ELECTRICS.
I have something of interest to say about the first laying of the electric telegraph across the Atlantic. Sir Culling Eardley invited a number of savants, among them Wheatstone and Morse, and others, both English and American, to a great feast inaugurating the completion of the cable: and I, amongst other outsiders, had the honour of being asked. I had written, and after dinner I read, the verses following, which had the good and great effect of originating the first message (see the seventh stanza) which was adopted by acclamation and sent off at once; being only preceded, for courtesy-sake, by a short friendly greeting from Queen to President, and President to Queen. The heading runs in my book as "The Atlantic Telegraph."
"World! what a wonder is this,
Grandly and simply sublime,—
All the Atlantic abyss
Leapt in a nothing of time!
Even the steeds of the sun
Half a day panting behind,
In the flat race that is run,
Won by a flash of the mind!
"Lo! on this sensitive, link—
It is one link, not a chain—
Man with his brother can think
Spanning the breadth of the main,—
Man to his brother can speak
Swift as the bolt from a cloud,
And where its thunders were weak
There his least whisper is loud!
"Yea; for as Providence wills,
Now doth intelligent man
Conquer material ills,
Wrestling them down as he can,—
And lay one weak little coil
Under the width of the waves,
Distance and Time are his spoil,
Fetter'd as Caliban slaves!
"Ariel?—right through the sea
We can fly swift as in air;
Puck?—forty minutes shall be
Sloth to the bow that we bear:
Here is Earth's girdle indeed,
Just a thought-circlet of fire,—
Delicate Ariel freed
Sings, as she flies, on a wire!
"Courage, O servants of light,
For you are safe to succeed;
Lo! you are helping the Right,
And shall be blest in your deed.
Lo! you shall bind in one band,
Joining the nations as one,
Brethren of every land,
Blessing them under the sun!
"This is Earth's pulse of high health
Thrilling with vigour and heat,
Brotherhood, wisdom and wealth,
Throbbing in every beat;
But you must watch in good sooth
Lest to false fever it swerve,—
Touch it with tenderest truth
As the world's exquisite nerve!
"Let the first message across—
High-hearted Commerce, give heed—
Not be of profit or loss,
But one electric indeed:
Praise to the Giver be given,
For that He giveth man skill,
Glory to God in the Heaven!
'Peace upon earth, and goodwill!'"
Another Electric poem of mine called "The First Message," also in Gall's edition, was sent over by telegraph to America. What a miserable muddle, by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel's Message;—preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly spoilt that sublime trilogy by making "Peace upon earth, goodwill towards men," read "Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well pleased." How clumsy and how ungrammatical, in whom! The whole dear Bible has been terribly damaged by their 36,000 needless alterations in the New Testament (not 100 having been really necessary), and I know not how many more myriads in the Old, but happily their Version falls dead, and will soon be as forgotten as Dr. Conquest's "Bible with 20,000 emendations," whereof I now possess a somewhat scarce copy in the library at Albury. I have less than no patience with those principally clerical revisers; albeit for their chairman, Dr. Ellicott, I retain a pleasant memory from Orkney recollections in old days.
But this is a digression, wrung from me by my righteous wrath against those who have done their worst to spoil for us The Angel's Message, the first word uttered by the telegraphic wire under the sea.
Returning to the subject of Electrics I have something of interest to say which will be news to my readers. One day when casually dipping into Addison's Spectator at Albury, I made the following discovery which I recorded in the newspapers at the time, and give the extract now fully as thus:—
In the 241st No. of Addison's Spectator, bearing date Thursday, December 6th, 1711, and as signed "C." (one of the letters of the mystic Clio), by the great Joseph Addison himself, occurs the following remarkable anticipation of our presumably most modern discovery. Those who have access to the London edition of the Spectator of 1841, published by J. J. Chidley, 123 Aldersgate Street, can verify the verbatim faithfulness of the following extract from page 274:—
"Strada, in one of his Prolusions (Lib. II. prol. 6), gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that if it touched two several needles, when one of the needles so touched began to move, the other, though at never so great a distance, moved at the same time, and in the same manner. He tells us that the two friends, being each of them possessed of one of those needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it with four-and-twenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. They then fixed one of the needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it could move round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-and-twenty letters.
"Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain hour of the day, and to converse with one another by means of this their invention.
"Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately cast his eye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind to write anything to his friend, he directed his needle to every letter that formed the words which he had occasion for, making a little pause at the end of every word or sentence, to avoid confusion.
"The friend in the meanwhile saw his own sympathetic needle moving of itself to every letter which that of his correspondent pointed at. By this means they talked together across a whole continent, and conveyed their thoughts to one another in an instant over cities or mountains, seas or deserts.
"If Monsieur Scudery, or any other writer of romance, had introduced a necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knight-errant, making a present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and watchers, or separated by castles and adventures.
"In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be revived or put in practice, I would propose that upon the lover's dial-plate there should be written not only the four-and-twenty letters, but several entire words which have always a place in passionate epistles, as flames, darts, die, language, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of writing a letter, as it would enable him to express the most useful and significant words with a single touch of the needle.—C."
Thus far Addison, a hundred and seventy years ago, and Strada (whoever he may be, for ordinary biographical dictionaries ignore him), perhaps fifty before him, and the two unknown experimentalists, perhaps twenty beyond that, making in all two hundred and forty or fifty years ago as the date of electrical invention: whereof we see no further mention in the Spectator. But is it not also among the "Century of the Marquis of Worcester's Inventions"?—as is possible; the scarce volume is not near me for reference. Let the curious reader who can, turn to it and see. Meanwhile, how strangely Addison and Strada have anticipated the dial-plate, and the needles, and the letters, and the short forms for common words, all so familiar to our telegraphists. Verily there is nothing new under the sun.
Extract from my Archive-book, No. 8. Date October 15, 1856.
"I was again an electric guest, this time at the Great Albion dinner (Liverpool) to Mr. Morse, whom I had met at Erith and in America. A day or two afterwards I sent him a letter of invitation to Albury, enclosing the sonnet below; and not knowing his London address I posted it to my brother Charles in London for him to read and forward. Lucky enough that I did so, for Mr. Morse had just sailed for America: so Charles had both prose and poetry telegraphed to him in New York,—and the Company would not charge any money for it! This is perhaps the only time a sonnet ever travelled by telegraph, and certainly the only time it ever so travelled gratis."
Here it is, for which I had a very complimentary and grateful note from "Samuel F. B. Morse, as an ardent admirer," &c. As never in print till now, I trust it will be acceptable to my readers. Mr. Morse's published speech was religiously high-minded and true-hearted, as indicated in the sonnet.
To Professor Morse, in pleasant memory of October 10, 1856,
at the Albion.
"A good and generous spirit ruled the hour;
Old jealousies were drowned in brotherhood,
Philanthropy rejoiced that skill and power,
Servants to science, compass all men's good;
And over all Religion's banner stood,
Upheld by thee, true Patriarch of the plan
Which in two hemispheres was schemed to shower
Mercies from God on universal man.
Yes, this electric chain from East to West
More than mere metal, more than Mammon can,
Binds us together kinsmen, in the best
As most affectionate and frankest bond,
Brethren at one, and looking far beyond
The world in an electric union blest."