"Sicilian Muses, sing we loftier strains!The humble tamarisk and woodland plainsDelight not all; if woods and groves we try,Be the groves worthy of a consul's eye.Told by the Sibyl's song, the 'latter time'Is come, and dispensations roll sublimeIn new and glorious order; spring againWith Virgo comes, and Saturn's golden reign.A heavenly band from heaven's bright realm descends,All evil ceases, and all discord ends.Do thou with favouring eye, Lucina chaste,Regard the wondrous babe,—his coming haste,—For under him the iron age shall cease,And the vast world rejoice in golden peace," &c. &c.
"Sicilian Muses, sing we loftier strains!The humble tamarisk and woodland plainsDelight not all; if woods and groves we try,Be the groves worthy of a consul's eye.Told by the Sibyl's song, the 'latter time'Is come, and dispensations roll sublimeIn new and glorious order; spring againWith Virgo comes, and Saturn's golden reign.A heavenly band from heaven's bright realm descends,All evil ceases, and all discord ends.Do thou with favouring eye, Lucina chaste,Regard the wondrous babe,—his coming haste,—For under him the iron age shall cease,And the vast world rejoice in golden peace," &c. &c.
I select this bit, famous for being one of the places in Virgil whichgoes 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:—
"Who praises Oxford?—some small buzzing thing,Some starveling songster on a tiny wing,—(N.B.They call the insect Bob, I know,I heard a printer's devil call it so)—So fondly tells his admiration vastNo one can call the chastened strains bombast,Though epitheted substantives immenseClaim for each lofty sound thecaretsense," &c. &c.
"Who praises Oxford?—some small buzzing thing,Some starveling songster on a tiny wing,—(N.B.They call the insect Bob, I know,I heard a printer's devil call it so)—So fondly tells his admiration vastNo one can call the chastened strains bombast,Though epitheted substantives immenseClaim for each lofty sound thecaretsense," &c. &c.
Next, a bit from my Low Church onslaught on St. Mary's in the Hampden case, being part of "The Oxford Controversy":—
"Though vanquished oft, in falsehood undismayed,Like heretics in flaming vest arrayedEach angry Don lifts high his injured head,Or 'stands between the living and the dead.'Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes widePrimó, beware of truth, whate'er betide;Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steerLest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer,Watch above all, so notSaintThomas spake,Lest upon Calvin, Scylla's rook, you break," &c. &c.
"Though vanquished oft, in falsehood undismayed,Like heretics in flaming vest arrayedEach angry Don lifts high his injured head,Or 'stands between the living and the dead.'Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes widePrimó, beware of truth, whate'er betide;Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steerLest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer,Watch above all, so notSaintThomas spake,Lest upon Calvin, Scylla's rook, you break," &c. &c.
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:—
"Bright was the doom which snatched her favourite son,Nor came too soon to him whose task was done.Long burned his restless spirit to exploreThat stream which eye had never tracked before,Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begunFlows on eternal to the rising sun!Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way,And all save him shrunk backward in dismay,Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayerTo reach that stream, though doomed to perish there!That prayer was heard; by Niger's mystic floodOne rapturous day the speechless dreamer stood,Fixt on that stream his glistening eyes he kept,—The sun went down,—the wayworn wanderer slept!"
"Bright was the doom which snatched her favourite son,Nor came too soon to him whose task was done.Long burned his restless spirit to exploreThat stream which eye had never tracked before,Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begunFlows on eternal to the rising sun!Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way,And all save him shrunk backward in dismay,Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayerTo reach that stream, though doomed to perish there!That prayer was heard; by Niger's mystic floodOne rapturous day the speechless dreamer stood,Fixt on that stream his glistening eyes he kept,—The sun went down,—the wayworn wanderer slept!"
So much for the prize-taker; the prize-loser vented his spleen as thus:—
"Bright was the doom that diddled Mungo Park,Yet very palpably obscure and dark.Long burned his throat, for want of coming nighThat stream he long'd and pray'd for wistfully,Whose course, 'tis said, that no one can tell whereIt flows eternal; guessing isn't fair.Though miles a thousand had he tramp'd along,And all, save him, were sure that path was wrong,Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayerHe'd find that stream,—if it was anywhere!That prayer was heard, of course, though no one knowsWhere this said Niger never flowed, or flows;All that is known is, that a dreamer stoodIn speechless transport by a mystic flood,And after fixing on't his glistening eyes,The sun goes down, and so the dreamer dies!"
"Bright was the doom that diddled Mungo Park,Yet very palpably obscure and dark.Long burned his throat, for want of coming nighThat stream he long'd and pray'd for wistfully,Whose course, 'tis said, that no one can tell whereIt flows eternal; guessing isn't fair.Though miles a thousand had he tramp'd along,And all, save him, were sure that path was wrong,Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayerHe'd find that stream,—if it was anywhere!That prayer was heard, of course, though no one knowsWhere this said Niger never flowed, or flows;All that is known is, that a dreamer stoodIn speechless transport by a mystic flood,And after fixing on't his glistening eyes,The sun goes down, and so the dreamer dies!"
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:—
"'Didst e'er read Dante!'—Never. 'Cruel man!Take, take him, Williams,—I—I never can.'"
"'Didst e'er read Dante!'—Never. 'Cruel man!Take, take him, Williams,—I—I never can.'"
N.B.—Williams was the other examiner. Garbet went on with a further question nevertheless,—as he was affectedly fond of Italian:—
"'Dost know the language love delights in most?If thou dost not, thy character is lost.''Yes, sir!'—the youth retorts with just surprise,'Love's language is the language of the eyes!'"
"'Dost know the language love delights in most?If thou dost not, thy character is lost.''Yes, sir!'—the youth retorts with just surprise,'Love's language is the language of the eyes!'"
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 aftermy 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?
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 thenorth 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.
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.Sat.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.
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 maybe 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.
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?
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 tohim 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.
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 theAsia'sslippery 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 ragingsea beneath,—and so all unseen I had been swept away,—but for good providence.
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.
"An hour of peril in the Lydstep caves:Down the steep gorge, grotesquely boulder-piledAnd tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wildUp it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,—My haste hath sped me to the rippled sandWhere, arching deep, o'erhang on either handThese halls of Amphitrité, echoing clearThe ceaseless mournful music of the waves:Ten thousand beauteous forms of life are here;And long I linger, wandering in and outAmong the seaflowers, tapestried aboutAll over those wet walls.—A shout of fear!The tide, the tide!—I turned and ran for life,And battled stoutly through that billowy strife!"
"An hour of peril in the Lydstep caves:Down the steep gorge, grotesquely boulder-piledAnd tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wildUp it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,—My haste hath sped me to the rippled sandWhere, arching deep, o'erhang on either handThese halls of Amphitrité, echoing clearThe ceaseless mournful music of the waves:Ten thousand beauteous forms of life are here;And long I linger, wandering in and outAmong the seaflowers, tapestried aboutAll over those wet walls.—A shout of fear!The tide, the tide!—I turned and ran for life,And battled stoutly through that billowy strife!"
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; itdoesrequire "a good deal of providence" to come to old age.
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.
And there are many like social evils besides. Let me delicately touch one of them. I desire as anAncient, 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.
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 themthe 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—usque recurrit—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 afterwardsreason to be thankful for this escape, as for others.I, fac simile; as no doubt you have done, and you will do, for there are many Potipheras; ay, and there exist some Josephs too.
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 ownpart, 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.
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?"
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.
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.
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 (valeat quantum) 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 cantruly 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:—
"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 Barmecidalwithout 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.
"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 Barmecidalwithout 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.
"Temperance? Yes! true Temperance, yes!Moderation in all things, the word is express;'Nothing too much'—Greek, 'Meden Agan;'So spake Cleobúlus, the Seventh Wise Man;And the grand 'golden mean' was shrewd Horace's law,And Solomon's self laid it down for a sawThat 'good overmuch' is a possible fault,As meat over-salted is worse for the salt;And Chilo, the Stagyrite, Peter, and Paul,Enjoin moderation in all things to all;The law to make better this trial-scene, earth,And draw out its strongest of wisdom and worth,By sagely suppressing each evil excess—In feasting, of course, but in fasting no less—In drinking—by all means let no one get drunk—In eating, let none be a gluttonous monk,But everyone feed as becometh a saint,With grateful indulging and wholesome restraint,Not pampering self, as an epicure might,Nor famishing self, the ascetic's delight."But man ever has been, and will be, it seems,Given up to intemperance, prone to extremes;The wish of his heart (it has always been such)Is, give me by all means of all things too much!In pleasures and honours, in meats, and in drinks,He craves for the most that his coveting thinks;To wallow in sensual Lucullus's sty,Or stand like the starving Stylités on high,To be free from all churches and worship alone,Or chain'd to the feet of a priest on a throne,To be rich as a Rothschild, and dozens beside,Or poor as St. Francis (in all things but pride),With appetite starved as a Faquir's, poor wretch!Or appetite fattened to luxury's stretch;Denouncing good meats, on lentils he fares,Denouncing good wine, by water he swears—In all things excessive his folly withstandsThe wise moderation that Scripture commands."This vice of excess is no foible of mine,Though liking and needing a glass of good wine,To help the digestion, to quicken the heart,And loosen the tongue for its eloquent part,But never once yielding one jot to excess,Nor weakly consenting the least to transgress.For let no intolerant bigot pretendMy Temperance Muse would excuse or defend,As Martial or tipsy Anacreon might,An orgy of Bacchus, the drunkard's delight:No! rational use is the sermon I'm preaching,Eschewing abuse as the text of my teaching."Old Pindar says slyly, that 'Water is best;'When pure as Bandusia, this may be confest.But water so often is troubled with fleasAnd queer little monsters the microscope sees;Is sometimes so muddy, and sometimes so mixtWith poisons and gases, both fixt and unfixt,And seems so connected with juvenile pills—A thought which the mind with unpleasantness fills—That really one asks, is it safe to imbibeSo freely the live animalcula tribe,Unkilled and uncooked with a little wine saucePoured in, or of whisky or brandy a toss—And gulp a cold draught of the colic, insteadOf something to warm both the heart and the head?"That Jotham-first-fable, the bramble and vine,Piles up to a climax the praise of good wine;For in Judges we read—look it up, as you can—'It cheereth the heart, both of God and of man;'And everywhere lightness, and brightness, and health,Gild the true temperance texts with their wealth,Giving strong drink to the ready to perish,And heavy-heartedness joying to cherish."What is wanted—and let some Good Templar invent it,Damaging drunkenness, nigh to prevent it,Is a drink that is nice, warm, pleasant, and pale,Delicious as 'cakes,' and seductive as 'ale,'Like 'ginger that's hot in the mouth' and won't hurt you,As old Falstaff winks it, in spite of your virtue;A temperate stimulant cup, to displacePipes, hasheesh, and opium, and all that bad race;Cheap as pure water and free as fresh air—Oh, where shall we find such a beverage—where?"No wine for the pure or the wise—so some teach—Abstinence utter for all and for each,Total denial of every right use,Because some bad fools the good creature abuse!As well might one vow not to warm at a fire,Nor give the least rein to a lawful desire,Because some have recklessly burnt down their houses,Because the rogue cheats, or the reveller carouses!I see not the logic, the rational logic,Conclusive to me, coherent and cogic,That since some poor sot in his folly exceeds,I must starve out my likings, and stint out my needs."Am Ithatbrother's keeper? He is not an Abel,Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table:I know not his mates, we are not near each other,He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!—But there's your example?—The drunkards can't see it,And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it;Example?—Your children!—No doubt it is rightTo be to them always a law and a light;But moderate temperance is the vise wayTo form them, and hinder their going astray;Whereas utter abstinence proves itself vain,And drunkards flare up because good men abstain."The law of reaction is stringent and strong,A youthin extremisis sure to go wrong,For the pendulum swings with a multiplied forceWhen sloped from its even legitimate course.I have known—who has not?—that a profligate sonHas been through his fanatic father undone;Restrained till the night of free licence arrives,And then he breaks out to the wreck of two lives!"A fierce water-fever just now is red-hot;Drink water, or perish, thou slave and thou sot!Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much—But, liquors or wines? Not a taste, not a touch!Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift?It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift;The times are so hard and the wines are so bad(For good at low prices are not to be had),That forthwith society shrewdly shouts highFor water alone, the whole abstinence cry!And, somehow supposed suggestive of heaven,The cup of cold water is generously given,But a glass of good wine is an obsolete thing,And will be till trade is once more in full swing!I hint not hypocrisy; many are true,They preach what they practise, they say—and they do,And used from their boyhood to only cold water,Enjoin nothing better on wife, son, and daughter;But surely with some it is merely for thrift,That they out off the wine, and with water make shift,Although they profess the self-sacrifice madeAs dread of intemperance makes them afraid.And so, like a helmsman too quick with his tiller,Eschewing Charybdis they steer upon Scylla,To perish of utter intemperance—Yes!The victims of water consumed to excess."To conclude: The first miracle, wonder Divine,Wasn't wine changed to water, but water to wine,That wine of the Kingdom, the water of lifeTransmuted, with every new excellence rife,The wine to make glad both body and soul,To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole.And when the Redeemer was seen among men,He drank with the sinners and publicans then,Exemplar of Temperance, yea, to the sot,In use of good wine, but abusing it not!We dare not pretend to do better than He;But follow the Master, as servants made freeTo touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse,All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!It is thus the true Christian with temperance lives,Giving God thanks for the wine that He gives."
"Temperance? Yes! true Temperance, yes!Moderation in all things, the word is express;'Nothing too much'—Greek, 'Meden Agan;'So spake Cleobúlus, the Seventh Wise Man;And the grand 'golden mean' was shrewd Horace's law,And Solomon's self laid it down for a sawThat 'good overmuch' is a possible fault,As meat over-salted is worse for the salt;And Chilo, the Stagyrite, Peter, and Paul,Enjoin moderation in all things to all;The law to make better this trial-scene, earth,And draw out its strongest of wisdom and worth,By sagely suppressing each evil excess—In feasting, of course, but in fasting no less—In drinking—by all means let no one get drunk—In eating, let none be a gluttonous monk,But everyone feed as becometh a saint,With grateful indulging and wholesome restraint,Not pampering self, as an epicure might,Nor famishing self, the ascetic's delight.
"But man ever has been, and will be, it seems,Given up to intemperance, prone to extremes;The wish of his heart (it has always been such)Is, give me by all means of all things too much!In pleasures and honours, in meats, and in drinks,He craves for the most that his coveting thinks;To wallow in sensual Lucullus's sty,Or stand like the starving Stylités on high,To be free from all churches and worship alone,Or chain'd to the feet of a priest on a throne,To be rich as a Rothschild, and dozens beside,Or poor as St. Francis (in all things but pride),With appetite starved as a Faquir's, poor wretch!Or appetite fattened to luxury's stretch;Denouncing good meats, on lentils he fares,Denouncing good wine, by water he swears—In all things excessive his folly withstandsThe wise moderation that Scripture commands.
"This vice of excess is no foible of mine,Though liking and needing a glass of good wine,To help the digestion, to quicken the heart,And loosen the tongue for its eloquent part,But never once yielding one jot to excess,Nor weakly consenting the least to transgress.For let no intolerant bigot pretendMy Temperance Muse would excuse or defend,As Martial or tipsy Anacreon might,An orgy of Bacchus, the drunkard's delight:No! rational use is the sermon I'm preaching,Eschewing abuse as the text of my teaching.
"Old Pindar says slyly, that 'Water is best;'When pure as Bandusia, this may be confest.But water so often is troubled with fleasAnd queer little monsters the microscope sees;Is sometimes so muddy, and sometimes so mixtWith poisons and gases, both fixt and unfixt,And seems so connected with juvenile pills—A thought which the mind with unpleasantness fills—That really one asks, is it safe to imbibeSo freely the live animalcula tribe,Unkilled and uncooked with a little wine saucePoured in, or of whisky or brandy a toss—And gulp a cold draught of the colic, insteadOf something to warm both the heart and the head?
"That Jotham-first-fable, the bramble and vine,Piles up to a climax the praise of good wine;For in Judges we read—look it up, as you can—'It cheereth the heart, both of God and of man;'And everywhere lightness, and brightness, and health,Gild the true temperance texts with their wealth,Giving strong drink to the ready to perish,And heavy-heartedness joying to cherish.
"What is wanted—and let some Good Templar invent it,Damaging drunkenness, nigh to prevent it,Is a drink that is nice, warm, pleasant, and pale,Delicious as 'cakes,' and seductive as 'ale,'Like 'ginger that's hot in the mouth' and won't hurt you,As old Falstaff winks it, in spite of your virtue;A temperate stimulant cup, to displacePipes, hasheesh, and opium, and all that bad race;Cheap as pure water and free as fresh air—Oh, where shall we find such a beverage—where?
"No wine for the pure or the wise—so some teach—Abstinence utter for all and for each,Total denial of every right use,Because some bad fools the good creature abuse!As well might one vow not to warm at a fire,Nor give the least rein to a lawful desire,Because some have recklessly burnt down their houses,Because the rogue cheats, or the reveller carouses!I see not the logic, the rational logic,Conclusive to me, coherent and cogic,That since some poor sot in his folly exceeds,I must starve out my likings, and stint out my needs.
"Am Ithatbrother's keeper? He is not an Abel,Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table:I know not his mates, we are not near each other,He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!—But there's your example?—The drunkards can't see it,And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it;Example?—Your children!—No doubt it is rightTo be to them always a law and a light;But moderate temperance is the vise wayTo form them, and hinder their going astray;Whereas utter abstinence proves itself vain,And drunkards flare up because good men abstain.
"The law of reaction is stringent and strong,A youthin extremisis sure to go wrong,For the pendulum swings with a multiplied forceWhen sloped from its even legitimate course.I have known—who has not?—that a profligate sonHas been through his fanatic father undone;Restrained till the night of free licence arrives,And then he breaks out to the wreck of two lives!
"A fierce water-fever just now is red-hot;Drink water, or perish, thou slave and thou sot!Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much—But, liquors or wines? Not a taste, not a touch!Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift?It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift;The times are so hard and the wines are so bad(For good at low prices are not to be had),That forthwith society shrewdly shouts highFor water alone, the whole abstinence cry!And, somehow supposed suggestive of heaven,The cup of cold water is generously given,But a glass of good wine is an obsolete thing,And will be till trade is once more in full swing!I hint not hypocrisy; many are true,They preach what they practise, they say—and they do,And used from their boyhood to only cold water,Enjoin nothing better on wife, son, and daughter;But surely with some it is merely for thrift,That they out off the wine, and with water make shift,Although they profess the self-sacrifice madeAs dread of intemperance makes them afraid.And so, like a helmsman too quick with his tiller,Eschewing Charybdis they steer upon Scylla,To perish of utter intemperance—Yes!The victims of water consumed to excess.
"To conclude: The first miracle, wonder Divine,Wasn't wine changed to water, but water to wine,That wine of the Kingdom, the water of lifeTransmuted, with every new excellence rife,The wine to make glad both body and soul,To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole.And when the Redeemer was seen among men,He drank with the sinners and publicans then,Exemplar of Temperance, yea, to the sot,In use of good wine, but abusing it not!We dare not pretend to do better than He;But follow the Master, as servants made freeTo touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse,All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!It is thus the true Christian with temperance lives,Giving God thanks for the wine that He gives."
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.Apropos,—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 ofeau de vieinsuch 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.
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 'in vino veritas' contains in it far more of 'veritas' 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 andare 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.
"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."
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.
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 haveoperated in my case, namely this: Ever since youth and now to my old age I have been exposed to the "odium theologicum," 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.
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:—
"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 theparturiunt montestheory. 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, andhas 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 theEdinburgh Review. 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 ofThe Atlas, 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 withThe Eclecticthat 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 verdictsin this case, black and white are not more contradictory:e.g., letBlackwoodbe contrasted with theMonthly Review, or theChurch of England Quarterlywith theWeekly True Sun, &c. &c."
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.
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,—