"Wotton, fair Wotton, thine ancestral hall,Thy green fresh meadows, coursed by ductile streams,That ripple joyous in the noonday beams,Leaping adown the frequent waterfall,Thy princely forest, and calm slumbering lakeAre hallowed spots and classic precincts all;For in thy terraced walks and beechen groveThe gentle, generous Evelyn wont to rove,Peace-lover, who of nature's garden spakeFrom cedars to the hyssop on the wall!O righteous spirit, fall'n on evil times,Thy loyal zeal and learned pietyBlest all around thee, wept thy country's crimes,And taught the world how Christians live and die."
"Wotton, fair Wotton, thine ancestral hall,Thy green fresh meadows, coursed by ductile streams,That ripple joyous in the noonday beams,Leaping adown the frequent waterfall,Thy princely forest, and calm slumbering lakeAre hallowed spots and classic precincts all;For in thy terraced walks and beechen groveThe gentle, generous Evelyn wont to rove,Peace-lover, who of nature's garden spakeFrom cedars to the hyssop on the wall!O righteous spirit, fall'n on evil times,Thy loyal zeal and learned pietyBlest all around thee, wept thy country's crimes,And taught the world how Christians live and die."
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 onlyunpopular 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 recentFortnightly(or was it aContemporary?) 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.
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.
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."
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:—
"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 definitelife,—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 myrôle,—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 ofinternal 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 persecutemyspirit, 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."
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 skeletonform 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:—
The Cathedral Mind."Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,Shrine of sweet thoughts veil'd round with words of power,The Author's Mind in all its hallowed richesStands a Cathedral; full of precious things—Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,Cloister and aisle, dark crypt and aery tower;Long-treasured relics in the fretted nichesAnd secret stores, and heaped-up offerings,Art's noblest wealth with Nature's fruit and flower.Paintings and Sculpture, Summer's best, and Spring's,Its plenitude of pride and praise betoken;An ever-burning lamp shines in its soul;Deep music all around enchantment flings;AndGod'sgreat Presence consecrates the whole!"
The Cathedral Mind.
"Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,Shrine of sweet thoughts veil'd round with words of power,The Author's Mind in all its hallowed richesStands a Cathedral; full of precious things—Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,Cloister and aisle, dark crypt and aery tower;Long-treasured relics in the fretted nichesAnd secret stores, and heaped-up offerings,Art's noblest wealth with Nature's fruit and flower.Paintings and Sculpture, Summer's best, and Spring's,Its plenitude of pride and praise betoken;An ever-burning lamp shines in its soul;Deep music all around enchantment flings;AndGod'sgreat Presence consecrates the whole!"
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,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, whereanent 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."—Britannia.And similarly of other English journals, while the Americans were equally favourable. Take this characteristic instance, one of many: theBrooklyn Eaglemaintains 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." AndHunt's Magazine, 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."
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:—
"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 theheart. 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.
"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.
"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 abortivediabolic 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.
"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!
"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."
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 wholesome popularity and wholesale good-doing. It was a fair method of preaching the Gospel to the poor, for that crowd was of the humblest.
The "Crock of Gold" has been translated complete as afeuilletonboth 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.
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:—
"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 itis 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.'
"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, 'The Crock of Gold, 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."
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:—
"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 manI knew at Brighton. So also with these tales, and others of my writings."
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; forlitera scripta manet, 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 themoraleof "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.
In the chapter headed "The find of the Heartless," I find a manuscript note perhaps worth printing here:
"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."
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:—
"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 goldis 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."
And of the other tales we find the following from the pen of the celebrated Mr. St. John, when he was editor of theSunday Times. He speaks of the three tales together:—
"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."
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."
"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,and so in this competitive free-trade era the units who feed those devourers are swallowed up themselves. However, "what must be, must,"—che sara sara,—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.
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 pencilledin 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:—
The Early Gallop."At five on a dewy morning,Before the blaze of day,To be up and off on a high-mettled horse,All care and danger scorning,Over the hills away,—To drink the rich sweet breath of the gorse,And bathe in the breeze of the downs.—Ha! man, if you can,—match bliss like thisIn all the joys of towns!"With glad and grateful tongue to joinThe lark at his matin hymn,And thence on faith's own wing to springAnd sing with cherubim!To pray from a deep and tender heartWith all things praying anew,The birds and the bees and the whispering trees,And heather bedropt with dew.—To be one with those early worshippers,And pour the carol too!"Then off again with a slackened reinAnd a bounding heart within,To dash at a gallop over the plainHealth's golden cup to win!This, this is the race for gain and grace,Richer than vases and crowns;And you that boast your pleasures the mostAmid the steam of towns,Come taste true bliss in a morning like this,Galloping over the downs!"
The Early Gallop.
"At five on a dewy morning,Before the blaze of day,To be up and off on a high-mettled horse,All care and danger scorning,Over the hills away,—To drink the rich sweet breath of the gorse,And bathe in the breeze of the downs.—Ha! man, if you can,—match bliss like thisIn all the joys of towns!
"With glad and grateful tongue to joinThe lark at his matin hymn,And thence on faith's own wing to springAnd sing with cherubim!To pray from a deep and tender heartWith all things praying anew,The birds and the bees and the whispering trees,And heather bedropt with dew.—To be one with those early worshippers,And pour the carol too!
"Then off again with a slackened reinAnd a bounding heart within,To dash at a gallop over the plainHealth's golden cup to win!This, this is the race for gain and grace,Richer than vases and crowns;And you that boast your pleasures the mostAmid the steam of towns,Come taste true bliss in a morning like this,Galloping over the downs!"
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.
I could fill many pages with the critiquesproandconthis queer book has provoked, but it is useless now that the world has let it die.
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.
The tragedy at the "Silent Pool" and theAuto-da-féare perhaps the most dramatic scenes in the book,—as the Robin Hood gathering in Combe Valley is the most picturesque.
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 dothat. 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 idealones 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."
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 volumeI could not give a true idea of it: but here shall come three or four samples:—
"Lo, I sang cheerilyIn my bright days,—But now all wearilyChaunt I my lays,—Sorrowing tearfully,Saddest of men,Can I sing cheerfullyAs I could then?" &c. &c.
"Lo, I sang cheerilyIn my bright days,—But now all wearilyChaunt I my lays,—Sorrowing tearfully,Saddest of men,Can I sing cheerfullyAs I could then?" &c. &c.
Here is a verse of another:—
"O Thou that art Maker of heaven and earth,Who steerest the stars, and hast given them birth,For ever thou reignest upon Thy high throne,And turnest all swiftly the heavenly zone," &c.
"O Thou that art Maker of heaven and earth,Who steerest the stars, and hast given them birth,For ever thou reignest upon Thy high throne,And turnest all swiftly the heavenly zone," &c.
Yet another:—
"What is a man the better,A man of worldly mould,Though he be gainful getterOf richest gems and gold,With every kind well fillèdOf goods in ripe array,And though for him be tillèdA thousand fields a day?" &c.
"What is a man the better,A man of worldly mould,Though he be gainful getterOf richest gems and gold,With every kind well fillèdOf goods in ripe array,And though for him be tillèdA thousand fields a day?" &c.
Again:—
"I have wings like a bird, and more swiftly can flyFar over this earth to the roof of the sky,And now must I feather thy fancies, O mind,To leave the mid earth and its earthlings behind," &c.
"I have wings like a bird, and more swiftly can flyFar over this earth to the roof of the sky,And now must I feather thy fancies, O mind,To leave the mid earth and its earthlings behind," &c.
And for a last word:—
"Thus quoth Alfred—'If thou growest oldAnd hast no pleasure, spite of weal and gold,And goest weak,—then thank thy Lord for this,That He hath sent thee hitherto much bliss,For life and light and pleasures past away;And say thou, Come and welcome, come what may.'"
"Thus quoth Alfred—'If thou growest oldAnd hast no pleasure, spite of weal and gold,And goest weak,—then thank thy Lord for this,That He hath sent thee hitherto much bliss,For life and light and pleasures past away;And say thou, Come and welcome, come what may.'"
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.
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.
"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,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.
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.
The Day of a Thousand Years."To-day is the day of a thousand years!Bless it, O brothers, with heart-thrilling cheers!Alfred for ever!—to-day was He born,Day-star of England, to herald her morn,That, everywhere breaking and brightening soon,Sheds on us now the full sunshine of noon,And fills us with blessing in Church and in State,Children of Alfred, the Good and the Great!Chorus—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years."Anglo-Saxons!—in love are we met,To honour a Name we can never forget!Father, and Founder, and King of a raceThat reigns and rejoices in every place,—Root of a tree that o'ershadows the earth,First of a Family blest from his birth,Blest in this stem of their strength and their state,Alfred the Wise, and the Good, and the Great!Chorus,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years!"Children of Alfred, from every climeYour glory shall live to the deathday of Time!Hereafter in bliss still ever expandO'er measureless realms of the Heavenly Land!For you, like him, serveGodand your Race,And gratefully look on the birthday of Grace:Then honour to Alfred! with heart-stirring cheers!To-day is the Day of a thousand years!Chorus,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years!"
The Day of a Thousand Years.
"To-day is the day of a thousand years!Bless it, O brothers, with heart-thrilling cheers!Alfred for ever!—to-day was He born,Day-star of England, to herald her morn,That, everywhere breaking and brightening soon,Sheds on us now the full sunshine of noon,And fills us with blessing in Church and in State,Children of Alfred, the Good and the Great!Chorus—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years.
"Anglo-Saxons!—in love are we met,To honour a Name we can never forget!Father, and Founder, and King of a raceThat reigns and rejoices in every place,—Root of a tree that o'ershadows the earth,First of a Family blest from his birth,Blest in this stem of their strength and their state,Alfred the Wise, and the Good, and the Great!Chorus,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years!
"Children of Alfred, from every climeYour glory shall live to the deathday of Time!Hereafter in bliss still ever expandO'er measureless realms of the Heavenly Land!For you, like him, serveGodand your Race,And gratefully look on the birthday of Grace:Then honour to Alfred! with heart-stirring cheers!To-day is the Day of a thousand years!Chorus,—Hail to his Jubilee Day,The Day of a thousand years!"
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.
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 ashe danced: for size those half-dozen Koh-i-noors must be—foolishly—invaluable.
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.e., 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.
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,showing the document to all around him, whilst I escaped.
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:—