four bronze angels blowing +trumpets east, west, north, and south,—and waited for my approval, +which honestly I could not give. I heard nothing more of this small +mausoleum, for he was a taciturn man: but when, some year or two after, +I went to his funeral and looked in vain for the temple-tomb, I found it +had vanished, and in its stead was a plain marble slab with his simple +name and birthday on it, and a blank left for the date of his death. +Manifestly he had repented of the vaingloriousness of those herald +angels and their dome; and practically took the hint of my dispraise in +the adoption of that humbler tombstone.</p> + +<p>Here is another characteristic trait: some navvy had found an old rusty +anchor near the Thames Tunnel, one of Brunel's ruinous follies,—now, as +we all know, finished and utilised by a railway. This anchor, a small +one, probably lost by some "jolly young waterman," Mr. Hawkins +maintained was Roman; and he had made for it a superb crimson case lined +with satin, which hung on his drawing-room wall at Hammersmith as a +decoration. He was also proud of possessing the paw of the Arctic bear +which had attacked Captain Parry, but from which he escaped, as also did +the bear, for no one is said to have shot the beast: however, there was +the paw in proof: and there were divers other uncommon properties.</p> + +<p>One of the most curious matters about my friend was this: the anagram of +his name in full (and he always wrote Esquire and not Esq.) exactly +describes him, with his peculiarity of greeting one with "<i>Oh</i>, I'm so +glad to see you!" and with his usual signature "W. H.," which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> also he +put on a medal for good conduct to youths, and gave my son one of those +"W. H. medals." Now the words "Oh, Walter Hawkins, Esquire," makes +anagrammatically, "W. H., who likes rare antiques!" exactly his +idiosyncrasy as a man and a collector.</p> + +<p>We all know how strangely "The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, +M.P.," spells, "I am the Whig M.P. who'll be a traitor to England's +rule:"—may it not prove to be prophetic. And still more strange is the +fact that the words "William Ewart Gladstone" spell "Erin, we will go +mad at last!" which seems only too likely. Another curious anagram is +this,—in a far different vein: "Christmas comes but once a year," makes +"So by Christ came a rescue to man." There's no end to these petty word +miracles.</p> + +<p>But to revert to our theme and to conclude it. As a West India merchant, +Mr. Hawkins one day sent me down to Albury a hogshead of sugar and some +sacks of rice, to be given (or, as he preferred it, sold at half price +for honour's sake and not to pauperise) to my poorer neighbours for a +Christmas gift. Well, to please him, I tried to sell, and only raised +the rancour of the shopkeepers, who declared I was competing with them +as a grocer: then I gave, with the same experience that soup charity had +before taught me, to wit, that poor quarrelled with poorer, and both +with me, for more or less given. So I was glad when it all came to an +end. It is very difficult, as many a Lady Bountiful knows, to be +charitable on a wide scale: <i>e.g.</i> once, in my country life, I tried to +recommend brown bread and oatmeal; and got nothing by it but ill-will, +as if wishing to starve the poor by denial of wheat-flour.</p> + +<p>Most of us have been checked in such silly efforts to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> do good through +forgetfulness of the fact that usually the poorest are the proudest. +Even the luxurious <i>débris</i> of London Club kitchens must be flung into +swill-barrels for pigs, because starving men and women will not demean +themselves to ask for it at the buttery-hatch. Moreover, that such are +often extravagant too, everybody has found out—here's an instance: In +my legal days, I now and then of course relieved poor folk, and +sometimes passed through Seven Dials: casually, I looked in upon an old +couple to whom I had occasionally given a trifle, believing them to be +near starvation; and I found them roasting a brace of partridges—or was +it quails? for they were waistcoated with bacon,—and I had the charity +to hope they had <i>not</i> stolen them! Anyhow, I never called there again. +And, while I am in Seven Dials, let me record another useful small +experience. There was a lapidary handy, who had at times cut my +beach-found choanites for me. One day I found him making scarabæi out of +bits of agate and lapis lazuli. "Who gave you an order for these," said +I. "Well, sir, I don't rightly know his name; but he was a furriner." +"Was the name Signor——?" "That's it, sir." Then I set off straight to +Sotheby's where I knew the Signor's Egyptian antiquities were soon to be +sold, and duly forewarned the auctioneer of these forgeries. I need not +detail how at the sale he put buyers on their guard, exposing the fraud, +and condemning the peccant scarabæi to extinction. I wonder how many +Grecian bronzes and copper Buddhas have been cast in Birmingham!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Yet another old friend for many years, so far literary in that he was a +sculptor, is to be recorded in Joseph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> Durham: it was he who, more than +thirty years ago, modelled in life and made in marble after death my +beautiful three-year old daughter, little Alice, epitaphed in my poems. +Of Durham's nobleness of character I can here give a charming trait. I +used to go about once a week—sometimes less often—to Alfred Place to +see how Durham was getting on with the statue (a sleeping infant), and +one day, to my astonishment, I perceived that instead of any progress +having been made in the work, it had, miraculously to me, retrograded; +not half so near completion as it was last week. As I was wondering and +perhaps not well pleased, Durham said, "I had hoped you would not call, +till I had made it look as it did last week,—and then you needn't have +known it." "Known what, friend?" "Well, only this; I came to a stain in +the marble, and as I resolved you should have everything of the best,—I +took another block, and have worked at it night and day, in hopes you +wouldn't find me out. There's the other figure, under that cloth." Now, +considering that the new block involved a cost of some twenty +pounds,—and that the old one might have been artificially doctored, and +that anyhow the risk and loss were equitably as much, mine as his,—and +further that the young sculptor had little more than daily bread, if +that,—I do say all this proves Durham to have been the noble fellow I +found him to be for years. He is long gone, like so many other friends, +to that Brighter World. His life-story in this was a touching one, as he +told it to me; and I think known to very few besides myself. In youth he +loved and was beloved; but friends and circumstances hindered; so she +married some one else who, to Durham's constant horror and indignation, +treated his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> wife brutally: till, one happy day, he died in some fit, +probably from his own excesses. And then—here comes the sad +climax—when Durham, having achieved fortune and fame, offered himself +to his old love, the now rich widow, she deliberately turned away with a +refusal, and broke his heart! Was it any wonder that his grief sometimes +sought the solace of voluntary forgetfulness, or that certain false +friends of his I wot of have in their teetotal Pharisaism made the evil +most of an occasional infirmity, and have blackened even with printer's +ink the memory of one of God's and Nature's true noblemen! Besides my +little daughter in marble (so charmingly asleep that, in the Royal +Academy, we heard one lady whisper to another, Hush, don't talk so loud, +you'll wake her!)—besides <i>that</i>, his <i>chef-d'œuvre</i>, as I always +think, he modelled the bust of her father, now in the Crystal Palace +Gallery,—but would not accept any payment for it! So like Durham,—who +in many secret ways was ever generous and trying to do good: he was +always self-forgetful and only too modest. <i>Apropos</i>, I remember that +when Lord Granville asked the sculptor of Prince Albert's statue at +South Kensington "Whether the Queen, who was so well pleased, could do +anything for him"—suggestive, no doubt, of a knighthood—the dear +unselfish Durham replied, "Thank you, my Lord,—if her Majesty's +pleased, I'm satisfied." So that chance for a title was thrown +heedlessly away,—but we always called him "Sir Joe" ever after: +specially among the "Noviomagians," a band of antiquaries who used to +dine together jovially at many pretended and picturesque sites of the +undiscoverable Noviomagus, and among them I have met and numbered as my +friends Chief Baron Pollok, George Godwin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> Francis Bennoch, Thomas +Wright, Thornbury and Fairholt and other noted names, some of them still +among the living.</p> + +<p>It gave me great pleasure as a Guernseyman to have been chiefly +accessory to a duplicate in bronze of the Good Prince's statue by Durham +being set up at the Pierhead of St. Peter's Port. Interest was exerted +by me to get royal permission for a new cast from the original, +Government giving the metal of old cannons; a collection from house to +house was made throughout the island, granite to any extent was on the +spot, meetings were held, and I had the pleasure to see Durham's grand +work inaugurated there, and to find him welcomed by all the +"Sixties"—ay, and the "Forties" too—with the hospitality for which +Sarnia was in those days proverbial.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In this brief record of my literary life, I ought not to ignore sundry +true and constant book-friends known to me only by correspondence, and +that in some cases through many years. I cannot touch them all, and +shrink even from mentioning one or two, for fear of seeming to omit +others; but I will endeavour to do my best and wisest in the matter.</p> + +<p>Foremost, then, among those unseen favourers of your author is the +Baroness Stanislas von Barnekow, of Engelholme, in Sweden; with whom +during fifteen years I have interchanged certainly fifty letters, if not +more, hers at least being full of the utmost kindliness, cleverness, and +(for a foreigner) even truly poetic eloquence. This tribute to her +talents and warm feelings is only a debt of gratitude. She it was who +voluntarily translated into Swedish my two first series of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> "Proverbial +Philosophy," and many of my lyrics in "Cithara;" and naturally I was +willing to answer her in kind (for the Baroness is an excellent and +well-known poetess in her own land), but, as unfortunately the Swedish +tongue is not among my few accomplishments, I was glad to turn to a +diligent and authorial eldest daughter of mine, who learnt the language +for me, and responded to our unseen friend with many of her poems +rendered into English verse, as she had similarly favoured mine in +Swedish. My said daughter afterwards improved upon the idea by several +more like translations, since published in book-form, as some from the +Sagas, and in particular many original poems of much merit from the pen +of King Oscar and Princess Eugenie, which greatly pleased them, as their +photographs and autographs testified; the Baroness's brother, Count Von +Wrede, who is the King's Chamberlain, having kindly given facilities. I +trust that my old "friend unseen," Stanislas, will not be displeased by +this proof that I remember with appreciation her many expressions of +esteem for my unworthiness.</p> + +<p>Next, I do not know that I have mentioned the late learned Norman poet, +<i>George Métivier</i>, as having long ago translated my "Proverbial +Philosophy" into French; he died at a great age, I think past ninety, +and was highly honoured by his native Guernsey, through life and death; +I remember him with much gratitude for his labour of love in respect of +my book. Through many years also I have corresponded with another Norman +poet, <i>John Sullivan</i>, whose very clever French poems I have often +versified into English for him, and he has returned the compliment by +sending translated fly-leaves of mine over the Gallic world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<p>Let one more in this authorial category be the excellent and learned +<i>Canon R. C. Jenkins</i>, whom I have known from his childhood, and who in +these latter years has routed out for me, chiefly out of Zedler's +"Genealogical Encyclopædia," the heraldry and ancestry of my own +Thuringian pedigree; the Canon being one of our keenest antiquaries in +that line, and having German at his fingers' ends. He comes, as I do, +from old Lutheran stock, and is full both of prose and poetry of a high +class. My best regards to him and his.</p> + +<p>The <i>Rev. Wm. Barnes</i>, of Dorset dialect fame, is another memory; as +also in years past the late <i>Chevalier de Chatelain</i>, a relative of my +Norwood friend, <i>Victor de Pontigny</i>, a well-known musical authority.</p> + +<p>No doubt I have corresponded with most of the literary men of my day, +from Tennyson to—well, I will not sound a bathos, but I do not publish +private notes without permission, and in fact there would be no end of +such printed amenities of literature battledored and shuttlecocked from +one to another. I may, however, mention as a good habit of mine (is it +not a good one?) that, whenever I like a book, I take leave to thank its +author, and have usually received, <i>en révanche</i>, warm letters of their +gratitude from many, especially if young ones. Surely it is proper in a +veteran so to encourage a juvenile or even a mature brother, should he +seem to deserve it. As also, be it known, that sometimes I have taken up +the pen faithfully and honestly to rebuke: in these realistic and +atheistic days there are some modern writers, both of prose and poetry, +older or younger, who have reason to thank me for timely +expostulations,—if they have attended to my friendly strictures.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII.</h2> + +<h4>POLITICAL.</h4> + + +<p>Throughout my lengthened spell of life I never was anything of a zealous +politician. Well acquainted, as I have been, with many men of all manner +of opinions, and having had much the schooling of Ulysses, who had "seen +the cities of many men and had known their minds," I know perfectly well +that there are in every school of thought good men, and bad men too, +whatever may be their alleged principles, and I am quite willing to +believe in an <i>honest</i> man, and stand by him if need be. In that spirit, +for many years when I was a West Surrey voter (indeed I am so still), I +used to give one of my votes to Briscoe, the Whig, and the other to +Drummond, the Tory, because I knew and trusted both of them for upright +men as well as personal friends, and they sat together as our +Parliamentary representatives. As a matter of course, nobody understood +my duplex voting,—for they were partisans and I was not,—so in that as +in some other matters I have always been a dark horse, quite +independent, and of the broadgauge pattern rather than of the narrow. +For instance, having known him from youth to age, I do not even yet +despair of Gladstone; though I have remained much where we both began, +whilst he has gone down lower, step by step, to a zero of—what is +it?—inverted am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>bition, whither I cannot willingly descend with him; +and yet, I do not count him an enemy: he follows his conscience, as I do +mine. Here was my judgment of the Man thirty years since, printed in No. +53 of my "Three Hundred Sonnets":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gladstone, through youth and manhood many a year<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My constant heart hath followed thee with praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As 'good and faithful;' in thy words and ways<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pure-minded, just, and simple, and sincere:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And as, with early half prophetic ken<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I hailed thy greatness in my college days,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The coming man to guide and govern men,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">How gladly that instinctive prescience then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now do I see fulfill'd—because, thou art<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our England's eloquent tongue, her wise free hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To pour, wherever is her world-wide mart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The horn of plenty over every land;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because, by all the powers of mind and lip<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art the crown of Christian statemanship."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That high praise was once well-deserved, and was cordially given: but +since, alas! according to my lights I have seen fit more than once to +"palinode." The great man's rock of peril, whereon to wreck both his +country and himself, is that fatal eloquence by which all are captured, +but (as with birdlime) are captured to their loss. But I will not +reproduce invidiously—as if false to a fifty years' friendship—any +harsh reproach, however conscientious, whereby I may have publicly +withdrawn my praise. Rather will I pass on,—and after my own fashion +will here show my ambidextrous muse in a brace of political unpublished +lyrics on either side.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Popularis Aura.</i>"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Liberty! dragg'd from the fetters of kings,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Liberty! dug from the cell of the priest—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise to thy height upon zenith-borne wings!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spread to thy breadth from the west to the east!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Slow, through the ages, unbound limb by limb,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou hast been rescued from tyranny's maw,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only glad service still yielding to Him<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who ruleth in love by the sceptre of law!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nations have torn thee by fierce civil strife<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From the usurpers who trod them to mud;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saints at the stake gave up agonised life<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That superstitions be drown'd in hot blood!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Theirs was the battle—the conquest is ours—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Free souls and bodies the death-wrestled prize<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Won from bad kingcraft, despoiled of its powers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wrench'd from false priestcraft in spite of its lies!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God made the freeman, but man made the slave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forcing his brother the shackle to wear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all those fetters are loosed in the grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">King, priest, and serf meeting equally there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here, too, and now, in these swift latter days,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Freedom all round is humanity's right;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thought, speech, and action, enfranchised all ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Eager for service in Liberty's might."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That may be truly labelled Liberal: the next, in honour of Beaconsfield, +may be fairly ticketed Tory:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Great Achiever, first in place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">England's son of Israel's race!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man whom none could make afraid,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Self-reliant and self-made,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Potent both by tongue and pen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the hearts and mouths of men,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Wielder in each anxious hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the mighty people's power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wise to scheme, and bold to do,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who can this be,—history, who?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Heaper of a new renown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even on Victoria's crown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mightiest friend of blessed peace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By commanding wars to cease,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Paralysing faction still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Swift in act and strong of will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forcing every foe to cower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under Britain's patient power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like himself, firm, frank, and true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who can this be,—justice, who?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For other of my politicals, take this common-sense essay from my pen, +hitherto unpublished:—</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>IS THE ONE-VOTE SYSTEM RIGHT OR WRONG?</p> + +<p>In a nation self-governed through its own representatives, it seems +reasonable to admit that each citizen should have a vote; each citizen, +we say, simply as such; whether male or female, labourer, pauper, civil, +military, naval, or official, every one not convicted of crime nor an +attested lunatic, of full age, of sufficient capacity (evidenced by +being able to read and write), celibate or married, rich or poor,—every +person in our commonwealth should equitably, it may well be conceded, +have his or her single vote in the government of the country. Poverty is +no crime, therefore the Workhouse should not disfranchise; sex is no +just disqualification, therefore the woman should have her vote as +freely as the man, for surely marriage ought not to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> suffer derogation +and disgrace by denial of the common right of citizenship as its +penalty; the soldier, sailor, policeman, government-official, and any +other class which may now be deprived of their birthright by law or +custom, should certainly be admitted to the poll like other patriotic +citizens; in short, manhood suffrage, it may be theoretically argued, is +just and wise—manhood of course including womanhood, as suggested +above; for even a wife either sides with her husband or controls him in +common cases; and in the less usual instances where he rules, there need +be no more tyranny about political matters than about domesticities, and +so the home would scarcely be any the worse even for partisan zeal.</p> + +<p>However, whilst admitting the theoretical propriety of a one vote for +each citizen in the state, there remains to be considered the higher +practical justice of many having more than one. Numbers alone are not +the strength of a people; if of inferior quality they are rather its +weakness. For the Parliament of England representation is demanded of +all the virtues, talents, and acquirements, not certainly of the vice, +ignorance, poverty, and other evils more rife among the lower rungs of +the social ladder than to those above them. The single vote system (so +far as the franchise has any influence at all) depresses and demoralises +every class, as reducing all to one dead level. The ballot plan is now +law and cannot well be done away with; but it is manifestly a +humiliation for intelligence to have to sign with "his mark" in order +that ignorance may thus feel itself on an equality; and for honest +geniality to be hushed into silent secresy, that it may not put to shame +the cunning fraud of a partizan who wishes to hide his real opinion. +However, it is now too late to mend the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> ballot-box: let it be, and let +the single voter use it if he pleases.</p> + +<p>Another and a wiser scheme presents itself, practically (if possible) +even now to avert the national ruin wrought by the machinations of a +rash and blind self-seeking spirit of party, often, seen "hoist by its +own petard," though too liable to destroy the foundations of society in +the explosion. Shortly and simply, the scheme is this. Let every man, +high or low, add to his one vote others as he may and can. Be there a +vote for the Victoria Cross, another for the Albert Medal, another for +long good-service in the household or the farm, another for any such +intellectual exploits among the poor as Samuel Smiles has recorded; all +these being accessible to the humblest, and so elevating them thus far. +And now to ascend a few rungs, let additional votes be given to owners +of a stated number of acres, to possessors of a certain amount of money, +to those who have been deemed worthy of public honours, and the like. A +little further, let every mayor of a town have his official vote, and +the Presidents of the Royal Society and Royal Academy, and perhaps two +or three other chiefs of science and art; and so forth.</p> + +<p>Thus, then, we might get, by way of counterpoise to the voting power of +a bare and overwhelming proletariat, the worthier and far sweeter voices +of those who have virtues and excellences of various kinds to recommend +them,—so that if the lowest constituent counts for one, the highest may +add up to six or eight. And thus, while no one of the mob is denied his +one vote, those who rise above the crowd receive the more than one they +have earned by good-doing or position, and plump them all accordingly to +the worthiest candidate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + +<p>The method of ascertaining and ensuring such votes might be this. Let +each man who has more than his single suffrage apply for the paper +specially prepared to indicate the additional votes. They might be much +as thus:—</p> + +<p class="center padtop"><i>Surplus Claims—One Vote each.</i></p> + +<table class="center" summary="surplus claims"><tbody> +<tr> +<td class="left">For the Victoria Cross</td> <td>Signature of Claimant.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">For the Albert Medal</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">For faithful domestic service in one +family twenty-five years</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">For field-work on the same farm thirty years</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As a famous self-taught naturalist</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As owner in fee of 50 acres</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As possessed of £1000 in Government funds</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As publicly selected for honour by the Queen</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As mayor of such a city</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As President of the Royal Society</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left">As President of the Royal Academy</td> <td class="botright">ditto.</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class="left"> &c. &c. &c.</td><td></td> +</tr> +</tbody></table> + +<p class="padtop">Heavy penalties should attach to false claimants, who would be readily +found by their own signatures.</p> + +<p>All these surplus votes, openly avowed, of course, and not kept secret +as the single one in the ballot-box, would be counted up in the scores +of the several candidates.</p> + +<p>The surplus-voting papers should be applied for, be supplied, and be +returned when filled up—by post, and so all such voting be accomplished +on paper, as in the elections for Oxford University, &c. It is a +barbarism and anachronism at this time of day to insist on the great +cost and inconvenience of a personal appearance, in many cases +impossible.</p> + +<p>If our people in every class, and our legislators of whatever party, are +dissatisfied with the present system of representation as by no means +showing the nation at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> its best, and thus practically a mistake, let +them consider this suggestion; one made long ago by the writer as proved +by his published works.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The Voter's Motto.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For Church and State! our father's honoured toast;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dear England's ancient bulwark and her boast:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must we now cease to build and man the wall<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At base Sanballat's and Tobiah's call?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall Atheistic scorn and Jesuit guile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make Nehemiah quit his work awhile,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That their Arabian host may tear all down,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trample in the dust our Zion's crown?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May God avert it! No surrender! No!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We will not yield the battle to the foe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor shall the children of our fathers thus<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Betray the heritage they left to us!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For Church and State! While so we dread no storm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let no man shrink from wise and just Reform;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But with a firm and faithful, yet kind, hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prune cankers and corruptions from the land:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Humble the pride of priestcraft! we are each<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brother to him who doth Christ's gospel preach,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And—though a trivial shibboleth offend—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One who serves God and man shall be my friend:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ay, and some loaves and fishes should be given<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the rich state to Ministers of Heaven!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So shall both Church and State survive this strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dwell at peace with all, as man and wife.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For Church and State!—Yea: though the King of Heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As bridegroom to the Church Himself was given,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet is He symbolled in this earth-bound sphere<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the throned presence of our Sovereign here;<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And, ev'n as man and wife in figure show<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Christ and his spiritual spouse below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So by the eye of faith we gladly scan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our double duty—both to God and man—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In yielding hearts to love, minds to obey<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Religion's mandate and the Ruler's sway,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Defending timely, ere it be too late,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our threatened fortresses of Church and State!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As to the disputed matter of Protection, I am for Free Trade so far only +as regards the matter of provisions; but I desire Fair Trade on the +reciprocity system where manufactured articles and their raw material +are concerned. We absolutely require free food,—but are being ruined by +the bad bargain of one-sided Free Trade otherwise. Our ships (Mr. +Brockelbank tells me) go out empty, and return full; exports fail, but +imports are redundant.</p> + +<p>As a final word about my politics, which I suppose may be called +Liberal-Conservative, I am free to confess that I am only too +half-hearted and am rather of Talleyrand's mind in the matter, "surtout +point de zêle." However, I heartily side with any one who protests +against hereditary pensions, especially in the case of royal +illegitimates, as also against the glaring impropriety of ceasing to +exact legacy and probate duties beyond a certain sum, thus favouring the +millionaire, as well as of excusing the highest of our society from all +manner of taxation. These pieces of favouritism to the rich and great +are only too reasonable causes of popular discontent, and must ere long +cease. I would shut up half the public-houses in spite of all the +brewers in the Lords and Commons; and for Church matters, parishioners +should have some control over their pastors. If ever our Establishment +is overthrown,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> that catastrophe will be due to clerical faults and +defaults, rather than to lay apathy or hostility. If rectors were less +tyrannical, congregations would love them better; and if curates were +more inclined to Luther than to Rome, the Protestant heart of England +would the gladlier appreciate their zeal and capabilities. As to the +social mischief of Trades' Unions, an organised conspiracy of employed +against employers, fatal to both, I have often exposed that evil in +newspapers, though anonymously. It is an outrage on the honest working +man with a family, that even in starving times he is obliged by paid +demagogues to refuse work and wages unless he will give the least labour +for the most pay, as the worst of his mates are glad to be forced to do: +while the wicked absurdity of strikes, smashing factory windows and +destroying machinery in order to coerce unfortunate masters to pay +higher wages than they can afford, is climaxed by those brigand +processions of idle roughs who go about bawling, "We've no work to do, +and wouldn't do it if we had." The British workman (of course with many +exceptions) has become a byword for everything unpleasant, which both +large contractors and small employers avoid if they can: drink, bank +holidays, radical spouters, the conceit of being better than their +betters, and above all that suicidal iniquity of strikes, seem in these +latter days to have generally demoralised a race of citizens of whose +virtues our commonwealth once was proud. No wonder that John Bull had to +go to Germany to finish his Law Courts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2> + +<h4>A CURE FOR IRELAND.</h4> + + +<p>In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a +paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish +misery; at all events partially. Ireland has been with me a theme for +many kinds of literature; from that usual sort of authorship, letters in +the <i>Times</i>, to journalising on occasion, balladising in or out of +season, and now and then a political squib or graver article. I have +known that hapless land well in old days from Giant's Causeway to Cape +Clear; have been a guest in several noted homes, as with geological +Enniskillen and astronomical Crampton; know the natives well, and how +they have been taught by priests and demagogues to hate the Sassenach, +and, like most well-meaning men, who, after every kind effort, find +themselves utterly misunderstood, am (as a merely private and quite +unprejudiced politician) entirely at a loss to know how to please that +impracticable people, or to mend their miserable condition. However, +that in my authorial fashion I <i>have</i> tried, let the following paper +prove; written and published nearly thirty years ago.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Nations think and feel and act much as individuals do; for, after all, +the largest crowd of men is, only an aggre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>gate of units. If contempt +provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence +and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in +single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and +despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries, +honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead +of cold indifference. Thus, the far too common phrase, 'No Irish need +apply,' has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite's +chilling rule of 'passing by on the other side' evermore arouses +indignation nationally no less than individually.</p> + +<p>"Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic +nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied +historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically +crushed, and its generous impulses seared. If the Teutonic mind +illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the +Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of +its reckless childhood: and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to +hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a +strong one. Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil +influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in +vain have been hitherto attempted.</p> + +<p>"We must take nations as we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always +at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the +earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times, +more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to +survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the +Irish of America; as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> Roman poet has it, 'Those who cross the sea +may change their sky, but not their mind.' Therefore it is that a +far-seeing and philosophical statesmanship should ever deal +specifically—and as if individually—with national character; for +example, if we would convert the typical Irish mind from (must we say +it?) hatred of England to the love of her, we must commence as we would +in domestic life, by somehow managing to please our too sensitive +sister, by showing her our sympathies, and by treating her with honour +instead of contemptuous indifference; thus investing her with 'the +garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'"</p> + +<p>It is a quarter of a century since the writer of this paper published in +the course of a book of his, now somewhile out of print ("The Rides and +Reveries of Æsop Smith"), the following short chapter, on page 322, here +reproduced textually. It was headed "The Unsunned Corner," and runs +thus:—</p> + +<p>Ireland came upon the <i>tapis</i>, and Æsop said, when his turn came to +speak: One of my fields, on the wrong slope of a hill-side and +surrounded by trees, scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its +crops are short when arable, and when in pasture its grass sour, and the +hay musty.</p> + +<p>And why then, he went on to say, shouldn't Ireland have a palace—a +Balmoral at Killarney, or another Osborne at Killiney?</p> + +<p>Poor Erin is that unsunned corner of our Empire's field; and it seems a +thousand pities that the kingdom of Ireland should be denied some such +special royal home as is even found rather superfluously at the camp at +Aldershot. What if one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the +foot of M'Gillicuddy's Reeks were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> fitted with a Swiss cottage for the +Queen? Or if Bantry Bay supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape +Clear? Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied with a gilt carriage +or two to waft Majesty and children to some western palace in Connemara?</p> + +<p>Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn't fertilise that poor neglected +field, nor make its crops abundant, and its peasants happy? Think you +that the gold mine of Royal bounty, and the graciousness of Royal +favour, would not work a blessed change for grateful Ireland? Try it, O +good Queen!—a Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a sorry +substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for silver, electrotyped plate +instead of the true golden buffet: not without snobbism too, and +toadyism and vulgarism and other detestable small heresies. If but once +in three years Victoria's rural Court were housed in an Irish palace, +her presence would do more for happiness, prosperity, and patriotism +than all of these that Maynooth grants have ever hindered.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Thus Æsop Smith in 1858 delivered his mind on the matter. It is by no +means pretended or supposed that a palatial residence would of itself +cure Irish evils and misfortunes; but it might be a step towards this +good result, and at any rate would remove one very allegible accusation +of neglect: Ireland should enjoy the like privileges with her sister +kingdoms England and Scotland: and however inadequate, <i>per se</i>, such a +simple prescription may seem as "Æsop Smith" suggests, his advice +contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection; +and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet +been seriously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> mooted. The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal +instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their +own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known +object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic +court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of +their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the +Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of +English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen +herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: +yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must +have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago +at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two +generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty. Imagine, if only from +such an example as this, what might be the beneficent effect of our good +Queen periodically visiting her kingdom of Ireland, and permanently +having there some such happy homestead as Osborne or Balmoral; if also, +in her absence, one of the princes of our Royal house represented his +Imperial mother as Viceroy; and if in their train the tide of +aristocracy, wealth, and fashion flowed in upon impoverished Ireland. It +is not easy to calculate the advantages of such a social revolution as +this; and surely, in spite of many obvious objections, such an +experiment might be worth the trial.</p> + +<p>A beginning might avowedly be made in the right direction, by building +or purchasing some suitable castle as a permanent palace for Ireland's +Queen; say, for old association's sake, at Tara, if anyhow +adaptable,—or any other picturesque neighbourhood connected with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> some +ancient chieftain of the Irish quasi-heptarchy; wherein a Royal +Establishment might be commenced, in present proof of the serious +intention as to an early future residence: the mind of the people might +be thus prepared for the speedy coming of their Sovereign and her Court, +and would be softened and gratified by the evident confidence and +good-feeling thus shown; as well as their condition materially benefited +by the necessary expenditure that must be laid out locally in labour and +materials, giving work to the needy, and so helping to cure Erin's chief +disease,—poverty to the verge of famine. As to actual +life-peril,—every due precaution being taken,—the happy result of such +a humanising experiment might fairly be left to the generous native +loyalty of a kindly treated people, and to the gracious guardianship of +God's good providence. I am sure that present Royalty would neither be +boycotted nor burked. We remember with what generous cordiality our +Prince and Princess were received by all classes and creeds in their +recent brave visit to Ireland.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>I cannot honestly pretend to have always taken quite so amiable a view +of Celtic matters. I plead guilty to having more than once assailed in +print Daniel O'Connell and his kind, and to have written a pair of once +famous poetical fly-leaves, "Erin go bragh" and "Hurrah for Repeal!" +copies of which (beyond my archived ones) can now only be found in the +Ballad Collection of the British Museum, which I used to supply with my +Sibyllines, at a chief librarian's request: I forget the name, but he +collected such placards. I fear the two above were not very +complimentary:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> but what can one do for a perverse people, who complain +of it as a wrong that they are excused the Queen's taxes? Also I wrote +certain famous letters on Ireland, especially four long ones signed +"T.," in the <i>Times</i> of January 1847.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In Ireland I have caught a salmon at Killarney and cooked it too on an +arbutus stake; I have bruised my shins at the Giant's Causeway; I have +been an honoured guest at classical Florence Court; have picked up +native gold at Avoca; have done the Round Towers, possibly Phœnician +Baal-temples; have handled Brian Boroime's harp; and have been shocked +everywhere by the poverty and degradation of that musical barbarian's +miserable because idle people. What can be done for those who will not +help themselves?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2> + +<h4>SOME SPIRITUALISTIC REMINISCENCES.</h4> + + +<p>Having often been asked to put on record my few and far-between +experiences of spiritualism, as on several occasions I have verbally +related them, I have hitherto neglected or declined to do so, on account +of having really seen little, whereas many others have seen far more. +And on the whole it is to me rather an unwelcome task from several +considerations; first, because I have never wished to add, by my +apparent testimony, to the rising tide of unwholesome superstition in +that or any other direction; secondly, because I had always a crowd of +more important matters to look after, and, perhaps, was inclined to +indolence in the "<i>dolce far niente</i>" respecting things of less +consequence to myself; and thirdly, in chief, because, albeit I have +seen and heard a few of the petty miracles (avouched for otherwise by +thousands of better witnesses) inexplicable to my own reason, I yet +entirely abjure and renounce this so-called spiritualism as any part of +my personal belief. In particular, it seems to me quite an inconclusion +to give to the spirits of the dead, or to any other existences, good or +evil (unless, indeed, by possibility to ourselves as magnetically and +sympathetically influenced by some metaphysical potencies whereof we +know next to nothing), the seemingly miraculous powers exhibited,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> +however weakly and childishly, in numberless <i>séances</i>, privileged to +possess among the company an ecstatic medium between (as is assumed) +themselves and beings immaterial.</p> + +<p>The little I have seen and heard shall, however, now, upon a reasonable +call, be related simply and honestly, without any theory beyond what is +parenthetically alluded to in my last sentence, and with no attempt at +explanation, but only the expression of this truth, viz., that no +collusion apparently was possible (according to my judgment) in any of +the following manifestations, and that I promise only to state plain +facts, however, others may seek to expound them. Of course, where +cunning and dishonesty may contrive conjuring tricks it is not worth +while to treat such "manifestations" seriously, but I speak of what +seemed to be genuine, if trifling, marvels.</p> + +<p>To begin, then, with my earliest experience, written down the same +evening, and sent to the <i>Brighton Gazette</i>, from which I give an +extract. The date is Thursday, January 25th, 1849; the host, the late +Mr. Howell, of Hove; the performer, Alexis, pupil of M. Marcillet, who +accompanied him. After clairvoyance, induced by passes, Alexis is +blindfolded carefully, and then, with the host's own pack of cards, wins +blindfolded at games of écarté with myself. Next, a French book, brought +by an incredulous physician, was placed open upon the forehead of +Alexis, who read aloud some lines of it. This experiment, with +variations, was several times repeated. The third was my own test. I had +sealed up something unknown to all the world but myself in twelve +envelopes of white paper. Alexis, placing the parcel on his forehead, in +broken and difficult<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> enunciation, said "it was writing, two names, both +commencing with M; one of them an English name, the other French, or +some language not English; that the first contained four letters, the +second six (being really nine)," but he failed to give the names, which +were Mary Magdalene. It was suggested that if they had been written in +French his mind might have more easily discerned them. After this, +several locks of hair and sealed-up parcels, watches, and lockets, were +(with some unsuccessful attempts) guessed at, seemingly to the +satisfaction of the ladies and gentlemen who had respectively brought +them for explanation. The last experiment regarded a large bon-bon box +covered up, in which the host himself had concealed a mystery. Alexis +described it as wrapped in several folds, graven all round, oval, a +portrait of a young person of eighteen, but done a long time ago, set in +gold, "femme habillée en blanc; elle est morte, la tête au droit." In +all these respects the object was faithfully described, in particular to +the "long time ago," which, by a date on the portrait, was found to be +1769. And there were some other experiments, but Alexis, as appearing to +be well-nigh worn out with mental exertion, was then mercifully +unmesmerised.</p> + +<p>I may mention, by the way, that the said host at whose house Alexis +attended was a firm believer in the power of the human will, and as +connected therewith, in mesmerism, whereby he used to cure people of +headaches and other infirmities; and, at length, through his +philanthropic and energetic attraction to himself of other folks' +disorders (for he fancied he imbibed for his own behoof the pains he +drained <i>ab extrâ</i>), he unhappily became a paralytic, dying not long +after. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> of his less perilous attempts at the miraculous, I remember +was this: he brought a street Arab into his drawing-room, and put a +half-crown down on the carpet for him to pick up if he could, and keep +for himself; however, this the boy found, to his wonderment, to be +practically impossible, seeing that Mr. Howell had secretly willed that +he could not and should not pick up the prize. But such efforts of a +man's strong will are well evidenced in numerous other instances, and +serve to prove that no spiritual interferences beyond our noble selves +are essential to such mysteries.</p> + +<p>Amongst other reminiscences of the marvellous, I may refer to a private +exhibition in the Berners Street Hotel, to which I was invited by Mrs. +Washington Phillips (of whom more anon), to investigate Mr. Vernon's +influence over a little girl some twelve years old. The child's +specialty was an alleged capability of reading without eyesight, the +back of her head low down on the nape doing duty in the way of vision. +To omit numerous other successful examples (some failing, which I +thought so far evidences of the absence of collusion), I will detail my +own conclusive experiment. But let me anticipate an objection relating +to the exhibitor himself. Some of our party, a very distinguished one, +and known to each other, kept Mr. Vernon in conversation at a distance, +while the child was reading our thoughts, or the actual words of print +unknown to ourselves, quite independently of his manipulations; he +having first comatised her into a mesmeric state of trance. The invited +guests were told, as in the Alexis case, that we might bring our own +tests; and I had put into my pocket a small volume of Milton, from which +she might read on the nape of her neck, if she could. We had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> previously +bandaged her eyes, even to plaistering them up; and were only bidden to +be careful not to let the handkerchief cover the place of reverted +seeing on her neck. I stood behind the child, and, without knowing where +I opened my little Milton, placed the expanded volume on the back of her +head; and forthwith, slowly and with difficulty, as a child might, she +read two lines of blank verse, which I and all immediately verified! +Now, I state a fact which I cannot explain; for I myself had not seen +the lines, so my own brain was not read: neither could Mr. Vernon nor +any one else have been concerned in the matter. I believe this sort of +thing to be well-known to spiritualists, and they may, for aught I know, +refer it to angelic or necromantic interposition: whereas, what +physicians tell us of hypochondria is, perhaps, a mysterious explanation +nearer the mark.</p> + +<p>The same child, refreshed into an abnormal ecstasy, taking the hands of +several of our party professed to read their thoughts, with admitted +success in some instances. With me she failed, but then I was not +considered <i>en rapport</i>. Female believers are always much more +susceptible than masculine sceptics. However, I certainly had proof of +the child's marvellous power in this slight matter following. Two young +ladies had successfully brought her in spirit, into their mother's +drawing-room in Berkeley Square, the child graphically explaining all +she saw as she was mentally led along, and on being asked if she noticed +anything new and pretty on the mantel-piece, she got up and placed +herself in an attitude of dancing, and she said there was a figure and +it was clothed in lace. This was true; it was a bisque statuette of +Taglioni. On being led round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> room, still in spirit and +clairvoyante, the child strangely described wax-flowers under a glass, +and laughed heartily at "Taffy riding his goat,"—a china ornament which +she could have known nothing of.</p> + +<p>With respect to the lady who invited us, I can relate a strange story +wherewith the Brighton doctors in 1848 were familiar. Mrs. P. had an +invalid daughter subject to violent headaches, and as she had read of +the remedial powers of mesmerism from Chauncey Townsend's book, +privately resolved to try and cure her, and soon set her to sleep by the +usual "passes." However, when after twelve and even eighteen hours the +girl could not be awakened, Mrs. P. and her husband (a clergyman, who +knew nothing of the cause) were alarmed and summoned doctor after +doctor, to wake her, if they could. But all was in vain, until some one +turning to the peccant and magical volume found that by the simple +process of reversing the passes the abnormal slumber might be made to +cease. This was done at once, and all came more than right, for the girl +woke up without her usual headache, and was cured from that hour. At +this time of day, after thirty years and more, society having become +wiser, and bur medical men more physiologically hygienic, we all now wot +of mesmerism, and innumerable cases of cure through that mysterious form +of catalepsy.</p> + +<p>For another small experience, I have several times been among a crowd of +others at public exhibitions of those who speak off-hand in prose or +verse, "inspirationally" as they call it, but as the outer world prefer +to believe, improvisatorially, and certainly amid such gifted persons +Mrs. Cora Tappan stands out prominently in my memory. At the Brighton +Pavilion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> I gave her for a theme to be versified on the spot extempore +my own heraldic motto, "L'espoir est ma force," and to my astonishment, +in a burst of rhymed eloquence she rolled off at least a dozen four-line +stanzas on Hope and its spiritual power. Some one else among the +audience gave the subject of cremation, and forthwith the lady descanted +with terrific force on funeral pyres and the horrors of Gehenna; whilst +a male performer affected to personate sundry well-known dead orators of +past days (for as the inspirers were supposed to be disembodied spirits +no living orators were allowable), and he certainly imitated both voices +and topics with singular success. But everybody has heard of this sort +of thing, sufficiently remarkable as a mental effort; and we have all +similarly witnessed the more material marvels of Maskelyne and Cook, +known to be mechanical contrivances which are still riddles to the +world.</p> + +<p>Again, there are those who draw and paint in a condition of spiritual +ecstasy; and I remember visiting a public exhibition in Bond Street, +exclusively of most curious and intricate pictures, asserted to have +been inspired by dead artists, some being elaborate flourishings of +scenes and figures, said to be thus depicted as with lightning speed. As +to living artists, there are in existence several excitable youths and +damsels who write and draw very rapidly in an ecstatic state; and I +myself possess a dreamy conglomerate of microscopic faces crowded +together, and stated to have been drawn thus instantaneously to prove to +us "the cloud of witnesses," "the innumerable company of angels," by +whom we are continually surrounded.</p> + +<p>I pretermit with brief mention sundry inexplicable wonders, such as +those wherewith the spiritualistic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> papers are frequently full, only +stating that I was one of those who investigated the case of the Rev. +Mr. Vaughan's pew-opener, at St. James's, Brighton, whose daughter was +thought to be "bewitched." Certainly, strange knockings accompanied her +when she came in at my call, much like those I heard many years ago at +Rochester, U.S.; and her mother (a pious and credible widow) assured me, +with tears of unfeigned anxiety, that the chairs and stools followed her +about!—a statement only half credible, when we reflect that there is an +animal magnetism as well as a mineral one, and that we know nothing of +the reasons of either. Our ignorance on such matters is so profound that +we may fairly be credulous unless we obstinately refuse altogether our +belief in human testimony; but if we dare to do this, higher interests +are endangered than spiritualistics. Our religion is mainly based upon +credible evidence.</p> + +<p>There is certainly much that is mysterious in the toy they call +"Planchette," a triangular thin slab of polished wood on a couple of +small wheels, with a pencil at the apex. Hands laids upon this by two +persons properly conditioned, will give apparent vitality and volition +to the small machine, and make the pencil seem to write of itself in +answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in +South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies, +sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays +on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the +chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the +knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young +girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and +we were considerably startled to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> find that when I asked of the +so-called spirits, "What think ye of Christ?" the pencil under our +unconsciously-guided hands made answer, "With the utmost reverence!" I +need not assure mankind that neither my friend nor I (both incredulous +and unwilling witnesses) lent ourselves or one another to any deception, +and were mentally inclined, if at all, to the expectation that the +"spirits" might rather blaspheme than bless. It is right to mention +that, beyond the pair of young ladies and our two selves, only the host +and hostess were in the room; of whom I have this further wonder to +report, viz., that the host, whom I must not specify by name without his +leave, is afflicted with blindness, notwithstanding which and his +alleged incompetence towards poetry as an old naval officer, his wife +showed me several copybooks full of blank verse written by him in a hand +unlike his own, and supposed by them to be inspired by Young, as a +continuation of his "Night Thoughts." The captain and his lady also told +us how frequently flowers and sweetmeats (!) were showered on them from +the ceiling at their domestic dual <i>séances</i>: and on another occasion a +lady showed my wife and me a paper of seed pearls, alleged to have been +flung into her lap from the heavens—through the ceiling—by her +departed lord and master! Similarly, a lady well known in the +professedly spiritualistic circles, deposited round her chair, in the +dark, at Mr. S. C. Hall's, a profusion of bouquets—probably from Covent +Garden;—and that, notwithstanding the hostess had herself searched the +lady before the <i>séance</i>, as it was known that Mrs. G's special gift +from the spirits was the multitudinous creation of flowers! Really, +there must be a stand somewhere made to credulity; but, at all events, +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> venerable host and hostess believed this, on what seemed to them +reasonable evidence, and quite forgave me for not believing it too.</p> + +<p>And this brings me, naturally enough, to give a detailed account of the +two best and last <i>séances</i> I ever took the trouble to attend; for I +have, during many years, entirely avoided such exhibitions, as generally +childish, mentally unwholesome, and to some people dangerously +seductive. I had several times asked my worthy friends last alluded to, +to give me and a friend of mine, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, the +privilege of "assisting" at a <i>séance</i> under their experienced guidance: +and accordingly we were invited to meet Mr. Home, the high priest of +spiritualism, a quiet, well-mannered gentlemanly person enough, known to +our host from his birth. The other guests were a countess, the widow of +a colonel, and a distinguished physician; in all we numbered eight. My +friend and I were requested privately, by our host, to conceal our +probable incredulity if we desired the favour of the "spirits" in the +way of manifestations; and as these were what we came for, besides our +own polite desire to do at Rome as the Romans do, we readily assented to +the reasonable request. After the usual greetings and small talk of the +day, and tea and coffee and so forth, we all took seats round the +drawing-room circular table, a very weighty one, as I proved afterwards, +on a gigantic central pillar, and covered with a heavy piece of velvet +tapestry; and before commencing the special business we came for, I was +pleased to hear our host propose that we should all kneel round the +table and offer up prayer: this he did, simply and beautifully, in some +words, extemporary, closing with a Church collect and the Lord's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> +Prayer. On my expressed approval of this course, when we rose, Mr. Home +said it was always his custom, as a precautionary measure against the +self-intrusion of evil spirits: admittedly a wisdom, even if it seemed +somewhat unwise and perilous to be more or less courting the company of +such unpleasant guests, if a <i>séance</i> (as experienced afterwards) did +not happen to be made safe by exorcism. And now the gaslights bracketed +round the room were put as low as possible, making a dim, religious +semi-darkness; however, as there was a bright fire in the grate, and +some small scintillæ of gas, and one's eyesight soon gets accustomed to +any diminution of light, we could soon see nearly as well as usual. This +"gloaming" is a common condition in <i>séances</i>, and for aught any one +knows may be an electrical <i>sine quâ non</i> as needed for animal +magnetism; albeit some paid professionals may possibly find darkness a +very useful veil for cheatery. While we were chatting round the +table,—and Mr. Home enjoined this as better than the silent sobriety I +looked for—suddenly the table shuddered, and a cold wind swept over our +hands laid upon it. "They are coming now," said Mr. Home, which +everybody seemed glad of, though that cold wind felt to me not a little +"uncanny," but I said nothing in disparagement, for fear of stopping a +"manifestation." Soon loud knocks were heard, apparently from the middle +of the table, and on sundry spirits being alleged to be present, Mr. +Home proceeded to question them through the ordinary clumsy fashion, of +the alphabet, and some unimportant answers were elicited, which I fail +to remember and in common honesty must not invent. We were soon to see +stranger things; and I suppose the <i>séance</i> was exceptionally +successful, as I afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> noticed some of it in print. For while we +were looking and expecting, suddenly the table began to tilt this way +and that, and then as if by an effort the ponderous mass, with all our +hands still upon the velvet pall, positively mounted slowly into the +air, insomuch that we were obliged to rise from our chairs and stand to +reach the surface. I could see it at least two feet from the carpet, and +Mr. Home invited me to take especial notice that none of the company +could possibly be lifting the table; indeed, the strength of all of us +combined would have been barely enough for such a heavy task. Of course, +every one else but myself and friend supposed that the "spirits" had +kindly done this miracle to please us; but I unfortunately said "Oh! +Mrs. Hall! it will crush your chandelier!" (one of Venice glass, very +precious)—at which unbelieving remark, probably, the spirits took +umbrage, for at once the table ceased ascending, and with a slow +oscillation descended very gently on to the carpet. This sort of petty +miracle is a frequent experience among the spiritualists, and how it is +effected I cannot imagine. There could be no contrivance or machinery in +our host's drawing-room, as must be the case imitatively at the Egyptian +Hall; none of the company could be conspiring to deceive, and more than +all, that huge, heavy table rising up against the law of gravitation was +enough to chase away all incredulity. One fact is stronger than fifty +theories; and one reliable success overweighs a thousand failures. I +testify to that which I have seen.</p> + +<p>But more, and more wondrous, was to follow. All at once Mr. Home flung +himself back in his chair, looking wild and white; and then rising +slowly and solemnly, went to the still bright fire, into which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> +thrust his unprotected hands, and taking out a double handful of live +coals, placed them—as a fire offering—upon Mr. Hall's snow-white head, +combing the hair over them with his fingers, all which our host appeared +to receive more than patiently—religiously. Thereafter Mr. Home placed +them in the Countess's blonde-lace cap, and carried them, as a favour +vouchsafed by the spirits, to each of us, to hold in our hands. When he +came to me, Mr. Hall said: "My friend, have faith." "Yes," I answered, +"and courage, too;" whereupon I was blest with a good handful of those +wonderful coals, still hot enough to burn any skin; but, somehow or +other, I felt no pain and had no mark. Here was another law of nature +put to shame, in the miraculous fact that fire was seemingly deprived of +the power of burning. How this could be, I cannot guess; but I record +manfully the fact as witnessed. After this, an accordion held under the +table by Mr. Home with one hand, the other being upon the table, +positively played a tune of itself—"Ye banks and braes o' bonnie +Doon"—requested by Dr. Chambers, "that being the tune his dead child +loved so." I was requested to look under the table to see the +"spirit-hand" operating near the carpet; but I saw nothing except the +vitalised accordion expanding and contracting of itself, being held +tightly at the upper handle by Mr. Home. Some of the company, however, +claimed to see and to shake hands with the child, and Mr. Home requested +me to ask for a similar favour by placing my hand open under the table; +this, accordingly, I ventured to do, with the result of feeling my thumb +sensibly touched and thrilled, which I was told was a good sign of +favour from the spirits—albeit in my own mind I remembered what our +omniscient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> Shakespeare sings at the mouth of one of the Macbeth +witches,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"By the pricking of my thumbs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Something wicked this way comes"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and failed to feel quite comfortable. Soon, however, Mr. Home said: "The +accordion is leaving my hand;" and I saw the mysterious thing crawling +on the floor like a lame dog till it got into a corner. Of course, I +suspected a secret string; but all at once it moved out and came back, +moaning Æolianly as it went, and stood up beside the chair of Mrs. +Colonel N. S., who patted it lovingly; thence passing behind me it went +and stood beside the Countess, who also caressed it; and then Mr. Home +said: "Now ask the spirit to come to you;" whereto I acceded, and the +accordion crept near me, as if unwillingly, and stood up; but when I +touched it the thing shrank from my unsympathetic hand, and fell down +flop.</p> + +<p>After this, I noticed that my naval friend was staring with all his eyes +at something over our military widow's head, and that his hair (it is +red, which colour is very spiritualistic) stood on end as with fear. +"What's the matter, P.?" I asked. "Don't you see it?" responded he. +"What?" "The grey figure behind Mrs. N. S., bearded like an Egyptian +Sphinx." "That's the Colonel!" exclaimed Mr. Hall, and the widow bowed +religiously, with a "Dear! is it you?" On this, as my friend was +terribly frightened, we soon took leave; and when we went home, I found +that he was so pursued by "spirits" rapping all about him, that he +actually vacated his own room and slept in mine, for protection against +the invisible, on two chairs till morning broke;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> when he feared the +spirits no longer. I may mention that this insight into an immaterial +world (he having been inclined before to pyrrhonism) quite altered his +career, and that soon after he took holy orders. In this connection I +may state, that according to a printed account I have seen, both Mr. and +Mrs. Hall were converted from avowed materialism by spirit +manifestation, and that when the question of "<i>Cui bono?</i>" is raised, +his experience and that of divers others (the aforesaid Dr. Chambers in +particular) will avouch for the practical usefulness of these +inexplicable marvels.</p> + +<p>But I must have done, with only one other reminiscence soon after that +at Ashley Place. This time the venue is Fitzroy Square, and the company +(to omit needless detail) was a polyglot one, consisting chiefly of a +German merchant, a Hebrew financier, a French governess, my naval friend +aforesaid, who was quick at Latin, and I, who more or less remembered my +Greek. Of course English was represented in the two only other guests; +and it will be seen how strangely philology enters into this my next and +concluding anecdote. After plenty of other rappings and noises (I +noticed by the way that all the metal things in the room, as castors and +cruets—it was a dining-room—and wine coolers and bronze chandelier, +were clicked and clanged), and after the usual stupid alphabet questions +and answers had been exhibited; after also the heavy mahogany table on +five substantial pillars had been miraculously moved about the room and +tilted, as we failed to effect at the <i>finale</i> when we tried; all at +once a thundering knock quite shook the table and startled us, on which +Dr. Connell, our (unprofessional) medium for the nonce, as he had seen +more of spiritualistics than we had, called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> for the alphabetical test +to ascertain who it could be that knocked so furiously, for the blows +were often repeated. So then, by the slow method of letter by letter, he +made out the name "Jamblic," and then gave it up in despair, as he said +it was a mischievous imp that was sporting with us; but the knocks still +continued, and some one suggested that perhaps this strange name was +foreign, and that his own language would please the incensed spirit +better than English. Accordingly, he was addressed by the assembled +circle severally in French, German, Hebrew, and Latin, all in vain; when +I bethought me of Greek and the Pythagoreans and spoke out "<i>Ei su +Iamblicos</i>" (Art thou Iamblicus?)—on which, as if with joy at having +been discovered, there was a rush of noises and knocks all round the +room (my perfervid imagination fancied the flapping of wings), and +immediately after there ensued a dead silence! So we soon broke up and +went home. Opening my classical dictionary at Iamblicus, I read what I +certainly had not seen or thought of for more than thirty years, that he +was an author on "the mysteries of the Egyptians," and was bracketed +with Porphyry as a professor of the black art. Was then this unpleasant +visitor to Fitzroy Square no other than that magician redivivus? An +awkward possibility.</p> + +<p>And now to bring these scattered reminiscences to a practical +conclusion. What can I, what can my readers decide, on a rational +consideration of the whole matter? It is, no doubt, very baffling to +judge how rightly to think about it. I have stated a few facts that have +come under my own personal knowledge; but there are thousands of others +similar and even more extraordinary, which numerous persons quite as +credible as I am can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> vouch for in like manner to be true facts while +remaining unexplained miracles. For myself, I must suspend judgment; +waiting to see what in these wonderful times—some further development +of electricity, for example, may haply produce for us. After recent +marvels of the telephone, microphone, photophone, and I know not what +others, why should not some Edison or Lane Fox stumble upon a form of +psychic force emanating from our personal nervous organisation, and +capable of operating physically on all things round us, the immaterial +conquering the material it pervades? Some such vague theory as to +spiritualistic manifestations may be a far more rational as well as +pleasing explanation of these modern marvels than to suppose that our +dead friends come at any medium's summons to move tables, talk bad +grammar, and play accordions; or that angels, good and evil, are allowed +to be employed in mystifying or terrifying the frivolous assisters at a +<i>séance</i>.</p> + +<p>Beyond and after this, I might add, but for its too great length, the +indisputable testimony of certain friends of mine as to inexplicable +writings on locked slates and paper, the revelation of secrets, nay +visible apparitions, and both records of the secret past and revelations +of the still more secret future afterwards fulfilled,—to all which I +cannot, as an honest man and a believer in human evidence, refuse to +give a distinct testimony, even though conjurors perpetually baffle our +confused judgment.</p> + +<p>In this connection I will extract from one of my Archive-books the +curious story of a mysterious key in which my family are still +interested: for the secret is not yet solved. In the fourteenth volume, +then, of my Archives occurs this long note, accompanied by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> the drawing +which I made years ago of the weird-looking key: with a loose ring +handle, a threefold staircase body, and a strangely ringed column.</p> + +<p>"My father died in his sleep, December 8, 1844, at Southwick House, in +Windsor Park, on the same night after its owner, Lord Limerick, had also +died there in his arms, my father having been his medical friend for +thirty years. My father used to carry in his pocket a strange key, +whereof the figure was very unusual, as it folded up, and though large +he carried it in his pocket habitually: and he used to say in his +quietly humorous and reserved manner, 'under that key lies a fortune;' +my mother and I and others remember this well. When I came to be +executor, there was nearly nothing to guide me as to the amount of my +father's property,—and I certainly did not succeed in realising all +that he was supposed to have acquired. It was wonderful that with his +large income he left so little. So, we all thought that some hoard +locked by this key contained the missing treasure; my father's habitual +taciturnity, and secretiveness favouring this idea. But, nowhere could +the lock to fit it be found; nowhere either at banks or lawyers or +anywhere about our old house in Burlington Street or at Albury, appeared +the chest or cupboard containing the fancied accumulations; and to this +hour, June 12, 1873, nearly thirty years after my father's sudden death, +has the mystery not been cleared up. Once, on an occasion of a +spiritualistic <i>séance</i> at Mr. Carter Hall's, I handed the said key to +Mr. Home when entranced, and he shuddered at it, and uttered the name +'Elizabeth Henderson,'—which I thought at the time a bad guess, as one +utterly unknown to me: but oddly enough it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> proved to be the name of the +Queen's housekeeper at Windsor. However, on inquiry nothing further came +of this, for she was not in office when my father died at the Park. +To-day I have taken the key to a Miss Hudson, a clairvoyante, who never +saw me before, nor was told my name, nor my errand, except that I laid +that key silently before her. She can tell me very little, except that +the mystery is soon to be cleared up, and that certain spirits (from +description possibly my mother and brother William) much wish it. I gave +no sort of clues, but the medium guessed at my father's character, and +at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding +of it in some 'bank,'—whether underground or at a banker's did not +appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'—one 'Daisy, an Indian +papoose'—says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am +urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable +woman of about thirty,—living in a lodging near Bloomsbury +Square,—utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,—said (in her +spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, and was +inspired by two spirits, one of the fair and lively sort all in white, +and the other an old philosopher—a strange guess at my mixed medley of +writings. Miss Hudson promised me that I should soon know the secret of +the key, because the spirits wished it, and because there was a blue +magnetic circle round the key."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>P.S.</i>—It is only proper to state that up to this present writing, +January 13, 1886, I have heard nothing at all from the spirits +aforesaid, and that the family key is as mysterious as ever. My own +reasonable explanation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> of the medium's half true guesses is that she +might have read my own dim thoughts about the matter: naturally I would +think of my dead mother and brother and myself; and thought-reading is a +form of animal magnetism which some people possess more than others.</p> + +<p>Of late, as we all know, Mr. Cumberland and others have exhibited their +mysterious powers of perceiving and expounding the secret thoughts of +those who chose to be thus mentally vivisected: and I myself have this +small experience to record. Asked in a drawing-room to think of +something, the hostess answered my thought by "I don't know what it +means, but there's a great deal of green with a white star going round +and round in it." "Quite true," was my reply, "I was thinking of Ewhurst +windmill."</p> + +<p>In my anonymous prophetic ode, "Things to Come" (Bosworth, 1852, long +out of print), at its eleventh section, thought-reading and other like +metaphysicals are strangely anticipated, ending with—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Into some other wicked man's mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His foolish brother is peeping to find,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Caught in foul excitement's snare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Lying Future there!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV.</h2> + +<h4>FICKLE FORTUNE.</h4> + + +<p>Ever since Schiller wrote his famous song about a poet's heritage (ay, +and long before that, as it will be long years hence), authorship has +been noted for anything rather than wealth; albeit, nowadays, we have +had such fortunate scribes as Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope, who +severally have left piles of well-earned money behind them; though they +all had encountered previous mischances before. Accordingly, in this +true record of my life, I must not omit its reverses, for, though born +with a silver spoon in my mouth (perhaps a bismuth one, such as in my +chemical days I melted in hot tea), and always having had plentiful +surroundings, there has been often much also of financial embarrassment, +though not always nor usually from the author's fault. I am not going to +accuse others any more than myself, only hinting that it has been costly +to be a sleeping-partner, especially when the chief fails; that it is +discouraging to economic thrift when the investments wherein you place +your savings come to an untimely end; that in particular the Albert Life +Insurance was a notorious swindle, wherein more than twenty years' of +banked-up prudent earnings, besides the original policy, vanished in an +hour; that my early efforts to win fortune were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> stumped from impediment +of speech; and that some of those on whom I depended, as well as others +dependent on me, met with misfortunes, deserved or undeserved. Anyhow, I +have just now no reason to complain of bursting barns or inflated +money-bags. Everybody knows (so I need not blink it) that some time ago +a few friends kindly got up a so-called testimonial for my benefit; but +that sort of thing had been overdone in other instances; and it is small +wonder that (although certainly not quite such a fiasco as with Ginx's +Baby) the trouble and care and humiliation are scarcely compensated +where the costs and defaults are considerable: however, I desire +heartily to thank its promoters and contributors, one and all; even +those who promised but never paid.</p> + +<p>With reference to other efforts, my two Transatlantic visits, and divers +reading tours at home, show that self-help never was neglected, as, +indeed, former pages will have proved. Accordingly, as Providence helps +those who help themselves, or at all events endeavour to do so, I still +lean on the heraldic motto, given to General Volkmar von Tophere by +Henri Quatre, "L'espoir est ma force." I will here add two American +anecdotes whereby it might seem that heretofore I have unwittingly +jilted Fortune when she would have blest me with her favour.</p> + +<p>I had just landed in New York after a stormy fortnight in the <i>Asia</i> (it +was <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1851) and taken up my quarters at the Astor House, to +rest before friends found me out. But my arrival had been published, and +before, in private, I had taken my first refreshment, the host, a +colonel of course, came and asked if I would allow a few of my admirers +to greet me. Doubtless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> natural vanity was willing, and through my +room, having doors right and left, forthwith came a stream of +well-wishers all shaking hands and saying kind words for an hour and +more; at last they departed, all but one, who had come first and boldly +had taken a chair beside me: when the crowd were gone, he bluntly (or +let it be frankly) said, "I'm one of the richest men in New York, sir, +and I know authors must be poor; I like your books, and have told my +bankers (naming them) to honour any cheques on me you may like to draw." +"My dear sir," I replied, "you are most considerate, and all I can say +is, if I have the misfortune to lose this packet (it was a roll of +Herries's circular notes) I shall gladly accept your offer; but just now +I have more than I want—£300." "Well then, sir, come and stay at my +house, Fifth Avenue." "This is very kind, but several friends here have +specially invited me, so I am compelled to decline." "Then, sir, my +yacht in the harbour is at your service." "Pardon me, but I would rather +forget all memories of the sea at present,—with due thanks." "Then, +sir, my carriage has been waiting at the hotel all this time, let me +have the honour of taking you to see Mrs. So-and-so, who is anxious to +meet you." Of course I could not refuse this, nor the occasional loan of +his handsome turn-out whenever other friends let me go. Who knows how +nearly I then missed smiles from the blind goddess, by my sturdy refusal +of her favours, for I heard afterwards that the wealthy Mr.—— was +childless! Again, at Baltimore, after my Historical dinner (see a former +page), comes up to me a very shabby-looking man, as I thought to beg. He +sidled up and whispered that he wanted me to go home with him. I'm +afraid I rather snubbed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> him; but was sorry for it afterwards, when told +that he was the rich old miser So-and-so, who had never taken a fancy to +any one before. What a dolt I must have been to snub away the possible +codicil of a millionaire!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On page 3 of this book I proposed no mention of private domesticities or +of personal religious experiences—the one being of interest merely to +my family, the other a matter between God and the soul. However, the +recent sudden death of one for fifty years my faithful friend and +companion in marriage, urges me to record here simply her many excellent +qualities, which must not be passed by without a regretful word as if I +were a Stoic, or as if my dear good wife of half a century could be +silently forgotten by her bereaved husband and children. I began this +biography when she was in her usual health and spirits, but soon after +its commencement a fit of apoplexy took her unconsciously from our happy +circle,—and we are made to feel by this affliction, as also by another +over leaf, how truly "in the midst of life we are in death." Her body +awaits the Resurrection in Albury Churchyard, and her spirit lives with +us in affectionate remembrance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2> + +<h4>DE BEAUVOIR CHANCERY SUIT: AND BELGRAVIA.</h4> + + +<p>My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in +South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front +seat in a rutty road and crushed to death under the wheel of an +ox-waggon creeping at two miles an hour! This sad event occurred on May +31, 1871: and the newspapers at the time, both British and South +African, fully recorded not only the accident but the heroism of the +brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the +municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and +council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town +(every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon +Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble +headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written +some touching stanzas to his memory: but they are private.</p> + +<p>I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the +kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William's Town, +not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom +we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the +world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my +son, now fifteen years ago: I desire, then, cordially to thank T. G. for +these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> kindnesses: as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son +was Henry's African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe, +and following him to the grave.</p> + +<p>Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir, +reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is +on record, I will here relate. In the days of King James I. (to quote +with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir, +descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an +eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my +spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey +of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather. Peter's second +son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter +married a Benyon, in Charles II.'s time, whose descendant is now the +millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c. Now, +this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others. +The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years +ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our +day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including +De Beauvoir Town.</p> + +<p>In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder +branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the +inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in +Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,—and was +carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory +for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty +thousand pounds for his individual chance,—but my less sanguine father +cared not to join in the lawsuit,—saying he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> not "throw good +money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old +conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly +fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though +the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But +somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast +property must have <i>all</i>,—and the elder be strangely left out in the +cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was +hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the +Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has +the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the +dreams of avarice." Such is life,—and law: the most obstinate and the +richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail: +it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now +"too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield +Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who +(but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.</p> + +<p>My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have +heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">A Lost Chance in Belgravia.</span></h4> + +<p>In this connection of possible good luck that never happened, let me +record this.</p> + +<p>Another of my father's patients was the long deceased Earl Grosvenor, +grandfather of the present Duke of Westminster; and about him I have a +tale to tell, which shows how nearly we might have been possessed of +another vast property—but we missed it. One day in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> my boyhood, I +remember my father coming home after his round and telling my mother +that he had a great mind to buy "the five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's, +because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are +now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,—but were then a +dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for +highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and +there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box: +it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His +lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if +he could sell to my father those squalid fields for £2000,—so he +offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was +dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much +dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach +ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to +give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who +possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the +hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been +"stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this +memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father +was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he +had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have +changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine +what a bargain was there!—However, nobody can foresee anything beyond +an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the +dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2> + +<h4>FLYING.</h4> + + +<p>A lecture which I gave at the Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on +the Art of Human Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper +notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Burnaby being in the chair, supported by +several other aeronautical notables. From a rough copy by me I have +thought fit to preserve the exordium here, just as spoken.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"'Tis sixty years since,"—as the title-page to Waverley has it,—'tis +sixty years since a little Charterhouse schoolboy of thirteen called on +one Saturday afternoon (his half-holiday) at a shabby office up a court +in Fleet Street, with a few saved-up shillings of pocket-money in his +hand. His object was secretly to bribe a balloon agent to give him a +seat in the basket on the next flight from Vauxhall: however as, either +from prudential humanity or commercial greed, the clerk stated that five +pounds was the fixed price for a place, and as the aforesaid little +gentleman could only produce ten shillings, the negotiation came to +nothing,—and I, who had coveted from my cradle the privilege that a +bird enjoys from his nest, was fortunately refused that juvenile voyage +in the clouds: whereof when I told my excellent mother, her tearful joy +that I had <i>not</i> made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> perilous ascent affectionately consoled my +disappointment.</p> + +<p>So it is that, as often happens throughout life, and I am a living proof +of it, our Failures prove to be the best Successes: for certainly if my +boyish whim had been granted, and I had thereafter taken habitually to +such aeronautical flights, at once perilous and unsettling, that young +Carthusian would scarcely have stood before you this day as an ancient +Proverbial Philosopher.</p> + +<p>However, let that pass: I only acted—as oftentimes I since have longed +to act—on the desire we all feel to have "the wings of a dove, and fly +away and be at rest,"—floating afar from the dross and dust of earth +into the blue expanse of the heavenly ether:—a thing yet to be +accomplished!—or I will confess to be no prophet: in these days of +electricity, concentrated and accumulative after the fashion of M. +Faure, aided perhaps by some lighter gas, some condensed form of tamed +dynamite,—these elevating and motive powers being helped by exquisite +mechanism either as attached to the human form (if the flier be an +athlete) or quickening a vehicle with flapping wings impelled by +electricity, in which he might sit (if said flier is as burdened with +"too solid flesh" as some of us)—these mixed potencies, I say, of +electricity and gas, ought at this time of the day to be so manipulated +by our chemists and mechanicians as to issue—very soon too—in the +grand invention than would supersede every other sort of +locomotion,—human flight.</p> + +<p>I once met at Baltimore, and since elsewhere, a clever young American +mathematician and engineer, Henry Middleton by name, who showed me, at +his father's place in South Carolina, parts of a model energised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> by the +motive-powers of gas and electricity, which he hoped would successfully +solve the problem of flying; but the Patent Office at Washington was +burnt down soon after, and in it I fear was his machine. At all events I +have heard nothing of his project since.</p> + +<p>I may mention, too, that I believe I have among my audience this evening +Mr. De Lisle Hay, the author not only of that recent very graphic book +"Brighter Britain," but also of another, more cognate to our present +topic, entitled "Three Hundred Years Hence," now out of print, though +published only three years ago. In this latter work he has a chapter on +"Our Conquest of the Air," and imagines a lighter gas called by him +"lucegene," as also a bird-like human flight very much as I had +conceived it forty-one years ago. He tells me also that the best vehicle +for flying might be an imitation of the sidelong action of a flat fish +in water; but how far he has worked upon this idea I know not. Possibly, +if in the room, he may tell us after I release you.</p> + +<p>It is most worthy of notice, that in the almost solitary Biblical +instance of winged angels (see Isaiah vi. 2, and a corresponding passage +in Ezekiel—all other angelic ministers being represented as +etherealised men) these are somewhat like birds in outline, though +having more wings,—with twain covering the head so as to cleave the +air, with twain to cover the feet so as to be a sort of tail or rudder, +while with twain they did fly: even as Blake, and Raffaelle, and some +other painters have depicted them. I mentioned this once to Professor +Owen, our great natural philosopher, in a talk I had with him on human +flight, and he thought such seraphim very remarkable in the light of +analogous comparative anatomy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p> + +<p>Ovid also in a passage before me advocates our imitation of birds if we +would fly bodily: in his "De Icari Casu," he says (with omissions)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Naturamque novat: nam ponit in ordine pennas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A minimâ cœptas, longam breviore sequenti: ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sic imitentur aves: geminas libravit in alas<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ipse suum corpus, motâque pependit in aurâ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Which, being interpreted, means this,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nature he reproduces, ranging fine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From least to longest feathery plumes aline,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus imitating birds, that on the air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With balanced wings are poised in lightness there."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Whilst our noble Laureate in "Locksley Hall" goes in for aerial +machines, "Argosies of magic sails," and "airy navies grappling in the +central blue."</p> + +<p>As to that essay of mine published in the first number of Ainsworth's +Magazine, August 1842, long before the Patent Aerial Company started +their projects, and very much noticed at the time,—Mr. Claude Hamilton +ingrafted it in his work on Flying; the Duke of Argyll in a note before +me commends this principle of copying nature as the true one; a Signor +Ignazio of Milan in 1877 adopted almost exactly my Flying Man,—which +was for the lecture enlarged from Cruikshank's etching of my own sketch: +an aerial flapping machine, a sort of flying wheelbarrow, was some +twenty years ago exhibited at Kensington: whilst in the <i>Daily +Telegraph</i> for July 10, 1874, you will find recorded the untimely death +of one M. de Groof, the Flying Man, who unhappily perished at Cremorne +after a successful flight of 5000 feet. All these are on record.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p> + +<h4 class="padtop"><span class="smcap">Extract from Proverbial Philosophy</span> (Series iv. p. 375).</h4> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Of Change and Travel.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All of us have within us the wandering Crusoe spirit;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We come of Norse sea-rovers, and adventurers full of hope:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And man was bade to tame his earth, to rule it and subdue it,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whereby our feet-soles tingle at an untrod Alpine peak—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But shall we not fly anon with wings, to shame these creeping paces,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even as steam hath worked all speed on land and sea before?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is not this firmament of air part of the human heritage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which man must conquer duteously, as first his Maker willed?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There needeth but a lighter gas, well-tutored to our skill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The springing spirit to some shape of delicate steel and silk,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A bird-like frame of Daedalus, and gummed Icarian plumes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ancient inventions, long forgotten, to be found anew!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When shall the chemist mix aright this rarer lifting essence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make the lord of earth but equal to his many sparrows?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When will discovery help us to such conquest of the air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And teach us swifter travel than our creeps by land and water?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And finally from my "Three Hundred Sonnets" hear Sonnet No. 189—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Spirit.</i>"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Throw me from this tall cliff,—my wings are strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The hurricane is raging fierce and high,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My spirit pants, and all in heat I long<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To fly right upward to a purer sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And spurn the clouds beneath me rolling by;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Lo thus, into the buoyant air I leap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Confident and exulting, at a bound<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Swifter than whirlwinds happily to sweep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On fiery wing the reeling world around:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Off with my fetters!—who shall hold me back?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My path lies there,—the lightning's sudden track<br /></span> +<span class="i4">O'er the blue concave of the fathomless deep,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O that I thus could conquer space and time,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soaring above this world in strength sublime!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2> + +<h4>LUTHER.</h4> + + +<p>I gave a second lecture, one on Luther, at the same place, and on the +like solicitation of Mr. Le Fevre, President of the Balloon Society; the +date being November 9, 1883.</p> + +<p>Of this lecture, not to be tedious, I will here give only the +peroration.</p> + +<p>"And now, in conclusion, let us answer these reasonable questions: What +has Martin Luther done and suffered that we at this distant interval of +four centuries should reverence his memory with gratitude and +admiration? What was the lifework he was raised up to do, and how did he +do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which +we live?—We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had +culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and +superstition: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to +mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not +break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead +both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then +well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther +broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,—freeing +to this day from that bitter bondage not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> alone Germany, Sweden, France, +and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China: +without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the +living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own +persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition, +still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere +forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at +the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still +both spiritually and politically the mean vassals of an Italian priest +instead of brave freemen under our English Queen. Luther relit the +well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it shines for him all +the more gloriously to this hour: Luther refreshed the gospel salt that +had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic +than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener +of good: Luther, under God's good grace and providence, has rescued the +conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of +self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superstitious fears +of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in +this: Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now +than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,—for he has cleansed the +real Augæan stable,—more than any mythical William Tell,—for he has +ensured the boon of everlasting liberty, more to us than a whole army of +so-called heroes in conquest, patriotism, or even local +philanthropy,—for the enemies he fought and vanquished were our +spiritual foes,—the country he opened to us is the heavenly one,—the +good-doing, he inaugurated is wide as the world, and shines an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> electric +universal threefold light of faith, hope, and charity."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Luther.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Written by request, for the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Martin Luther! deathless name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Noblest on the scroll of Fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Solitary monk,—that shook<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the world by God's own book;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Antichrist's Davidian foe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strong to lay Goliath low,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thee, in thy four-hundredth year,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gladly we remember here.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How, without thy forceful mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now had fared all human kind,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Curst and scorch'd and chain'd by Rome,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In each heart of hearth and home?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But for thee, and thy grand hour,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">German light, and British power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Columbia's faith and hope,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All were crush'd beneath the Pope!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God be thank'd for this bright morn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Eisleben's babe was born!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the pious peasant's son,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Liberty's great fight hath won,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When at Wittenberg he stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All alone for God and good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his Bible flew unfurl'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flag of freedom to the world!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Reverend E. Bullinger set this to excellent music; and it was +translated for Continental use into German, French, Swedish, and +Hungarian in the same metre.</p> + +<p>As quite a cognate subject here shall be added my ballad on Wycliffe, +also written by request:—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Wycliffe.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Distant beacon on the night<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Full five centuries ago,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Harbinger of Luther's light,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now four hundred years aglow,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Priest of Lutterworth we see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All of Luther-worth in thee!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lo, the wondrous parallel,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Both gave Bibles to their land;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While, the rage of Rome to quell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Princes stood on either hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">John of Gaunt, and Saxon John,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cheered each bold confessor on.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Both are rescuers of souls,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cleansing those Augæan styes—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Superstition's hiding holes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nunneries and monkeries;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both gave liberty to men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bearding lions in their den!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wycliffe, Luther! glorious pair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Great Twin Brethren of mankind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conscience was your guide and care,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Purifying heart and mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both before your judges stood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Here I stand, for God and good.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Each had liv'd a martyr's life,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Still protesting for the faith;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet amid that fiery strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Each escap'd the martyr's death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rescued from the fangs of Rome,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both died peacefully at home."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.</h2> + +<h4>FINAL.</h4> + + +<p>A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or +not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and +chances to the gates of death in a marvellously predestined manner; if +we pray about everything, we shall see and know that, as Pope says,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In spite of wrong, in erring reason's spite,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and the trustful assurance that the highest wisdom and mercy and power +orders all things will give us comfort under whatever circumstances. I +believe in prayer as the universal panacea, philosophically as well as +devoutly; and that "walking with God" is our highest wisdom as well as +our deepest comfort.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Let no man think that a sick-bed is the best place to repent in. When +the brain is clouded by bodily ailment there is neither capacity nor +even will to mend matters; a man is at the best then tired, lazy, and +dull, but if there is pain too all is worse. Listen to one of my old +sonnets, and take its good advice:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To seek repentance: pain is absolute,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Exacting all the body, all the brain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Humanity's stern king from head to foot:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">How canst thou pray, while fever'd arrows shoot<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Through this torn targe,—while every bone doth ache,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">And the soared mind raves up and down her cell<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake?<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Add not to death the bitter fear of hell;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Take pity on thy future self, poor man,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of meeting all its terrors in the van<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Just at the ebbing agony of life."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have great faith in first impressions of intuitive liking or +disliking. Second thoughts are by no means best always nor even often. +Charity sometimes tries to induce, one to think better of such a person +or such a situation than a first feeling shrinks from,—but it won't do +for long: the man or the place will continue to be distasteful. My +spirit apprehends instinctively the right and the true; and through life +I have relied on intuitions; which some have called a rashness, +recommending colder cautions; but these latter have seldom paid their +way. A country parson was right in his diagnosis of Iscariot's character +as that of "a low mean fellow;" and he judged reasonably that all the +patient kindliness of One who strove to make such His "own familiar +friend" was so much charity almost thrown away, except indeed as to +spiritual improvement of the charitable.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It is right that in a book of self-revelations, like this genuine +autobiography, some special recognition should be made before its close +of gratitude to the Great Giver of all good, and of the spiritual +longings of His penitent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> These feelings I prefer to show after the +author's poetic custom in verse. Let the first be a trilogy of +unpublished sonnets lately written on</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>What We Shall Be.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We—all and each—have faculties and powers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here undeveloped, lying deep within,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crush'd by the weight of circumstance and sin;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Latent, as germs conceal their hidden flowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till some new clime, with genial suns and showers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Give them the force consummate life to win:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even so we, poor prisoners of Time,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Victims of others' evil and our own,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But full of excellences in us sown,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Must wait that better life, and there, full blown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In spiritual perfectness sublime<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The prizes of our nature we shall gain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which now we struggle for in vain—in vain!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who does not feel within him he could be<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Anything, everything, of great and good?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That, give him but the chance, he could and would<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soar on the wings of triumph strong and free?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And think not this is vanity, for he,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If one of Glory's heirs, is of the band<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'I said that ye are gods!'—on this we stand<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Through the eternal ages infinite,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Growing like Christ in hope and love and light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As grafted into Him: there shall we see,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And know as we are known; no hindrance then<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Shall bind our wings, or shut our eyes or ears;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Led upward, onward, through ten million years,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We shall expand in spirit,—but still be Men."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Each hath his specialty; we see in some<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Music or painting, eloquence or skill,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With, or without, an effort of the will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As by spontaneous inspiration come<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ev'n in this mingled crowd of good and ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make us hail a Wonder:—but Elsewhere<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Without or let or hindrance we shall use<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forces neglected here, but nurtured there;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till all the powers of every classic Muse,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ninefold, may dwell in each—as each may choose:<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Since Heaven for creatures must have creature gifts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not only love, religion, gratitude,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">But also light, and every force that lifts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man's spirit to the heights of Great and Good."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For a second take my recent open protest against the pestilential +atheism so rife in our midst:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My Father! everpresent, everwise, and everkind,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Life that pulses at my heart, the Light within my mind,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My Maker, Guardian, Guide, and God, my never-failing Friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who hitherto hast blest me, and wilt bless me to the end,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How should I not acknowledge Thee in all my words and ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bring my doubts to Thee in prayer, the prayer that turns to praise?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How can I cease to trust Thee, who hast guided me so long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And been from earliest childhood to old age my strength and song?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My Father! Great Triunity! For Thou art One in Three,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mystery of mysteries, a threefold joy to me,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What deep delight to dwell upon the philosophic plan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Thy divine self-sacrifice in God becoming man,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And taking on Thyself in Christ the sins and woes of all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Redeemed to higher glory from the ruin of their fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As humbled and enlightened and enlivened into love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the Pure Spirit of sweet peace, the-heart-indwelling Dove!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My Father, Abba, Father! For Thou callest me Thy child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As in Thy holy Jesus and Good Spirit reconciled,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O Father, in this evil day when atheism is found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dropping its poison seeds about in all our fallow-ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall I keep coward silence, and ungenerously forget<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Friend that hitherto hath helped me—and shall help me yet?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall unbelief, all unabashed, proclaim that God is Not,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor faith with honest zeal be quick this hideous lie to blot?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">IV.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ho! Christian soldier,—to the front! and boldly speak aloud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dear old truths denied by yonder Sadducean crowd,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That every inch and every instant we are guided well<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By Him who made, and loved, and loves us more than tongue can tell;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, though there be dread mysteries of cruelty and crime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And marvellous long-suffering patience with these wrongs of time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still, wait a little longer, and we soon shall know the cause<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For every seeming error in the Ruler's righteous laws!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">V.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A little longer, and our faith and hope and works of love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall reap munificent reward in those blest orbs above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where He (who being God of old became our brother here)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall welcome us and speed us on' from glorious sphere to sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until before His Father's throne the Spirit with the Son<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall give to every Christian then the crown his Lord hath won;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And through the ages in all worlds our wondrous ransomed race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall bless the Universal King of Providence and Grace!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For a third, my testimony as to the wonders that surround us: I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> +called this poem The Infinities.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lift up your eyes to yon star-jewelled sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gaze on that firmament caverned on high,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Marvellous universe, infinite space,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Studded with suns in fixt order and place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each with its system of planets unseen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meshed in their orbits by comets between,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worlds that are vaster than mind may believe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whirling more swiftly than thought can conceive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O ye immensities! Who shall declare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The glory of God in His galaxies there?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look too on this poor planet of ours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Torn by the storms of mysterious powers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Evil contending with good from its birth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wrenching in battle the heartstrings of earth,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah! what infinities circle us here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strangeness and wonderment swathing the sphere!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Providence ruleth with care most minute,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet is fell cruelty torturing the mute,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite marvels of wrong and of right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blessing and blasting each day and each night.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All things in mystery; riddles unread;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nothing but dimness of guesses instead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only beginning, where none see the end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor where these infinite energies tend;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Saving that chrysalis-creatures are we,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till we grow wings in that æon-to-be!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everything infinite: Nature, and Art,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The schemes of man's mind, and the throbs of his heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite cravings for better, and best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tempered by infinite longings for rest.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">IV.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then, as the telescope's miracle drew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite Heaven's vast worlds into view,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So doth the microscope's marvel display<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite atomies, wondrous as they!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A mere drop of water, a bubble of air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Teems with perfections of littleness there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite wisdom in exquisite works<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All but invisible everywhere lurks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While we confess as in great so in small,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite skill in the Maker of all.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">V.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And there be grander infinities still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where, in Emmanuel, good has quench'd ill;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite humbleness, highest and first,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Choosing the doom of the lowest and worst;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite pity, and patience,—how long?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite justice, avenging all wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite purity, wisdom, and skill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bettering good through each effort of ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite beauty and infinite love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shining around and beneath and above!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And let this simple hymn be the old man's last prayer, bridging over the +long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with +a child's first piety:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Love and Life.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'My son, give Me thine heart;'<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yes, Abba, Father, yes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perfect in goodness as Thou art,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I will not give Thee less.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But I am dark and dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And need Thy grace to live;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Father, on me Thy Spirit shed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To me that sunshine give!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thus only can I say<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When Thou dost ask my love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will return in earth's poor way<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy gift from heaven above.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There is no good in me<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But droppeth from on high,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then quicken me with life from Thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That I may never die.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For if I am a son—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O grace beyond compare!—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A child of God, with Jesus one,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In Him I stand an heir;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In Him I live and move,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And only so can give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An immortality of love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To Thee by whom I live.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then melt this heart of stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And grant the heart of flesh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That all I am may be Thine own,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Renewed to love afresh."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the +dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal +Hope—ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the +only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the "puir Deil:" +albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to +purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke +character. As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the "tree lying where +it fell," commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,—it +is obvious to answer that when a tree <i>is</i> cut down, its final course of +useful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>ness only then <i>begins</i>, by being sawn up and converted into +furniture; much as when a human being's work here is finished, he is +taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of +our existence, whether here or elsewhere,—no stopping, far less +annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love +having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more +reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which +cannot be true if bodies and spirits—even of the wicked—are to be +condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for +the wretched creature's own improvement, is only in accordance with the +voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our +Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase +of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over +the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the +offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being +burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)—He yet "went +and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those +who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this +sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is +not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his +own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and, +if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling, +of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness. +Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved +from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to +live for Him in this world may by some purifying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> education in the next +come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.</p> + +<p>The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to +indicate a long time,—not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many +proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a +doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely +agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its +intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a hell; to +say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the +millions of the untaught in Christendom, who never have had a chance, +and billions of the Heathen brutalised through the ages by birth and +evil custom? Yes; for all there must be in the near hereafter continuous +new chances of improvement and hopes of better life.</p> + +<p>There is one poem in the volume superadded to my Dramatics which I will +introduce here, as it is quite a <i>tour de force</i> in its way of double +rhyming throughout, and has, moreover, excellent moral uses: so I wish +it read more widely.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Behind the Veil.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Mysteries! crowding around us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How ye perplex and confound us,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each our ignorance screening<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hidden in words without meaning!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who knoweth aught that is certain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Veil'd behind mystery's curtain?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeing the wisest of guesses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Foolishness only expresses.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ancestry? ruthlessly moulding<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bodies and souls in unfolding;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How such a mixture confuses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Judgment's indulgent excuses,—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"While the derivative nature,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still a responsible creature,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yields individual merits,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Biassed by what it inherits.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Circumstance? mighty to fashion<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Instant occasion for passion,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gripping with clutch of a bandit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Weakness too weak to withstand it,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What? shall it mar me or make me?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Neither, till faith shall forsake me—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, with good courage to nerve me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Circumstance only can serve me!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Destiny? doth it then seem so?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or can the will we esteem so,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Change the decree at a bidding,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Us of that destiny ridding,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If with no fatalist weakness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Battling in boldness and meekness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are determined to master<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Every defeat and disaster?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Providence? ordering all things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both of the great and the small things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Equally each of us guiding,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guarding, destroying, providing,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fixt, beyond human forecasting,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both as to blessing and blasting,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet, though we darkly discern Him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quick'ning the prayer that may turn Him!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Evil?—O direst enigma,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whispered and terrible stigma<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By fools to the Good One imputed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if everlastingly rooted!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How so? shall wrong to no ending<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still with the Right be contending?<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Must not the bitterest leaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Melt in the mercy of Heaven?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Or can old Baal, the sun-god,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Boast there are two gods, not one god,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Satan, the rebel infernal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Regent with Christ the Supernal?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come, blessed end, through the ages,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When no more wickedness rages,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When no iniquity hinders,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But sin is burnt down to its cinders!—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Cruelties?—somehow permitted,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With its mute victims unpitied,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tortured in nature's defiance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the false pretext of science,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Shall not some æon of gladness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Balance the throes of pain-madness,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must not the crime of the cruel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burn into souls as its fuel?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never can wisdom's creation<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be stultified annihilation,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But every poor unit that liveth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall live in the life that He giveth,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yea, for that æon of glory,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Revealed in millennial story,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When earth with beatified features,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shines the new Heaven of creatures.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Death? Is it all things, or nothing?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Either the Spirit unclothing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unto new living for ever,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or the dread penalty—never!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Death,—if thou art but the portal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leading to glories immortal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why should we tremble to near thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How be the cowards to fear thee,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Since the worlds blazing above us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Peopled by angels who love us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand our fatherly mansions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fitted for spirits' expansions?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where are the dead? and what doing?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still their old trifles pursuing?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or in the trance of a slumber,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crowded by dreams without number?—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Dreams of unspeakable sadness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breams of ineffable gladness,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the quick conscience remembers<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Evil and good in their embers,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As it lives over in quiet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time and its orgies of riot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or the good gifts and good graces,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bright'ning its happier phases,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As it sees photograph'd clearly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crystalised sharply and nearly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life and its million transactions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fancies and feelings and factions,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Every prayer ever uttered,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Every curse ever muttered,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the man's lowest and highest,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These are thyself, when thou diest!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Filling thee, after thy measure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the full river of pleasure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or, as the fruit of thy sowing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pangs of remorse ever growing,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In thee all Heaven upspringing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or its dread opposite flinging<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blackness and darkness about thee,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both are within, not without thee!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet,—in that darkness, we grope for<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Somewhat far off, yet to hope for,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That through some future repentance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Justice may soften its sentence.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ere from the dead He had risen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'He preached to the spirits in prison,'—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is this a text that His aid is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still to be hoped for in Hades?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Wrath may endure for a season,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both in religion and reason,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if its end must be never,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where is His mercy for ever'?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay,—after long retribution,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mercy may drag from pollution<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Souls that have suffered for ages,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Working out sin's bitter wages,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So that the end shall be glorious,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Good over evil victorious,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And this black sin-night of sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blaze into gladness to-morrow!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And so I make an end of this autobiography, with the humble prayer that +I may have grace given to finish my course in this life usefully and +with honour, at peace with God and man; mindful of that caution of +Tellus, the Athenian, as recorded by Herodotus, "not to judge any man +happy until he is dead;"—the Christian adds, "and is alive again!"</p> + +<p>Let me conclude with some noble lines of Ovid in his Epilogue to the +Metamorphoses, which I have Englished below:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Jamque opus exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cum volet illa dies, quæ nil nisi corporis hujus<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat ævi,—<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Astra ferar: nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ore legar populi; perque omnia sæcula famâ<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Si quid habent veri vatum præsagia <span class="smcap">vivam</span>."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now have I done my work: which not Jove's ire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can make undone, nor sword nor time nor fire.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whene'er that day, whose only powers extend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against this body, my brief life shall end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still in my better portion evermore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above the stars undying shall I soar.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My name shall never die; but through all time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whenever Rome shall reach a conquer'd clime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, in that people's tongue, shall this my page<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be read and glorified from age to age:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yea, if the bodings of my spirit give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">True note of inspiration, I shall live!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h4>THE END.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4 class="left">Transcriber's Notes</h4> + +<p> +There was an illustration of the author as the frontispiece, but it was scanned too poorly to +include here. The caption reads "Martin F. Tupper. <i>Elliott & Fry, Photographers.</i>"<br /> +<a href="#Page_44">Page 44</a>: added closing parenthesis after "contempt]!"<br /> +<a href="#Page_296">Page 296</a>: added closing parenthesis after "patriotic but peculiar"<br /> +<a href="#Page_297">Page 297</a>: removed opening parenthesis after "Rifledom—were once to a comma"<br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's My Life as an Author, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR *** + +***** This file should be named 17558-h.htm or 17558-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/5/5/17558/ + +Produced by Stacy Brown Thellend, Robert Connal and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France +(BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo1.png b/17558-h/images/illo1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a83a0e --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo1.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo10.png b/17558-h/images/illo10.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c3eff07 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo10.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo11.png b/17558-h/images/illo11.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c7c8adc --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo11.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo2.png b/17558-h/images/illo2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e303b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo2.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo3.png b/17558-h/images/illo3.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bdf5317 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo3.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo4.png b/17558-h/images/illo4.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..781520c --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo4.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo5.png b/17558-h/images/illo5.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bed7bfa --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo5.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo6.png b/17558-h/images/illo6.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..60a7869 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo6.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo7.png b/17558-h/images/illo7.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d807d07 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo7.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo8.png b/17558-h/images/illo8.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..16f7ac6 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo8.png diff --git a/17558-h/images/illo9.png b/17558-h/images/illo9.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..67d7309 --- /dev/null +++ b/17558-h/images/illo9.png |
