My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

YOUNG AUTHORSHIP IN VERSE AND PROSE.

Of my earliest MS., written soon after my seventh birthday, I have no copy, and only a very confused memory: but I remember that my good mother treasured for years and showed to many friends something in the nature of an elegy which a broken-hearted little brother wrote on the death of an infant sister from his first school: this is only mentioned in case any one of my older readers may possibly supply such a lost MS. in a child's roundhand. At school, chiefly as a young Carthusian, I frequently broke out into verse, where prose translation was more properly required: seeing that it pleased my indolence to be poetical where I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this small poetaster of having "cribbed" his metrical version from some unknown collection of poems: however, he had always to be satisfied with my assurance as to authenticity, for he was sure to be baffled in his inquiries elsewhere.

One such instance is extant as thus,—for I kept a copy, as the assembled Charterhouse masters seemed to think it too good to be original for a small boy of twelve to thirteen. Here then, as a specimen of one of my early bits of literature, is a genuine and unaltered poem (for any modern improvements would not be honest) in the shape of a translated Greek epigram from the Anthologia:—

"Not Juno's eye of fire divine
Can vie my Melite, with thine
So heavenly pure and bright;
Nor can Minerva's hand excel
That pretty hand I know so well,
So small and lily-white.

"Not Venus can such charms disclose
As those sweet lips of blushing rose
And ivory bosom show;
Not Thetis' nimble foot can tread
More lightly o'er her coral bed
Than thy soft foot of snow.

"What happiness thy face bestows
When smiling on a lover's woes!
Thrice happy then is he
Who hears thy soul-subduing song,—
O more than blest, to whom belong
The charms of Melite!"

I was head of the lower school then, and I remember the father of Bernal Osborne patting my curly locks and scolding his whiskered son for letting a small boy be above him.

Much about this time, and until I left Charterhouse at sixteen, there proceeded from my pen numerous other mild rhymed pieces and sundry unsuccessful prize poems; e.g., three on Carthage, the second Temple of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, Æschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady friends, one being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G. A. S. had a musical relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following "On a shell sounding like the sea" is a fair specimen for a boy:—

"I remember the voice of the flood
Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore,
As a linnet remembers the wood
And his warblings so joyous before."

Of course, this class of my juvenile lyrics was holiday work, and barely worth a record, except to save a fly in amber, like this.