My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

I quote a few particulars from one of my diaries. "This book tended to clear my brain of sundry fancies and pictures, as only the writing of another book could do that. Its seed is truly recorded in the first chapter as to the two stone coffins still in the chancel of St. Martha's. I began the book on November 26, 1857, and finished it in exactly eight weeks, on January 21, 1858, reading for the work included. In two months more it was printed by Hurst & Blackett. I intended it for one full volume, but the publishers preferred to issue it in two scant ones; it has since been reproduced by Lasham, Guildford, in one vol., at one-and-sixpence; it was 14s. I consulted and partially read for it (as I wanted accurate pictures of John's reign in England) the histories of Tyrrell, Hollingshed, Hume, Poole, Markland, Thomson's Magna Charta, James's Philip Augustus, Milman's Latin Christianity, Hallam's Middle Ages, Maimbourg's Lives of the Popes, Ranke's Life of Innocent III., Maitland on the Dark Ages, Ritson's Life of Robin Hood, Salmon's, Bray's, and Brayley's Surrey, Tupper's and Duncan's Guernsey, besides the British and National and other Encyclopædias and Dictionaries as required. It was a work of hard and quick and fervid labour, not an idle piece of mere brain-spinning, and it may be depended on for archæological accuracy in every detail. More than thirty localities in our beautiful county Surrey are painted in the book; of other parts of England twelve; of France and Italy twelve; there are more than twenty historical characters honestly (as I judge) depicted; and some fifteen ideal ones fairly enough invented as accessories: I preferred Stephan to the commoner Stephen, for etymological and archæological reasons: it is clearly nearer the Greek, and is spelt so in ancient records."

King Alfred's own Poems.

One of the rarest of the books I have written (if any bibliomaniac of some future age desires to collect them) must always be "King Alfred's Poems, now first turned into English metres;" for the little volume was privately printed by Dr. Allen Giles, the edition being only of 250 copies, which soon vanished, a few of them bearing Hall & Virtue's name on a new title, and being dated 1850,—the majority hailing from the private press aforesaid. I constructed it purposely for the "Jubilee Edition of the Works of King Alfred," learning as well as I could (by the help of Dr. Bosworth's Dictionary and a Grammar) in a few weeks a little Anglo-Saxon,—and I confess considerably assisted by Mr. Fox's prose translation of Boethius. There are thirty-one poems in all, some being of Alfred's own, but the major part rendered by the wise king out of Latin into the language of his own people to help their teaching. I turned it into English verse in thirty-one different metres, each being as nearly as I could manage in the rhythm of the original: there were no rhymes in those days; alliteration was the only sort of jingle: in the judgment of Mr. Fox and some other Anglo-Saxon critics my version was fairly close, and for the poetical part of my own production at least nothing is of the slipshod order of half rhymes or alternate prose and verse—too common, especially in our hymnology—but honest double rhyming throughout. Without transcribing the little volume I could not give a true idea of it: but here shall come three or four samples:—

"Lo, I sang cheerily
In my bright days,—
But now all wearily
Chaunt I my lays,—
Sorrowing tearfully,
Saddest of men,
Can I sing cheerfully
As 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.

Yet another:—

"What is a man the better,
A man of worldly mould,
Though he be gainful getter
Of richest gems and gold,
With every kind well fillèd
Of goods in ripe array,
And though for him be tillèd
A thousand fields a day?" &c.

Again:—

"I have wings like a bird, and more swiftly can fly
Far 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.