Martin Tupper's Autobiography

MY LIFE

AS AN AUTHOR

BY

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
D.C.L. F.R.S.

Viri, vivo, vivam.

LONDON:

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET, E.C.
1886
[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS.

MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY.

I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:—

"You bid me write the story of my life,
And draw what secrets in my memory dwell
From the dried fountains of her failing well,
With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife,
And such small facts, with good or evil rife,
As happen to us all: I have no tale
Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,—
Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale:
My life is in my books: the record there,
A truthful photograph, is all I choose
To give the world of self; nor will excuse
Mine own or others' failures: glad to spare
From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes,
Leaving unwritten what God only knows."

In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its apparent vainglory as to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of self-registered virtues and successes,—but even still more from the mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace troubles and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life," to the casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations—whether pleasant or the reverse—of matters merely personal, and therefore more of a private than a public character.

Indeed, so disquieted was I at the possible prospect of any one getting hold of a mass of manuscript in old days diligently compiled by myself from year to year in several small diaries, that I have long ago ruthlessly made a holocaust of the heap of such written self-memories, fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now add my express protest against the printing hereafter of any of my innumerable private letters to friends, or other MSS., unless they are strictly and merely of a literary nature.

Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded. And even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good or evil, and the possession or otherwise of gifts and talents, due very much (under Providence) to one's ancient ancestors and one's modern teachers? We are each of us morally and bodily the psychical and physical composite of a thousand generations. Albeit every individual possesses as his birthright a freewill to turn either to the right or to the left, and is liable to a due responsibility for his words and actions, still the Just Judge alone can and must make allowance for the innate inclinings of heredity and the outward influences of circumstance, and He only can hold the balance between the guilt and innocence, the merit or demerit, of His creature.

So far as my own will goes, I leave my inner spiritual biography to the Recording Angel, choosing only to give some recollections and memories of my outer literary life. For spiritual self-analysis in matters of religion and affection I desire to be as silent as I can be; but in such a book as this absolute taciturnity on such subjects is practically impossible.

For the matter, then, of autobiography, I decline its higher and its deeper aspects; as also I wish not to obtrude on the public eye mere domesticities and privacies of life. But mainly lest others less acquainted with the petty incidents of my career should hereafter take up the task, I accede with all frankness and humility to what seems to me like a present call to duty, having little time to spare at seventy-six, so near the end of my tether,—and protesting, as I well may, against the charge of selfish egotism in a book necessarily spotted on every page with the insignificant letter I; and while, of course on human-nature principles, willing enough to exhibit myself at the best, promising also not to hide the second best, or worse than that, where I can perceive it.

That shrewd old philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, thus excuses his own self-imposed task of "autobiography," and I cannot do better than quote and adopt his wise and just remarks:—

"In thus employing myself, I shall yield to the inclination so natural to old men, of talking of themselves and their own actions, and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to those who, from respect to my age, might conceive themselves obliged to listen to me, since they will always be free to read me or not. And (I may as well confess it, as the denial would be believed by nobody) I shall, perhaps, not a little gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I never heard or saw the introductory words, 'Without vanity I may say,' &c., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they may have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

"And now I speak of thanking God, I desire, with all humility, to acknowledge that I attribute the happiness of my past life to His divine providence, which led me to the means I used, and gave the success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised towards me in continuing that happiness or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done; the complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless us, even in our afflictions."

Thus speaketh the honest wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.

I do not see that a better plan can be chosen for carrying out the title of this book than the one I have adopted, namely, tracing from the earliest years to old age the author's literary lifework, illustrated by accounts of, and specimens from, his various books and writings, especially those which are absolutely out of print, or, haply have never been published. No doubt, in such excerpts, exhibited at their best, the critical accusations of unfairness, self-seeking, and so forth, will be made, and may be met by the true consideration that something of this sort is inevitable in autobiography. However, for the matter of vanity, all I know of myself is the fact that praise, if consciously undeserved, only depresses me instead of elating; that a noted characteristic of mine through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike to any assumption of dignity—surely a feeling the opposite to self-conceit; whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse than I hope I am, and all my friends are deceived in their kind judgment of me.

But let this book speak for itself; I trust it is honest, charitable, and rationally religious. If I have (and I show it through all my writings) a shrinking from priestcraft of every denomination, that feeling I take to be due to some ancient heredity ingrained, or, more truly, inburnt into my nature from sundry pre-Lutheran confessors and martyrs of old, from whom I claim to be descended, and by whose spirit I am imbued. Not but that I profess myself broad, and wide, and liberal enough for all manner of allowances to others, and so far as any narrow prejudices may be imagined of my idiosyncrasy, I must allow myself to be changeable and uncertain—though hitherto having steered through life a fairly straight course—and that sometimes I can even doubt as to my politics, whether they should be defined Whig or Tory; as to my religion, whether it is most truly chargeable by the epithet high or low; as to my likings, whether I best prefer solitude or society; as to literature, whether gaieties or gravities please me most. In fact, I recognise good in everything, though sometimes hidden by evil, right (by intention, at least) in sundry doctrines and opinions otherwise to my judgment wrong, and I am willing to believe the kindliest of my opponents who appear to be honest and earnest. This is a very fair creed for a citizen of the world, whose motto is Terence's famous avowal, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."

CHAPTER II.

INFANCY AND SCHOOLDAYS.

In a short and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to state very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my parentage. July 17, 1810, was my birthday, and No. 20 Devonshire Place, Marylebone, my birthplace, at that time the last house of London northward. My father, Martin Tupper, a name ever honoured by me, was an eminent medical man, who twice refused a baronetcy (first from Lord Liverpool, and secondly, as offered by the Duke of Wellington); my mother, Ellin Devis Marris, being daughter of Robert Marris, a good landscape artist, of an old Lincolnshire family, and made the heiress, as adopted child, of her aunt, Mrs. Ellin Devis, of Devonshire Place and Albury.

My father's family have sojourned 336 years in Guernsey, having migrated thither from Thuringia, viâ Hesse Cassel, owing to religious persecution in the evil days of Charles V., our remote ancestors being styled Von Topheres (chieftains, or head-lords) of Treffurth (as is recorded in the heraldic MSS. of the British Museum), that being the origin of our name.

Of my mother's family (in old time Maris, as "of the sea," with mermaids for heraldry), I have the commissions of one who was an Ironside cavalry officer, signed by Cromwell and Fairfax; and several of her relatives (besides her father) were distinguished artists. In particular, her uncle (my wife's father), Arthur William Devis, the well-known historical painter, and her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, who filled Albury House with his landscapes.

Some of our old German stock crossed the Atlantic in Puritan times, and many of the name have attained wealth and position both in Canada and the United States; notably Sir Charles Tupper northwards, and sundry rich merchants in New York, Virginia, and the Carolines southwardly.

Of my infancy let me record that I "enjoyed" very delicate health, chiefly due, as I now judge, to the constant cuppings and bleedings whereby "the faculty" of those days combated teething fits, and (perhaps with Malthusian proclivities) killed off young children. I remember, too, that the broad meadows, since developed into Regent's Park and Primrose Hill, then "truly rural," and even up to Chalk Farm, then notorious for duels, were my nursery ramblings in search of cowslips and new milk. Also, that once at least in those infantile days, my father took me to see Winsor's Patent Gaslights at Carlton House, and how he prognosticated the domestic failure of so perilous an explosive, more than one blowing-up having carelessly occurred.

Another infantile recollection is memorable, as thus. My father's annual holiday happened one year to be at Bognor, where a patron patient of his, Lord Arran, rented a pleasant villa, and he had for a visitor at the time no less a personage than George the Third: it must have been during some lucid interval, perhaps after the Great Thanksgiving at St. Paul's. My father took his little boy with him to call upon the Earl, not thinking to see the King; but when we came in there was his kind-hearted Majesty, who patted my curls and gave me his blessing! How far the mysterious efficacy of the royal touch affected my after career believers in the divine rights and spiritual powers of a king may speculate as they please. At all events I got a good man's blessing.

I remember also in my nursery days to have heard this curious story of a dream. My father, when a young man, was a student at Guy's Hospital, from which school of medicine he went to Yarmouth to attend the wounded after the battle of Copenhagen. He was on one occasion leaving Guernsey for Southampton in the clumsy seagoing smack of those days, when, on the night before embarking, he dreamt that on his way to the harbour he crossed the churchyard and fell into an open grave. Telling this to his parents at "The Pollet," they would not let him go, with a sort of superstitious wisdom; for, strangely enough, the smack was seized on its voyage by a privateer, and all the crew and passengers were consigned—for twelve years—to a French prison! I have heard my father tell this tale, and noted early how true was Dr. Watts' awkward line, "On little things what great depend." I might say more about warnings in dreams and other somnolencies, whereof we all have experiences. For instance, my "Dream of Ambition" in Proverbial Philosophy was a real one. And this reminds me now of another like sort of spiritual monition alluded to in my Proverbial Essay on "Truth in Things False," which has several times occurred to myself, as this, for example: Years ago, in Devonshire, for the first time, I was on the top of a coach passing through a town—I think it was Crediton—and I had the strange feeling that I had seen all this before: now, we changed horses just on this side of a cross street, and I resolved within myself to test the truth of the place being new to me or not, by prophesying what I should see right and left as we passed; to my consternation it was all as I had foreseen,—a market-place with the usual incidents. Now, if reasonably asked how to account for this (and most of us have felt the like), I reply that possibly in an elevated state of health and spirits the soul may outrun the body, and literally foresee coming events both real and ideal. But we must leave this to the Psychical Society for a judgment upon the famous Horatian philosophy of "more things in heaven and earth," &c.

On Mr. Galton's topic of hereditary talent I have little to report as to myself. Neither father nor mother had any leanings either towards verse or prose; but my mother was an excellent pianiste and a fair landscape painter both in oils and water-colour; also she drew and printed on stone, and otherwise showed that she came of an artistic family. As to my father's surroundings, his brother Peter, a consul-general in Spain, wrote a tragedy called Pelayo; and I possess half-a-dozen French songs, labelled by my father "in my late dear father's handwriting," but whether or not original, I cannot tell. As a Guernseyman, he might well be as much French as English. They seem to me clever and worthy of Beranger, though long before him: possibly they are my grandsire's. A very fair judge of French poetry, and himself a good Norman poet, Mr. John Sullivan of Jersey writes and tells me that the songs are excellent, and that he remembers them to have been popularly sung when he was a boy.

About the matter of hereditary bias itself, we know that as with animals so with men, "fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;" this so far as bodies are concerned; but surely spirits are more individual, as innumerable instances prove, where children do not take after their parents. If, however, I may mention my own small experience of this matter, literary talent, or at all events authorship, is hereditary, especially in these days of that general epidemic, the "cacoethes scribendi."

I wrote this paper following originally for an American publication; and as I cannot improve upon it, and it has never been printed in England, I produce it here in its integrity.

A true and genuine record of what English schools of the highest class were more than sixty-five years ago cannot fail to have much to interest the present generation on both sides of the Atlantic; if only because we may now indulge in the self-complacency of being everyway wiser, better, and happier than our recent forebears. And in setting myself to write these early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at times necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude of plain truth-telling), I desire to say nothing against or for either the dead or the living beyond their just deserts, and I protest against any charge of unreasonable want of charity as to my whilom "schools and schoolmasters." It is true that sometimes I loved them not, neither can I in general respect their memory; but the causes of such a feeling on my part shall be made manifest anon, and I am sure that modern parents and guardians will rejoice that much of my childhood's hard experience has not been altogether that of their own boys.

I was sent to school much too soon, at the early age of seven, having previously had for my home tutor a well-remembered day-teacher in "little Latin and less Greek" of the name of Swallow, whom I thought a wit and a poet in those days because one morning he produced as an epitaph on himself the following effusion:

"Beneath this stone a Swallow lies,
No one laughs and no one cries;
Where he is gone or how he fares
No one knows and no one cares."

At this time of day I suspect this epigram not to be quite original, but it served to give me for the nonce a high opinion of the pundit who read with me Cornelius Nepos and Cæsar and some portions of that hopeless grammar, the Eton Greek, in the midst of his hard-breathing consumption of perpetual sandwiches and beer.

The first school chosen for me (though expensive, there could not have been a worse one) was a large mixed establishment for boys of all ages, from infancy to early manhood, belonging to one Rev. Dr. Morris of Egglesfield House, Brentford Butts, which I now judge to have been conducted solely with a view to the proprietor's pocket, without reference to the morals, happiness, or education of the pupils committed to his care. All I care to remember of this false priest (and there were many such of old, whatever may be the case now) are his cruel punishments, which passed for discipline, his careful cringing to parents, and his careless indifference towards their children, and in brief his total unfitness for the twin duties of pastor and teacher. A large private school of mixed ages and classes is perilously liable to infection from licentious youths left to themselves and their evil propensities, and I can feelingly recollect how miserable for nearly a year was that poor little helpless innocent of seven under the unrestricted tyranny of one Cooke (in after years a life convict for crime) who did all he could to pollute the infant mind of the little fag delivered over to his cruelty. Cowper's Tirocinium well expresses the situation:—

"Would you your son should be a sot or dunce,
Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once,
Train him in public with a mob of boys,
Childish in mischief only and in noise,
Else of a mannish growth and, five in ten,
For infidelity and lewdness, men."

My next school was more of a success; for Eagle House, Brookgreen, where I was from eight to eleven, had for its owner and headmaster a most worthy and excellent layman, Joseph Railton. Mr. Railton was gentle, though gigantic, fairly learned, just and kindly. His school produced, amongst others eminent, the famous naval author Kingston, well known from cabin-boy to admiral; there was also Lord Paulet, some others of noble birth, and the two Middletons, nick-named Yankees, whom years after I visited at their ruined mansion in South Carolina after the Confederate War. Through the personal good influence of honest "Old Joe," and his middle-aged housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, our whole well-ordered company of perhaps a hundred boys lived and learned, worked and played purely, and happily together: so great a social benefactor may a good school chieftain be.

I have little to regret in my Brook Green recollections; the annual fair was memorable with Richardson's show and Gingel's conjuring, and the walks for mild cricketing at Shepherd's Bush, and the occasional Sundays at home; and how pleasant to a schoolboy was the generous visitor who tipped him, a good action never forgotten; and the garden with its flowering tulip-tree, and the syringas and rose-trees jewelled with the much-prized emerald May-bugs; for the whole garden was liberally thrown open to us beyond the gravelled playground; all being now given over to monks and nuns. Then I recollect how a rarely-dark annular eclipse of the sun convulsed the whole school, bringing smoked glass to a high premium; and there was a notable boy's library of amusing travels and stories, all eagerly devoured; and old Phulax the house-dog, and good Mr. Whitmore an usher, who gave a certain small boy a diamond prayer-book, greatly prized then, though long since lost, and suitably inscribed for him "Parvum parva decent;" and the speech days, wherein the same small boy always signalised himself, to the general astonishment, for he was usually a stammerer, owing much to the early worries of Brentford; all these are agreeable reminiscences.

My next school at eleven was Charterhouse, or as my schoolfellow Thackeray was wont to style it, Slaughterhouse, no doubt from the cruel tyranny of another educational D.D., the Rev. Dr. Russell. For this man and the school he so despotically drilled into passive servility and pedantic scholarship, I have less than no reverence, for he worked so upon an over-sensitive nature to force a boy beyond his powers, as to fix for many years the infirmity of stammering, which was my affliction until past middle life. As for tuition, it must all have grown of itself by dint of private hard grinding with dictionaries and grammars, for the exercises, themes, and other lessons were notoriously difficult, and those before me would be inextricable puzzles now; however, we had to do them, and we did them, unhelped by any teacher but our own industry. As for the masters in school, two more ignorant old parsons than Chapman and "Bob Watki" could not readily be found; and though the four others, Lloyd, Dickens, Irvine, and Penny were somewhat more intelligent, still all six in the lower school were occasionally summoned to a "concio," if the interpretation of any ordinary passage in Homer or Virgil or Horace was haply in dispute between a monitor and his class. In the upper school the single really excellent teacher and good clergyman, Edward Churton, had but one fault, a meek subserviency to the tyrannic Russell, who domineered over all to our universal terror; and I remember kindly Mr. Churton once affected to tears at the cruelty of his chief. What should we think nowadays of an irate schoolmaster smashing a child's head between two books in his shoulder-of-mutton hands till the nose bled, as I once saw? Or, in these milder times when your burglar or garotter is visited with a brief whipping, what shall we judge of the wisdom or equity of some slight fault of idleness or ignorance being visited with the Reverend Doctor's terrible sentence, "Allen, three rods, eighteen, and most severely"?

Let me comment on this line, one of a sharp satire by a boy named Barnes, long since an Indian Judge and I suppose translated Elsewhere. Allen was head-gown-boy, and so chief executioner, the three rods being some five-feet bunches of birch armed with buds as sharp as thorns, renewed after six strokes for fresh excoriation! sometimes the exhibition was in medio, a public terror to evil-doers, or doers of nothing, but usually in a sort of side chapel to the lower school where the whipping-block stood. Who could tolerate such things now? and who can wonder that I, as a lad, proclaimed that I would rather die than be flogged, for I had resolved in that event to commit justifiable homicide on my flogger? I do not mean Allen, who became Head of Dulwich College, and with whom I have since dined, annually as donor of a picture there, but Russell, concerning whom I vowed that if ever he was made a Bishop (happily he wasn't) I would desert the Church of England; as yet I have not, albeit it has lately become so papalised as to be little worth an honest Protestant's adherence.

As to the exclusively classic education in my young days, to the resolute neglect of all other languages and sciences, I for myself have from youth upwards always protested against it as mainly waste of time and of very little service in the battle of life. For proof of this, before I was eighteen, I wrote that essay on Education to be seen in my first series of Proverbial Philosophy, which long years after the celebrated Dr. Binney of the Weigh-house in Thames Street issued with my leave as a tractate useful to the present generation. And while there was so much fuss made as to the criminality of a false quantity in Greek, or a deficient acquaintance with those awkward verbs in "Mi," or above all a false concord (every one of which derelictions in duty involved severe punishment), let us remember that all this time Holywell Street was suffered to infect Charterhouse with its poison (I speak of long ago, before Lord Campbell's wholesome Act), and that our clerical tutors and governors professionally recognised no sort of sins or shortcomings but those committed in class! They practically ignored everything out of school, much as a captain knows nothing of his company off duty. It was the idle system of boys set to govern boys, that the masters might have no damage. I think the system was called Lancastrian.

One very noticeable trait in the parson-schoolmasters of those old days (and perhaps it still survives) was the subserviency to rank and wealth towards any pupils likely to give them livings, whereof more anon; at present, an appropriate instance occurs to me. I was in my thirteenth year monitor of the playground, when one Dillon, a scion of a titled family, hunted and killed a stray dog there, and much to their credit for humanity a number of other boys hunted and pelted him into a dry ditch or vallum, dug for the leaping-pole under a Captain Clias who taught us athletics. I was technically responsible for this open insult offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed to look another way and let lynch-law take its course. Accordingly, the Doctor had me up for punishment, and he inflicted an almost impossible imposition, Book Epsilon of the Iliad (the longest of all) to be translated word for word, English and Greek, and to be given to him in MS. within a month (it would have been work for a year), that or expulsion. Had Mr. Dillon been a plebeian, no notice would have been taken of the matter, but he was an honourable, so Russell must avenge his righteous punishment. However, the result of this outrageous set-task was curious and worthy of this its first and only record. All the seventy boys in Irvine's house and others elsewhere, volunteered to do the whole imposition for me, and within a week hundreds of pages closely written with Greek and Latin, were sewn together, making a large quarto pamphlet, which was duly handed by me to the wondering Doctor; who had, however, too much shrewdness to care to inquire closely as to this popular outburst of a general indignation, so he said nothing more about it.

For other playground reminiscences: I saw, even in those tame times for cricket when overhand bowling was illegal, and the fierce artillery of a Spofforth impossible, a poor lad killed in the field, one Honourable Henry Howard; he was taken to the pump for recovery, as from a swoon, but the ball had struck him behind the ear, stone-dead. Again as to that pump; it was sometimes maliciously used for sousing unfortunate day-boys, who were allowed two minutes law out of school to enable them to escape pursuit after lessons, most unjustly, and injuriously, seeing that old Sutton founded his Charterhouse mainly for day-boys (John Leech was one in my time) and for pensioners ("old Cods") whereof Colonel Newcome of Thackeray fame, was another; but both of these charity classes were utterly despised and ignored by the reverend brigands who kept all the loaves and fishes for themselves.

One remarkable playground experience was the fact that it helped to develop in me antiquarian inclinations, and my own discovered hunting-ground for Roman numismatics in the south of England, long afterwards expanded in "Farley Heath" near Albury. At Charterhouse there was a great slope or semi-mound which had in old times been utilised as a wholesale grave for the victims of plague and other epidemics. It strikes me now as most perilous, but we boys used to dig and scratch among bones and other débris for on occasional coin or lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, usually driven in duplicate or triplicate, the hoops were "stored" or "shied" into the branching elms, from which they were again brought down by hockey-sticks flung at them; a great boon to the smaller boys who thus gratuitously became possessed of valuable properties. And for all else, there were fights behind the school, in those pugilistic days scientifically conducted with seconds and bottleholders, and some "claret" drawn, and other like fashionable brutalities; also in its season came football, but not quite so fiercely fought as it is now; and there was Mr. Rackwitz, the man of sweets and pastries at the corner; and another sort of rackets in the tennis court; and for another sort of court there was then extant a bit of ruinous Gothic in old Rutland Court, a ghostly entrance from Charterhouse Square, some thought haunted, and long since cleared away.

And now crossing the Square we come to No. 41, the Queen Anne fashioned mansion where Mr. Andrew Irvine (another Reverend Master, who like all the rest, except Churton, almost never "did duty," and when he did manifestly could neither read, preach, not pray) had a houseful of pupils, whereof the writer was one. That long room is full of ancient memories of past and gone Carthusians, though it is now humiliated into a local charity school. I remember some humorous scenes there, chiefly owing to the master's notorious niggardliness. Andrew had some Gruyere cheese, easily accessible to the boyish plunderers of his larder. Now we had complained that our slabs of butter laid between the cut sides of the rolls often were salt and strong, so one "Punsonby" (afterwards an earl) managed to put a piece of highly-flavoured Gruyere into a roll, and publicly at breakfast produced it before Mr. Irvine as a proof of the bad butter provided by the unfortunate housekeeper. He was overborne against his own convictions, by the heroic impudence of chief big boys whom he dared not offend, and actually pretended indignation, promising better butter in future!

For another small scholastic recollection: Andrew's Indian brother had brought over a lot of curiosities from the East, including a rhinoceros skin, and bows and arrows, idols, and the like, all of which were carelessly stored away in a cellar near the larder aforesaid. Of course the boys made a raid upon such spolia opima, and divers portions of that thick hide were exhibited as Indian rubber: but Andrew never knew that many other things vanished, and that for example Knighton used to walk home on Saturdays with preternaturally stiff arms, an arrow (possibly poisoned) being hid in each sleeve! some creeses also were appropriated by others. I wonder if any Carthusian of my time survives as the possessor of such loot.

Let me record, too, that in those evil days (for I am not one who can think this age as "pejor avis") boys used to go, on their Monday mornings' return from the weekly holiday, out of their way to see the wretches hanging at Newgate; that the scenes of cruelty to animals in Smithfield were terrible; that books of the vilest character were circulated in the long-room; and that both morality and religion were ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five hundred boys. If more memories are wanted of those times, here are two; the planned famine on one occasion, when—under monitorial inspiration—all the juniors clamoured for "more, more," seeing they had slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter supposed to have been eaten-out; and on another, that lobsters, surreptitiously obtained from out-of-bounds by the big boys were sworn in the débris of their smaller claws to be pieces of sealing-wax! and nothing else: at least a reckless young aristocrat declared that they were so,—and the mean-spirited Andrew, fearful of giving offence in such high quarters, pretended to believe him.

Yet another trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as Rousseau did with his housekeeper. We, that is Knighton and Ellis and I, used to return on Sunday night in my father's carriage by the back way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of cattle; and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and nuts from the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we sped along. Alas! on one occasion Knighton was skilful enough to smash a chemist's blue bottle with an apple,—and on another I am aware that an oil lamp in Carthusian Street succumbed to my only too-true cockshy: "Et hoc meminisse dolendum."

Another incident was amusing in its way. Poor Mr. Irvine (who was going to be married) mended up a very much smashed greenhouse to greet his bride thereby with floral joy. Unluckily, the boys preferred broken panes to whole ones, so nothing was easier than by flinging brickbats and even mugs over the laundry wall to revel in the sweet sound of smashed glass; moreover this would go to evidence the popular animosity against a wretched bridegroom. Then, when he reappeared after some temporary absence before the wedding, it was after this ridiculous fashion. There was a wooden staircase screened off one side of the long-room down which he would occasionally creep to listen at the door at bottom to the tattle of the boys about him. He was heard creaking downstairs, and some active young fellow by a round-about byway managed to steal down behind and suddenly pushed him by the burst open door, spread-eagle fashion, into the laughing long-room! The poor victim pretended it was an accident, "Ye see, Mr. Yates, I was coming down the stair, and me foot slipped." It seems that the luckless Andrew was coming, so he averred, expressly to expostulate with the boys, to throw himself on their generosity for a subscription towards his ruined greenhouse, and to ask Messrs. "Punsonby," Yates, & Co. to promote it. This they promised to do, and did after an original fashion. Several pounds worth of pence and half-pence were distributed through the house, so that when Andrew with his traitorous aides went round to collect monies, it miraculously happened to be all coppers, unrelieved by a single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a mean over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, and as the hired waiters from the Falcon brought out the viands (all was a delusive peace as they went in) our harpies flew upon the spoil, and each meat, fish and fowl was cleared off the great dishes held between the helpless hands of the astonished servitors! It was really too bad, but if a man is so manifestly unpopular no doubt he deserves it. Rugbeians would not have so served Arnold. Nearly all my schoolmates are dead, and I cannot call on Charles Roe or Frank Ellis to corroborate my small anecdotes, but I could till lately on Sir William Knighton and one or two more. In a crowd of five hundred scholars (Russell's average number, afterwards much diminished, until Godalming brought up the tale), there must be many still extant and of eminence whom I would name if I did but know them. Certainly, yes, Trevelyan was my next neighbour in the "emeriti," and there was Hebert, the one distinguished in the State, the other in the Church; also Cole, and his noble chief of Enniskillen, whom I have visited at Florence Court; and Walford, our great genealogist, with many more; among the more recent dead, let me mention my good friend Archibald Mathison, lately an Indian Judge, and Robert Curzon, and Arthur Helps, the historian of Mexico. Thackeray I knew then but very slightly, as he was a lower schoolboy, and John Leech not at all, because he was a day boy, seeing that the upper school was made to keep foolishly aloof from all such; however, in after years I made good acquaintance with both of those true geniuses, and had Leech down to Albury, and to illustrate my tales, whilst I have several times compared judgments with Thackeray as to Doctor Birch and his young friends and other scholia.

For the matter of my practical education at Charterhouse, I like others went through the usual course, though without much distinction. I never gained a prize, albeit I tried for some, by certain tame didactic poems on the Tower, Carthage, and Jerusalem, and as I couldn't as a stammerer speak in school, high places were out of my reach. Like others, however, I learned by heart all Horace's odes and epodes, the Ajax and the Antigone of Sophocles, and other like efforts of memory, almost useless in after life, except for capping quotations, and thereby being thought a pedant by the display of schoolboy erudition. How often have I wished that the years wasted over Latin verses and Greek plays had been utilised among French and German, astronomy, geology, chemistry and the like; but all such useful educationals were quite ignored by the clerical boobies who then professed to teach young gentlemen all that they needed to know. Sixty years ago I perceived what we all see now (teste Lord Sherborne) that a most imperfect classical education, such as was then provided for us, was the least useful introduction to the real business of life, except that it was fashionable, and gave a man some false prestige in the circle of society. At about sixteen I left Charterhouse for a private tutor, Dr. Stocker, then head of Elizabeth College, Guernsey, seeing my father wished to do him a service for kindly private reasons; I was not at the College, but a pupil in his own house: however, as this other Rev. D.D. proved a failure, I was passed on to a Rev. Mr. Twopeny of Long Wittenham, near Dorchester, staying with him about a year with like little profit; when I changed to Mr. Holt's at Albury, a most worthy friend and neighbour, with whom I read diligently until my matriculation at Oxford, when I was about nineteen. With Holt, my intimate comrade was Harold Browne, the present Bishop of Winchester, and he will remember that it was our rather mischievous object to get beyond Mr. Holt in our prepared Aristotle and Plato, as we knew he had hard work to keep even in the race with his advanced pupils by dint of midnight oil. With this good tutor and the excellent ministrations of Hugh M'Neile, the famous rector of Albury, my status pupillaris comes technically to an end, Oxford being practically independence; albeit I am sure that education can cease only with human life, even if it be not carried further, onward and upward, through the cycles of eternity.

As I did not care to stop the continuity of this gossiping record (perhaps too light and too frank, but it is best unaltered) I must now hark back for a few years, to fill in whatever small details of early life and primitive literature happened to me, between school and college. Truly, much of this amounts to recording trivialities; but boyhood, not to say life also, is made up of trifles; and there is always interest to a reader in personal anecdotes and experiences, the more if they are lively rather than severe. Let this excuse that lengthy account of "My Schooldays."

CHAPTER III.

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.

Whilst I was at Charterhouse, occurred my first Continental journey, when my excellent father took his small party all through France in his private travelling carriage, bought at Calais for the trip (it was long before railways were invented), and I jotted down in verse our daily adventures in the rumble. The whole journal, entitled "Rough Rhymes," in divers metres, grave and gay, was published by the "Literary Chronicle" in 1826, and the editor thereof, Mr. Jerdan, says, after some compliments, "the author is in his sixteenth year,"—which fixes the date. Possibly, a brief specimen or two of this may please: take the livelier first,—on French cookery: if trivial, the lines are genuine: I must not doctor anything up even by a word.

"Now Muse, you must versify your very best,
To sing how they ransack the East and the West,
To tell how they plunder the North and the South
For food for the stomach and zest for the mouth!
Such savoury stews, and such odorous dishes,
Such soups, and (at Calais) such capital fishes!
With sauces so strange they disguise the lean meat
That you seldom, or never, know what you're to eat;
Such fricandeaux, fricassees epicurean,
Such vins-ordinaires, and such banquets Circean,—
And the nice little nothings which very soon vanish
Before you are able your plate to replenish,—
Such exquisite eatables! and for your drink
Not porter or ale, but—what do you think?
'Tis Burgundy, Bourdeaux, real red rosy wine,
Which you quaff at a draught, neat nectar, divine!
Thus they pamper the taste with everything good
And of an old shoe can make savoury food,
But the worst of it is that when you have done
You are nearly as famish'd as when you begun!"

For a more serious morsel, take the closing lines on Rouen:—

"Yes, proud Cathedral, ages pass'd away
While generations lived their little day,—
France has been deluged with her patriots' blood
By traitors to their country and their God,—
The face of Europe has been changed, but thou
Hast stood sublime in changelessness till now,
Exulting in thy glories of carved stone,
A living monument of ages gone!—
Yet—time hath touch'd thee too; thy prime is o'er,—
A few short years, and thou must be no more;
Ev'n thou must bend beneath the common fate,
But in thy very ruins wilt be great!"

More than enough of this brief memory of "Sixty Years Since," which has no other extant record, and is only given as a sample of the rest, equally juvenile. Three years however before, this, my earliest piece printed, I find among my papers a very faded copy of my first MS. in verse, being part of an attempted prize poem at Charterhouse on Carthage, written at the age of thirteen in 1823; for auld langsyne's sake I rescue its conclusion thus curtly from oblivion,—though no doubt archæologically faulty:—

"Where sculptured temples once appeared to sight,
Now dismal ruins meet the moon's pale light,—
Where regal pomp once shone with gorgeous ray,
And kings successive held their transient sway;—
Where once the priest his sacred victims led
And on the altars their warm lifeblood shed,—
Where swollen rivers once had amply flowed
And splendid galleys down the stream had rowed,
A dreary wilderness now meets the view,
And nought but Memory can trace the clue!"

The poor little schoolboy's muse was perhaps quite of the pedestrian order: but so also, the critics said, had been stern old Dr. Johnson's in his "London."

Mere school-exercises (whereof I have some antique copybooks before me), cannot be held to count for much as early literature; though I know not why some of my Greek Iambic translations of the Psalms and Shakespeare, as also sundry very respectable versions of English poems into Latin Sapphics and Alcaics still among my archives, should not have been shrined—as they were offered at the time—in Dr. Haig Brown's Carthusian Anthology. However somehow these have escaped printer's ink,—the only true elixir vitæ—and we must therefore suppose them not quite worthy to be bracketed with the classical versification of Buchanan or even of Mr. John Milton,—albeit actually superior to sundry of the aforesaid Anthologia Carthusiana; so of these we will say nothing.

Of other sorts of schoolboy literaria whereof from time to time I was guilty let me save here (by way of change) one or two of my trivial humoristics: here is one, not seen in print till now; "Sapphics to my Umbrella,—written on a very rainy day," in 1827. N.B. If Canning in his Eton days immortalised sapphically a knifegrinder, why shouldn't a young Carthusian similarly celebrate his gingham?

"Valued companion of my expeditions,
Wanderings, and my street perambulations,
What can be more deserving of my praises
Than my umbrella?

"Under thine ample covering rejoicing,
(All the 'canaille' tumultuously running)
While the rain streams and patters from the housetops,
Slow and majestic,

"I trudge along unwetted, though an ocean
Pours from the clouds, as if some Abernethy
Had given all the nubilary regions
Purges cathartic!

"Others run on in piteous condition,
Black desperation painted in their faces,
While the full flood descends in very pailfuls
Streaming upon them.

"Yea, 'tis as if some cunning necromancer
Had drawn a circle magically round me,
Till like the wretched victim of Kehama,
(Southey's abortion)

"Nothing like liquor ever could approach me!
But it is thou, disinterested comrade,
Bearest the rainy weather uncomplaining,
Oh, my umbrella!

"How many hats, and 'upper Bens,' and new coats,
How many wretched duckings hast thou saved me
Well—I have done—but must be still indebted
To my umbrella!"

Another such trifle may be permissible, as thus: also about an umbrella, a stolen one. On the occasion of my loss I wrote this to rebuke the thief, "The height of honesty:"—

"Three friends once, in the course of conversation,
Touch'd upon honesty: 'No virtue better,'
Says Dick, quite lost in sweet self-admiration,
'I'm sure I'm honest;—ay—beyond the letter:
You know the field I rent; beneath the ground
My plough stuck in the middle of a furrow
And there a pot of golden coins I found!
My landlord has it, without fail, to-morrow.'
Thus modestly his good intents he told:
'But stay,' says Bob,' we soon shall see who's best,
A stranger left with me uncounted gold!
But I'll not touch it; which is honestest?'
'Your honest acts I've heard,' says Jack, 'but I
Have done much better, would that all folks learn'd it,
Mine is the highest pitch of honesty—
I borrow'd an umbrella and—return'd it!!'".

N.B.—I remember that Dr. Buckland, whose geological lectures I attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved on the ivory handle of his umbrella: he never lost it again.

In the way of prose, not printed (though much later on I have since published "Paterfamilias's Diary of Everybody's Tour") I have kept journals of holiday travel passim, whereof I now make a brief mention. Six juvenile bits of authorship are before me, ranging through the summers of 1828 to 1835 inclusive; each neatly written in its note-book on the spot and at the time (therefore fresh and true) decorated with untutored sketches, and all full of interest ab least to myself in old memories, faded interests, and departed friends. As very rare survivals of the past (for who cares to keep as I have done his schoolboy journals of half a century ago?) I will give at haphazard from each in its order of time a short quotation by way of sample,—a brick to represent the house. My first, a.d. 1828, records how my good father took his sons through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of Staffordshire, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace: in fact, a short volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page. "Melrose looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect cathedral. While the horses were being changed we walked to see this Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the architecture being florid Gothic. The tracery round the capitals of pillars is in wonderful preservation, looking as fresh and sharp as on the first day of their creation; instead of the Grecian acanthus Scotch kail being a favourite ornament. Some of the images still remain in their niches. In the east aisle is the grave of the famous wizard, Michael Scott, and at the foot of the tombstone a grim-looking figure,—query himself? In the ruined cloisters the tracery is of the most delicate description, foliage of trees and vegetables being carved on them. This Abbey was founded by David the First, but repaired by James the Fourth, which accounts for his altered crown appearing in stone on the walls," &c. &c. The Scotch kail is curious, as indicative of national preference: and is the wizard still on guard? Recollect that in those days there were no guide-books,—so every observant traveller had to record for himself what he saw.

The next, in 1829, was a second visit to the Continent, my first having been in 1826, with those quotations from "Rough Rhymes" which have already met your view. In this we took the usual tour of those days, viâ Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, and I might quote plenty thereof if space and time allowed. Here shall follow a casual page from the 1829 MS. Journal, now before me.

"Heidelberg has a university of seven hundred students, who wear no particular academicals, but are generally seen with a little red or blue cap topping a luxuriant head of hair, a long coat, and moustaches which usually perform the function of a chimney to pipe or cigar. All along our to-day's route extended immense fields of tobacco, turnips, and vegetals of every description. Most of the women seem to be troubled with goitres, and we observed that all who have them wear rows of garnets strung tight on the part affected, whether with the idea of hiding the deformity, or of rendering the beauty of the swelling more conspicuous, or of charming it away, I cannot tell. The roads in these parts are much avenued with walnut trees: Fels, our courier, told me that of all trees they are most subject to be struck by lightning, and that under them is always a current of air. I insert his information, as he is both a sensible man, and has had great opportunities of observing," &c. &c. Here is a gap of three years.

In 1832, my journal about Dorsetshire and the Isle of Wight is chiefly geological: as this extract shows, it was mainly a search after fossil spoils at Charmouth:—"Would you like to see a creature with the head of a lizard, wings of a bat, and tail of a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollowness) often occur in the coprolites or fossil dung of Plesiosauri, mighty monsters of the deep like gigantic swans, it is thought they were their special prey, for which the long and flexible neck of the Plesiosaurus is an à priori argument," &c. &c.

The 1833 journal is Welsh; and, inter alia, I therein drew and I now record that recently destroyed and more recently restored Druidical movement, the Buckstone: "A solid mass of rock, not of living adamant but of dead pudding-stone, seemingly 'by subtle magic poised' on the brow of a steep and high hill, wooded with oaks: the top of this mass of rock is an area of fifty-four feet, its base being four, and the height twelve. It was once a logan stone, but now has no rocking properties; though most perilously poised on the side of a slope, and certainly, if in part a work of nature, it must have been helped by art, seeing the mere action of the atmosphere never could have so exactly chiselled away all but the centre of gravity. The secret of the Druids, in this instance at least, was in leaving a large mass behind, which as a lever counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the spot two exact views of it, taken to scale,—whereof this is one,—now of some curious value, since its intentional destruction last year by a snobbish party of mischievous idiots. (However, I see by the papers that, at a cost of £500, it has been replaced.) Let this touch suffice as to my then growing predilection for Druidism, since expanded by me into several essays find pamphlets, touching on that strange topic, the numerous rude stone monuments from Arabia to Mona.

The 1834 journal regards Scotland,—a country I have since visited several times, including the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the voyage round from Thurso viâ Cape Wrath to the Hebrides; whereof, perhaps, more anon. For a specimen page of this let me give what follows; the locality is near Inverness and the Caledonian Canal: "We now bent our steps toward Craig Phadrick, two miles north. This is the site of one of the celebrated vitrified forts, concerning the creation of which there has been so much learned discussion. And verily there is room, for there is mystery: I will detail what we saw. On the summit of a steep hill of conglomerate rock we could trace very clearly a double oblong enclosure of eighty yards by twenty, with entrances east and west, a space of five yards being between the two oblongs. The mounds were outwardly of turf, but under a thin skin of this was a thick continuous wall of molten stone, granite, gneiss, and sandstone, bubbling together in a hotchpot! The existence of these forts (occurring frequently on the heights and of various shapes) is attempted to be explained by divers theories. One man tells us they were beacons; but, first, what an enormous one is here, one hundred and twenty-four feet by sixty of blazing wood, timber being scarce too! next, they sometimes occur in low situations from which a flame could scarcely be seen; thirdly, common wood fire will not melt granite. Another pundit says they are volcanic. O wondrous volcano to spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now, starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of a rich land, through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and with lit candles descended into the abyss, hands, knees, and elbows being of as much service as our feet. Now, I am not going to map my way after the manner of guide-books, nor to nickname the gorgeous architecture of nature according to the caprice of a rude peasant on the spot or the fancy of a passing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but I rather choose to speak of these subterranean palaces with none of such vulgar similarities. No one ever saw such magnificence in stalactites; from the black fissured roofs of antres vast and low-browed caves they are hanging, of all conceivable shapes and sizes and descriptions. Now a tall-fluted column, now a fringed canopy, now like a large white sheet flung over a beetling rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a curtain, everywhere are pure white stalactites like icicles straining to meet the sturdier mounds of stalagmite below; whilst in the smaller caves slender tubes extend from top to bottom like congealed rain. One cavern is quite curtained round with dazzling and wavy tapestry; another has gigantic masses of the white spar pouring from its crannied roof like boiled Brobdingnag macaroni; others like heaps of snowy linen lying about or hanging from the ceiling. The extent of the caves is quite unknown: eleven acres (I was told) have been surveyed and mapped, while there are six avenues still unexplored, and you may already wander for twenty-four hours through the discovered provinces of the gnome king." This is not to be compared with Kentucky, perhaps not quite with Derbyshire; but it seemed to me marvellous at the time. Let this much suffice as hinted reference to those early journals, which, if the world were not already more full of books than of their readers, would be as well worth printing in their integrity as many others of their bound and lettered brethren.

In connection with these journals, I have been specially requested to add to the above this record following (dated forty-four years ago) as a specimen of my letter-writing in old days: it has pen-and-ink sketches, here inserted by way of rough and ready illustration. The whole letter is printed in its integrity as desired, and tells its own archæological tale, though rather voluminously; but in the prehistoric era before Rowland Hill arose, to give us cheap stamps for short notes, it was an economy to make a letter as long as possible to pay for its exorbitant postage: for example, my letters to and from Oxford used to cost eightpence—or double if in an envelope, then absurdly surcharged.

My Cornish Expedition.

My Dear Mother, and all good Domiciliars,—

I suppose it to be the intention of our worshipful and right bankrupt Government that everybody write to everybody true, full, and particular accounts of all things which he, she, or it, may have done, be doing, or be about to do; and seeing I may have something to say which will interest you all, I fulfil the gossiping intentions of the Collective Wisdom, and give you an omnibus epistle. Now, I recommend a good map, a quiet mind, and as Charley says, Attention.—The bright, clear, frosty morning of the 8th found me at Devonport, and nine o'clock beheld the same egregious individual, well-benjamined, patronising with his bodily presence the roof of the Falmouth coach. A steam ferry-bridge took us across the Hamoaze, which, with its stationed hulks, scattered shipping, and town and country banks, made, as it always makes, a beautiful landscape. At Torpoint we first encountered venerable Cornwall; and a pretty drive of sixteen miles, well wooded, and watered by several intrusions of the unsatisfied sea, brought coach and contents to Liskeard, a clean, granite, country town, with palatial inn, and (in common with the whole of Devonshire and Cornwall) a large many gabled church, covered with carved cathedral windows, and shadowed by ancient elms. Not being able to accomplish everything, I heard of, but saw not, divers antiquities in the distant neighbourhood of St. Clare,

such as a circle of stones, an old church and well, and the natural curiosity called the cheese-ring, being a mass of layered granite capriciously decomposed: these "unseen ones" (what a mysterious name for a three-volumed Bentleyism!) I do not regret, for I know how to appreciate those wonders, the only enchantment whereof is, distance. So suffered I conveyance to Lostwithiel, a town lying in a hollow under the pictorial auspices of Restormel Castle, whose ivied ruins up the valley are fine and Raglandish: while the rest were bolting a coach dinner, I betook me to y^e church, and was charmed with a curious antique font, and the tower, an octagon gothic lantern with extinguisher atop, like this: as far as memory

serves me. Onward again, through St. Blazey, and a mining district, not ill-wooded, nor unpicturesque, to the fair town of St. Austle, which the piety of Cornish ancestors has furnished with another splendid specimen of ecclesiastical architecture, the upper half of the chief tower, a square one, being fretted on every stone with florid carving, and grotesque devices: but what shall I say of Probus tower, which from top to bottom is covered with delicate tracery cut in granite? it rises above the miserable surrounding village, a satire upon neighbouring degeneracy in things religious: you must often have seen drawings of Probus at the Watercolour Exhibition, as it is a regular artists' lion. At about half-past six we got into Truro, a clean wide flourishing town with London shops, a commemorative column, a fine spired church, bridges over narrow streams, and, like most other West of England towns, well payed and gas-lighted. From this, I had intended to go to Falmouth, but a diligent brain-sucking of coach comrades induced me to jump at once into a branch conveyance to Penzance, so passing sleepy Redruth, Camborne, and St. Erth in the dark, I found myself safely housed at the Union Inn, Penzance, at half-past eleven. Talking of unions, the country is studded here as everywhere with them; fine buildings put to the pernicious use of imprisoning for life those whose only crime is poverty, and destined to be metamorphosed ere long (so I prophesy) into lunatic asylums for desperate ministerialists, prisons for the Chartists, veterinary colleges for cattle with the rot, and as one good end, hospitals for the poor. Near Redruth, I took notice in the moonlight of Carn-bréh, the remains of a British beacon or hill-fort, much of the antiquarian interest of which has been destroyed by a neighbouring squire having added to it modern ruins, to make it an object from his hall! the whole hill, like much of the country, is sprinkled with granite blocks higgledi-piggledy, and it is a grand dispute among the pundits, whether or not the Archdruid Nature has been playing at marbles in these parts; I wished to satisfy myself about it, but couldn't stop, and so there's no use in grummering about regrets. I've seen enough, to be able to judge à priori, that father Noah's flood piled the hill with blocks, which have served one Dr. Borlase and others as occasions for earning the character of blockheads. One thing is man's doing, without much dispute, and that is, an obelisk in honour of old Lord De Dunstanville, which is a conspicuous toothpick on the hilltop: no doubt, as in this case, nature brought the stones there, and man did his part in arranging them; poor Dr. B. would have you believe that every natural rock had been lifted here bodily for architectural purposes, and as bodily made a most elaborate and labyrinthine ruin afterwards. At Penzance, a broiled fish supper, and to bed by midnight, having ordered a twilight gig, wherein by 7 on the ninth I was traversing the beautiful bay. Penzance is a fine town in a splendid situation; the bay, bounded by the Lizard and its opposite bold brother-headland, inclosing St. Michael's Mount, and having a fertile and villa-studded background; the town full of good handsome shops (one like the Egyptian Hall), a large cathedralish church, and with a very special market-place, of light granite, in the form of a plain Grecian temple, surmounted at the middle by an imposing dome. As I had duly culled information from the natives, I lost no time in breakfasting, but drove off, bun in hand, to explore the country of the Druids. Now, if the matters I succeeded in visiting were in isolated and plain situations, they might have been less disappointing; but where the face of the whole soil is covered naturally with jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone set on end a little more obviously than the rest, or to find out by dint of perseverance a little arrangement, which may or may not be accidental: added to this, the cottages, and walls, and field enclosures are built of such immense blocks cleared off the surface of the fields, that one's mind is prepared for far more than the Druids ever did: many a Stonehengeified doorway, many a Titanic pigstye, many a "Pelion-on-Ossa" questionable-sentry box, puts one out of conceit with our puny ancestors. I went first to the Dâns-mene, a famous stone-circle; and felt not a little vexed to find that I, little i, am feet taller than any of the uprights there, not 25 in number, and no bigger than field gateposts. It is evidently the consecrated portion of a battlefield, for there are several single stones dotted about the neighbourhood, to mark where heroes fell; like those at Inveraray, but smaller. The habit all through Cornwall of setting up a stone in every field, for cattle to scratch themselves withal, seems to be a sly satire against other rubbing-stones for A. S. Ses. A few dreary miles further brought me to the "voonder of voonders," the Logan-Rock, which on the map is near Boskenna. The cliff and coast scenery is superb; immense masses of granite of all shapes and sizes tumbled about in all directions; what wonder that in such a heap of giant pebbles one should be found ricketty? or more, what wonder that the very decomposing nature of coarse granite should have caused the atmosphere to eat away, gradually, all but the actual centre of gravity? both at the Logan, and Land's End, and Mount St. Michael, I am sure I have seen a hundred rocks wasted very nearly to the moving point, and I could mention specifically six, which in 20 years will rock, or in half an hour of chiselling would. In part proof of what I say, the Land-End people, jealous of Logan customers, have just found out a great rock in their parts, which two men can make to move; I recommended a long-handled chisel, and have little doubt that my hint will be acted on; by next season, the Cornish antiquaries will be puzzling their musty brains over marks of "druidical" tools;

essays will appear, to demonstrate that the chippings were accomplished by the consecrated golden sickle; the rock will be proved to have been quarried at Normandy, and ferried over; facsimiles of the cuts will be lithographed; and the Innkeeper of the "First and Last house in England" will gratefully present a piece of plate (a Druid "spanning" [consider Ezekiel's "putting the branch to the nose" as a sign of contempt]!) to the author of "Hints for a Chisel," "Proverbial Phil.," &c. &c. &c. But—revenous à nos moutons: to the Logan: until it was scrupulously pointed out, by so tangible a manner as my boy-guide getting on it, I could scarcely distinguish

it from the fine hurlyburly of rocks around. That it moves there is no question; but when I tell you that it is now obliged to be artificially kept from falling, by a chain fixing it behind, and a beam to rest on before, I think you will agree with me in muttering "the humbug!" Artists have so diligently falsified the view, ad captandum, that you will have some difficulty in recognising so old a friend as the Logan:

it is commonly drawn as if isolated, thus, and would so, no doubt, be very astonishing; but, when my memory puts it as above, stapled, and obliged to remain for Cockneys to log it, surrounded by a much more imposing brotherhood, my wonder only is that it keeps its lion character, and that, considering the easy explication of its natural cause or accident, it should ever have been conceived to be man's doing; perhaps the Druids availed themselves of so lucky a chance for miracle-mongering, but as to having contrived it, you might as well say that they built the cliffs. It strikes me, moreover, that Cornwall could never have been the headquarters of Druidism, inasmuch as the soil is too scanty for oaks: there isn't a tree of any size, much less an oak tree in all West Cornwall: they must have cut samphire from the rocks, instead of misletoe from oaks, and the old gentlemen must have been pretty tolerable climbers, victim and all, to have got near enough to touch the Logan: to be sure it was a frosty day, and iron-shod shoes on icy granite are not over coalescible, but I did not dare scramble to it, as a tumble would have insured a particularly uncomfortable death; and although the interesting "Leaper from the Logan, or Martin Martyr" would have had his name enshrined in young lady sonnets, and azure albums, such immortality had little charms for me. I contented myself

with being able to swear that I have seen 90 tons of stone moved by a child of ten years old. Near it is another, called the logging lady, a block, upright like its neighbours, about 12 feet high, and which the boy told me could only be made to log by two men with poles; in fact, one end is worn with levers: well, I told him to try and move it; no use, says he; try, said I; he did try, and couldn't; well, I took a sight of where I thought he could do it, and set him to push; forthwith, my lady tottered, and I told the boy, if he would only keep to himself where he pushed it would be a banknote to him. I mention this to illustrate what I verily believe, to wit, that, if a man only took the breakneck trouble to clamber and try, he would discover several rocking-stones; but the fact is, this would diminish the wonder, and Cockneys wouldn't come to see what is easily explained: your Druids, with imaginary dynamics, invest nature's freaks with mysterious interest. But away to Tol Peden Penwith, where there is another curiosity; in the smooth green middle of a narrow promontory, surrounded and terminated by the boldest rock-scenery, strangely drops down for a perpendicular hundred feet, a circular chasm, not ill named the Funnel, and which not even a stolid Borlase can pretend was dug by the Druids: at the bottom there is

communication with the sea by means of a cavern, and in stormy weather the rush up this gigantic earth's chimney-must be something terrible: will this convey a rough idea? the scenery all round is really magnificent, and the looking down this black smooth stone-pit is quite fearful; it slopes away so deceitfully, and looks like a huge lion-ant's nest. Few people see this, because you can only get at it by a walk of a mile, but I think it quite as worth seeing as the logan-rock. My next object was the Land's End, where, as elsewhere, I did signalise myself by not scribbling my autograph on a rock, or carving M. F. T. on the sod: the rocky coast is of the same grand character; granite bits, as big as houses, floundering over each other like whales at play; the cliffs, cavernous, castellated, mossgrown, and weatherbeaten; it looks like a Land's end, a regular break up of the world's then useless ribs: an outlier of rocks in the sea, surmounted by a lighthouse: looks like the end of the struggle between conquering man, and sturdy desolation. One place, where I tremble to think I have been, struck me as quite awful: helped by an iron-handed sailor, who comforts you in the dizzy scramble with "Never fear, sir, you shan't fall, unless I fall too," you fearfully pick your way to the extreme end, where it goes slick down, and lying prostrate on the slippery granite (which looks disjointed everywhere, and as if it would fall with you, bodily) with head strained over you see under you a dreadful cavern, open nearly to where you are, up which roars the white and angry sea. O brother David, and foot-tingling Sire, never can you take that look; and never would I again. Only think of tipping over! ugh.—Into the gig again, beside my shrewd Sam Weller driver, and away. Here and there

about this part of Cornwall are studded rude stone crosses, probably of the time of St. Colomba, as they are similar to those at Iona: about two or three feet high, and very rude. In one place, I noticed what seemed to be a headless female figure, perhaps the Virgin,

and as large as life: my Jehu said he had heard that it once had a head. We soon came to a small square inclosure, said to be a most ancient cemetery; I scrambled over the wall, and found among the briars and weeds one solitary tomb of a venerable and Runic aspect, but I soon found out that it recorded the name of somebody who departed Y^e LYFE somewhere in 1577; nothing so extremely ancient. A rough rock-besprinkled hill now attracted me, as I heard it was called another Carn-bréh, and was surmounted by some mound, or ruin: so out of the gig, and up in no time. Clearly it had been an ancient beacon place, as atop are the remains of a small square-built terrace inclosing some upright stones placed irregularly,—a sort of huge fireplace. One of the neighbouring rocks presented on its surface a fine specimen of what are called rock basins; but unluckily for the antiquary, this excavation is on the side of the stone, not on the summit; so that it could not possibly hold water, and is clearly caused by some particular moss eating away the stone.—By three o'clock returned to Penzance, had dinner (it was breakfast too), bought a mineral memorial, and in the gig again, over the sands to the outlandishly named Mara Zion, or Market Jew, words probably of similar import. Opposite to this little place, and joined to it by a neck of rocks passable at low-water, stands that picturesque gem, Mount St. Michael. You know the sort of thing; an abrupt, pyramid of craggy rock, crowned with an edifice, half stronghold and half cathedral. It is a home of the St. Aubyn family, and is well kept up in the ancient style, but in rather a small way: a portcullised entrance, old armour hanging in the guard-room, a beautiful dining-hall with carved oak roof, and panels, and chairs; a chapel to match, with stained windows; an elegant Gothic drawing-room, white and gold; and everything, down to black-leather drinking jugs, in character with the feudal stronghold. I mounted the corkscrew tower, and got to the broken stone lantern they call St. Michael's chair; an uncomfortable job, but rewarded by a splendid panorama, gilt by the setting sun: in the chapel too, I descended into a miserable dungeon communicating with a monk's stall, where doubtless some self-immured penitent had wasted life away, only coming to the light for matins, and only relieved from solitary imprisonment by midnight mass. This has been discovered but very lately in repairing the chapel: it was walled up, and contained a skeleton. As a matter of course, this old castle contains a little hidden room, where that ubiquitous vagabond, the royal Charles, laid his hunted head: the poor persecuted debauchee sponged upon all his friends like Bellyserious Buggins. Back again, by water this time, to little Mara Zion, but ever and anon looking with admiration on that beautiful mount; the western rocks are really magnificent, as big as the largest hay-stacks, and tumbled about as loosely as an emptied sugar-basin; some hanging by a corner, and others resting on a casual fragment; I am sure of one logan-stone, if a little impertinent bit of rock were only moved away; and I walked under and between more Titanic architecture than Stonehenge can show: the Druids, for my part, shall have their due, but not where they don't deserve it. At nine, after a substantial fried-fish tea, I mounted the night coach to Falmouth,—outside, as there was no room in, and so, through respectable Helstone, remarkable for a florid Gothic arch erected to some modern worthy of the town, to decent Penryn, and then by midnight, to the narrowest of all towns, Falmouth. I longed to get back to my darlings, and resolved to see them by next morning, so booked an outside (no room inside, as before) for an immediate start. Now, you can readily imagine that I was by no means hot, and though the night of Thursday last was rather mild, still it was midwinter: accordingly I conceived and executed a marvellous calorificating plan, which even the mail-coachman had never heard of. Haying comforted my interiors with hot grog of the stiffest, I called for another shillingsworth of brandy, and deliberately emptied it, to the astonished edification of beholders, into my boots! literal fact, and it kept my feet comfortable all night long. And so, wrapped all in double clothing, sped I my rapid way, varying what I had before seen by passing through desolate Bodmin, and its neighbourhood of rock, moor, and sand: hot coffee at Liskeard, morning broke soon after, then the glorious sun over the sea. Hamoaze, the ferry, and Devonport at 1/2 past 8. Much as I longed to get home, I went forthwith into a hot bath at 102, to boil out all chills, and thence went spick and span to my happy rest, having within 48 hours seen the best part of Cornwall and its wonders, and rode or walked 250 miles. And so, brother David, commend me for a traveller. Here ends my Cornish expedition. Does it recall to thee, O sire, thine own of old time, undertaken (if I remember rightly) with Dr. Kidd?—Mails then did not travel like the Quicksilver, averaging 12 miles an hour, and few people go 40 miles before breakfast. Now, I feel able to get nearer my Albury destination, and in a week or so, shall hope to be residing at Dorchester, near the Blandford of paternal recollections. Did you, dear mother, get a letter from me directed to Albury? I hope so, for it sets all clear: and if not, I'll set the nation against cheap postage. I don't feel the least confidence now in the Post Office, forasmuch as they have no interest in a letter after it is paid, and many will be mislaid from haste and multiplicity. Please to say if it came safely to hand, as I judge it important. If you, dear mother, got my last, I have nothing more to say, and if not, I'll blow up the Post Office: unpopularity would send all the letters by carriers: but whether or not, I can't write any more, so with a due proportion of regards rightly broadcast around, accept the remainder from—Your affectionate son,

M. F. T.

CHAPTER IV.

COLLEGE DAYS.

In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two cousins, Elisha and Carré, were at Exeter College, to take the benefit of its Sarnian Exhibitions; my brother Daniel was at Brasenose, and my brother William gained a scholarship of Trinity. When at Christ Church I wore the same academical gown which my father had,—and have it still; a curious antiquity in the dress line, now some fourscore years old, and perfect for wear and appearance,—such as would have rejoiced the Sartor Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line, unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin poets were always rendered by me in verse not prose, and that I published anonymously "A Voice from the Cloister," being an earnest appeal to my fellow-collegians against the youthful excesses so common in those days.

From this pamphlet I give an extract, as it is scarce; it began with blank verse and ended with rhyme, all being for the period courageously moral and religious. The end is as thus:—

"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flight
Has cleft with wearied wing the shades of night:
Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past,
And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last,
Strike on the chords of joy a happier strain
And be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.
Hail, goodly company of generous youth,
Hail, nobler sons of Temperance and Truth!
I see attendant Ariels circling there,
Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair,
Sweet Chastity, young Hope, and Reason bright,
And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight,
Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace,
And gentle Happiness with smiling face,—
All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,
And Melancholy flees the sons of day;
Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,
And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.

"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praise
And the fool's censure equally betrays,
Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,
Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,
She asks not flattery, but let her claim
A kind perusal, and a secret name."

I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. I had the honour at Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr. Burton's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to give me the £25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone to have £5 worth of them, as he was so good a second. Certainly such an easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.

My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable event, and may thus be worthy of mention. It was at that time not a common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch Cathedral—that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts. So when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of letters through many years have passed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too, according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses, ending with

"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage,
The Crichton,—more, the Gladstone of the age,"

my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode (one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing

"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"

and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with

"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"

and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so proverbially dangerous. Some of our most honest Ministers, e.g., Althorpe and Wellington, have been very bad speakers: some of our most eloquent orators have proved very bad Ministers.

And in this place I may introduce some account, long ago in print, of the famous Aristotle class under the tutorship of Mr. Biscoe at Christ Church, wherein (among far nobler and better scholars) your present confessor took the lowest seat.

Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle class at Christ Church was comprised almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a remarkable degree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards attaining to great distinction, have rarely been associated at one lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief note of those old Aristotelians.

Let the central figure be Gladstone—ever from youth up the beloved and admired of many personal intimates (although some may be politically his opponents). Always the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest, hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and keen intelligences of Eton and Christ Church formed themselves into a small social sort of club, styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, the "W. E. G."

Next to Gladstone Lord Lincoln used to sit, his first parliamentary patron at Newark, and through life to death his friend. We all know how admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcastle served his country, and what a good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful Telemachus in America.

Canning may be mentioned thirdly; then a good-looking youth with classic features and a florid cheek, since gone to "the land of the departed" after having healed up the wounds of India as her Governor-General. Next to the writer, one on each side, sat two more Governors-General in futuro, though then both younger sons and commoners, and now both also gone to their reward elsewhere; these were Bruce, afterwards Lord Elgin, and Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie; the one famous from Canada to China, the other noted for his triumphs in the Punjaub. When at Toronto in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the splendid hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture-room here depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." Lord Abercorn was of the class, a future viceroy; Lord Douglas, lately Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of Baden; and if Lord Waterford was infrequent in his attendance, at least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of eccentric celebrity. Then Phillimore was there, now our Dean of the Arches; Scott and Liddell, both heads of houses, and even then conspiring together for their great Dictionary. Curzon too (lately Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine MSS. preserved at Parham, where the writer has delighted to inspect them; how nearly Tischendorf was anticipated in his fortunate find of that earliest Scripture, no one knows better than Lord Zouch, who must have been close upon that great and important discovery! Doyle, now Professor of Poetry, Hill, of Mathematics, Vaughan, of History—all were of this wonderful class; as also the Earl of Selkirk, celebrated as a mathematician; Bishops Hamilton, Denison, and Wordsworth; and Cornewall Lewis, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Kynaston, Head Master of St. Paul's; and a member of Parliament or two, as, for example, Leader, once popular for Westminster.

Now, other names of almost equal eminence may have been here accidentally omitted, but the writer will not guess at more than he actually recollects. Sometimes—for the lecture was a famous one—members of other colleges came in; Sidney Herbert, of Oriel, in particular, is remembered; and if Robert Lowe, of University, was only occasionally seen, it must have been because he seldom went abroad till twilight.

Altogether "there were giants in those days;" and, without controversy, a casual class, containing more than a score of such; illustrious names as are here registered, must be memorable. The lecture-room was next to Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," illustrated by each reader with quotations, a record whereof is still penes me, and the lecturer, now no longer living, was that able and accomplished classic, the Reverend Robert Biscoe.

My college days are full of recollections of men, since become famous in literature, art, science, or position: of these the principal are already recorded as having been members of the Aristotle class. Let me add here, that I lived for three weeks of my first term in the gaily adorned rooms in Peckwater of the wild Lord Waterford; and afterwards in Lord Ossulston's, both being then absent from college; that Frank Buckland and his bear occupied (long after I had left) my own chambers in Fells' Buildings; that I was a class-mate and friend of the luckless Lord Conyers Osborne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his shocking death—he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long overlooked it, Mr. Tupper, but this must never occur again: indeed I have only waited till now, because I knew of your general good conduct."

"What have I done, Mr. Dean: be pleased to tell me."

"Why, sir, the porter states that this is the fifth time you have not come into college until past twelve o'clock."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dean; there is some mistake: for I have never once been later than ten."

"Then, Mr. Tupper, somebody must have given your name in the dark: and I request that you will do your best to discover who did this, and report it to me."

As I failed to do it, after some days, again the Dean sent for me; and finding after question made that I pretty well guessed the delinquent but declined to expose him, the Dean kindly added—"This does you credit, sir," and I left. A few days passed, and I was brought up again with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not speak. Then he said he was sorry for that, as he meant to nominate me for a studentship. This, however, never came to pass, and so the matter dropped; until Dean Gaisford succeeded Dean Smith, and Joseph lost his Pharaoh.

At college I lived the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or Newton-Courtnay,—or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to return home,—or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,—or the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I favoured with my approval (valeat quantum) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr. Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronet in præsenti, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a memoria technica of mine in rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents, and radii," though helpful to memory, and humorous at the time, ending with

"At least I have proved that nothing is worse
Than Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"

there are also similarly to be recorded my mathematical séances with that worthy and clever Professor, A. P. Saunders, afterwards headmaster of Charterhouse; and my Hebrew lectures with the mild-spoken Dr. Pusey, afterwards so notorious; and I know not whatever else is memorable, unless one condescended to what goes without saying about Hall and Chapel, and Examinations: however, some frivolous larks in the Waterford days, wherewith I need not say the present scribe had nothing to do, may amuse. Here are three I remember; 1. An edict had gone out from the authorities against hunting in pink,—and next morning the Dean's and the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which nobody can explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord Hillsborough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd of roughs with their fists, scattering them like duplicates of the hero of Corioli.

Of course I duly took my degrees of B.A. and M.A.,—and long after of D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang for me, as they always do for a grand compounding Doctor.

A mentionable curio of authorship on that occasion is this: whatever may be the rule now, in those days the degree of D.C.L. involved a three-hours' imprisonment in the pulpit of the Bodleian Chapel, for the candidate to answer therefrom in Latin any theological objectors who might show themselves for that purpose; as, however, the chapel was always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,—and I then and there produced my poem on "The Dead"—to be found at p. 26 of my Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's—a long one of eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was ridiculously thought that I had specially alluded to the registrar!

CHAPTER V.

ORDERS: AND LINCOLN'S INN.

Soon after leaving Oxford, and when some attempts to help my speech seemed to be partially successful, my father wished me to take orders, which also from religious motives was my own desire (for M'Neile at Albury, and Bulteel at Oxford, had been instruments of good to me, the first since I was 15, the other as a young collegian) and as Earl Rivers, whom my father had financially assisted promised me a living, and a curacy was easy where the mere licence was enough by way of salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,—and I began to hope before his awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough assured me with sorrow that I could not be ordained unless I had my speech. So that first and sole interview came to an untimely end: for soon after, not meaning to give up the struggle at once, I resolved, before my next Episcopal visit, to go down to Blewbury, the vicarage of my friend Mr. Evanson, who had agreed to license me to his curacy, in order that by reading the lessons in church I might practically test my competency. Of course, I prepared myself specially by diligence, and care, and prayer, to stand this new ordeal. But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed the not ungainly Cœlebs; and as for the severe old clerk,—he naïvely blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,—but what means them stops?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips against every difficult letter, a t, or a p, or a far too current s. And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson. And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism. I was thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the world.

After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law, thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or rhythmed thoughts in black and white.

There is a small chamber in the turret of No. 19 Lincoln's Inn Old Square, on the second floor of rooms then belonging to my late friend Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked me where they came from:

"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,
And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."

They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as found out.

When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the Literary Gazette, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L. E. L.'s brother. An unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which I most reluctantly assented; resolving however to be quite impartial. The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him, whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.

The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where nobody could read his handwriting except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and when he couldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition, wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist, breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on passengers' coats and blank walls, as he passed on his daily walks to his office and back, having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the spoil. In the course of years he had amassed butterflies and beetles to so valuable an extent, that when he was compelled by adverse fortune to sell his cabinets by auction at Stevens's, he netted £1200 for his collection: this he told me in later years himself; immediately after the sale, he commenced collecting anew,—and having been made curator of Lincoln's Inn Fields (through Mr. Brodie's interest), he soon found an infinity of new insects,—derived perhaps from the Surgeon's Hall Museum, or straying to the nine acres of that Garden,—is it not the area of Cephren's Pyramid?—as a refuge for them out of smoky London. The good man always brought a new flower to look at every morning while at desk work; it lived in an old inkbottle of water, till one happy day I bethought me charitably of giving him a pretty China vase,—that good man, I say, is now long since gone to a world of light and beauty—whence, I am sure, flowers and butterflies cannot be excluded.

About the same time this memorable matter may receive a notice. One day at Brodie's chambers we heard a riotous noise in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and running out, I found that the Duke of Wellington, for some political offence, was being mobbed,—and that too on the 18th of June! He was calmly walking his horse, surrounded by roaring roughs,—a groom being behind him at some distance, but otherwise alone. Disgusted at the scene, I jumped on the steps of Surgeon's Hall, and shouted out—Waterloo, Waterloo! That one word turned the tide of execrations into cheers, and the Iron Duke passed me silently with a military salute: as the mob were thus easily converted ("mob" being, as we conveyancers say, a short form for "mobilé", changeable) and escorted our national hero to his home in safety, I really think the little incident worth recording. We are just now in the throes of such a mobocracy,—and know how much one firm policeman can avail to calm a riot. While speaking of the Duke and Apsley House, let me add here another word of some interest. My uncle, Arthur W. Devis, had painted life-sized portraits of Blucher and Gneisenau, which his widow had given to me: and as the Duke had always been my father's friend, I asked his Grace if he would accept them from me; this he declined, but said, "get Colnaghi to value them and I'll buy them"—as accordingly I did, and the pictures are still I presume either at Apsley House or Strathfieldsaye. My small memories of the Great Duke are summed up in these four monosyllables, plain, blunt, firm, kind.

After Brodie's, my liberal father would give for me another hundred pounds, this time to his cousin Mr. Walters of No. 12 in the Square, to make me more learned as a conveyancer: but it was all of no use: "He penned a stanza when he should engross:" however, I ate my terms and was duly called to the Bar. At Walters' my most eminent colleague, amongst others, was Roundel Palmer, now Lord Selborne, who, some time after, when we both had chambers in the Inn, wanted me (but I repudiated the idea) to be proposed as a candidate member for Oxford University, just before Gladstone was induced to stand; I daresay he will remember it. As to M.P.ship I may have had other chances, but I never cared for a position of endless care and toil by night and day, to say nothing of my impediment of speech, and as to the magic letters I rather despised them: this being one reason. Not very many years ago my brother Charles was offered Nottingham if he would pay £3000 for the honour,—and so I failed to appreciate any such distinction. I think too that votes were at one time purchasable even at Guildford, my county town: but that was of course at a less upright and immaculate time of day than this.

At Walters' were also three of my cotemporaries,—De Morgan, who had the business after decease of our principal, and whose brother is or was the famous psychological philosopher; Domville, since Sir Charles, I believe; and Gunn, a West Indian, of whom the jest was to inquire of Walters, a very nervous man, if he liked us to have a gun in chambers: all these, and there were more, were clever men and worthy, but as the tide of life flows on I have lost sight of them.

I have just found an old letter of my own, dated December 28, 1839, which (with my own permission asked and granted) I will give as to a matter quite forgotten by me, viz., that Lady Spencer promised my father to get me an Indian Writership,—as also that previously I had once hopes of the Registrarship from Lord John Russell, afterwards given to Mr. Lyster. The letter proves how much my no-speech hindered both my good father's efforts and my own;—and explains itself. In those days it cost 9d. between Albury and London.

My Dearest Father,—I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.—I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes. Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully: my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification "needs no demonstration." Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M'Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way. However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way: I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose. I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or affliction, as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve some wise purpose. Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer's employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.

Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate son,

M. F. Tupper.

Albury, December 28th, Wednesday.

The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after a nine years' engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry without a profession. I did my best at this vocation of the law much against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin's help, a voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, procured for me by my mother's friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, a solicitor. I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing held water; but the thought of Lewin's skill has comforted me—and besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century. My fee for all was fifty guineas—pretty well for a first and last exploit in the way of law and its rewards.

As I am just leaving my father's house for Park Village, and thereafter Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived with my parents at No. 5. Here is one. Theodore Hook's famous Berners Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among schoolboys—and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by "Punsonby & Co." at my father's town-house. On a certain Saturday when I had my weekly holiday at home, I marvelled to find the street crowded with vans, coal-carts, trucks, a mourning coach, fishmongers, butchers, and confectioners with trays, and a number of servants wanting places. All these were crowding round No. 5, as ordered or advertised for by Mr. Tupper: of course soon explained away, and rejected, to a general indignation at the hoaxers. Now, as I had my suspicions, I sat unseen at the front drawing-room window, and watched: and as more than once I had noticed P. and his friends pass down the street on the opposite side, I taxed them with their exploit on the Monday; and I rather think it cost them not a trifling sum to satisfy that crowd of disappointed tradesmen. Happily such practical joking is now long since (or ought to be) a social outrage of the past; Hook's being first had the grace of original humour,—but imitations are dull repetition, not to be excused. I only once met Theodore Hook, and that was in his decadence; he looked puffy and only semi-sober; but I recollect with how much deference and expectation the "livener-up" was eagerly surrounded, and how sillily the dupes laughed at every word he uttered, whether humorous or not.

For another last memory of No. 5, in the dining-room whereof Lord Sandwich, who had once lived there, is said to have invented "sandwiches," I will record this.

In those days of long ago, how well I remember our next-door neighbour, old Lady Cork, "The Dowager-Countess of Cork and Orrery," as her door-plate proclaimed, some of whose peculiarities I may mention without offence, as they were notorious and (the physicians judged) innocent and venial. Whenever she found herself alone (and she kept profuse hospitality three or four days a week, with her vast illuminated conservatory full of artificial flowers and grapes and oranges tied on everything), when those famous routs were silent, and dance music no longer kept us awake at night, the little old lady would send in a message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner to-day"—sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published, as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of bric-à-brac which she had carried off with her in seeming unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly it was so. Let doctors decide. Requiescat. The forthcoming memoirs of that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if not over-edited.

CHAPTER VI.

STAMMERING AND CHESS.

One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations, when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note and syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer, and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did, and courageously stand up against the multitude to claim before heaven and earth man's proudest prerogative—the privilege of speech. In my Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures drawn from my own experiences: one of the stifled stammerer, the other of the unbridled orator: which you can turn to as you will. As, however, some of my old groanings after utterance are not equally accessible, I will here give a few lines of mine from the "Stammerer's Complaint," printed in the medical book of one of my Galens:—

"... And is it not in truth
A poisoned sting in every social joy,
A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh,
A drop of gall in each domestic sweet,
An irritating petty misery,—
That I can never look on one I love
And speak the fulness of my burning thoughts?
That I can never with unmingled joy
Meet a long-loved and long-expected friend
Because I feel, but cannot vent my feelings,—
Because I know I ought, but must not, speak,—
Because I mark his quick impatient eye
Striving in kindness to anticipate
The word of welcome strangled in its birth?
Is it not sorrow, while I truly love
Sweet social converse, to be forced to shun
The happy circle, from a nervous sense—
An agonising poignant consciousness—
That I must stand aloof, nor mingle with
The wise and good in rational argument,
The young in brilliant quickness of reply,
Friendship's ingenuous interchange of mind,
Affection's open-hearted sympathies?
But feel myself an isolated being,
A very wilderness of widowed thought!"

All this is only sad stern truth; nothing morbid here: let any poor stammerer testify to my faithfulness. Amongst others afflicted like myself was Charles Kingsley, whom I knew well at a time when I had overcome my calamity; whereas he carried his to the grave with him; though he had frequent gleams of a forced and courageous eloquence, preaching energetically in a somewhat artificial voice,—in private he stammered much, as once I used to do, no doubt to his mortification, though humbly acquiescing in God's will.

Chess is a chief intellectual resource to the stammerer; for therein he can conquer in argument without the toil of speech, and prove himself practically more eloquent than the men full of talk whom he so much envies. Accordingly, in days gone by (for of late years I have given it up, as too toilsome a recreation) I played often at that royal game. In these times it is no game at all,—but a wearisome if seductive science; just as cricket is an artillery combat now, and football a most perilous conflict, and boating breaks the athlete's heart, and billiards can only be played by a bar-spot professional, and tranquil whist itself has developed into a semi-fraudulent system of open rules and secret signs; even so the honest common-sense old game of chess has come to be so encumbered with published openings and gambits and other parasitic growths upon the wholesome house-plant, that I for one have renounced it, as a pursuit for which life is too short and serious (give me a farce or a story instead), and one moreover in which any fool well up to crammed book games may crow over the wisest of men in an easy, because stereotyped, checkmate. However, in this connection, I recollect a small experience which proves that positive ignorance of famous openings may sometimes be an advantage; just as the skilled fencer will be baffled by a brave boor rushing in against rules, and by close encounter unconventionally pinning him straight off. When a youth, just before matriculation, I was a guest at Culham of the good rector there, a chess-player to his own thinking indomitable, for none of the neighbours could checkmate him: so he thought to make quick work of a silent but thoughtful boy-stammerer,—by tempting him at an early period of the game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat. However, I declined the generous offer, which began to nettle my opponent; but when afterwards I refused to answer divers moves by the card (as he protested I ought), and finally reduced him to a positive checkmate, he flew into such an unclerical rage that I would not play again; his "revenge" might be too terrible. For another trivial chess anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't beat him again, sir,—he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly, after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: so he was enabled to sleep happily. I remember too playing with pegged pieces in a box-board at so strange a place as outside the Oxford coach; and I think my amiable adversary then was one Wynell Mayow, who has since grown into a great Church dignitary. If he lives, my compliments to him.

One of the best private chess-players I used often to encounter,—but almost never to beat, is my old life-friend, Evelyn of Wotton, now the first M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,—and if ever through his carelessness I managed a stale, or a draw,—very seldom a mate,—that was glory indeed. If he sees this, his memory will countersign it.

Let so much suffice, as perhaps a not inappropriate word about the Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especially, where the player is, like Moses, "not a man of words."

One day, by the by, this text in the original, "lo ish devarim anochi" (Exod. iv. 10), came to my lot in Pusey's Hebrew class, to my special confusion: but every tutor was very considerate and favoured the one who couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn came to read or to answer,—"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know it,—please to go on, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual confidence in my proficiency had the effect of forcing my consciousness to deserve it; and it usually happened that I really did know, silently, like Macaulay's cunning augur, "who knew but might not tell."

Speaking of recreation, Izaak Walton's joy as a contemplative man has been mine from youth; as witness these three fishing sonnets, just found in the faded ink of three or four decades ago, which may give a gleam of country sunshine on a page or two, and would have rejoiced my piscatorial friends Kingsley and Leech in old days, and will not be unacceptable to Attwood Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had various luck as an angler from Stennis Lake to the Usk, from Enniskillen to Killarney, from Isis to Wotton,—and so it would be a pity if I omitted such an authorial characteristic; especially as my stammering obliged me to "study to be quiet."

I.

"Look, like a village Queen of May, the stream
Dances her best before the holiday sun,
And still, with musical laugh, goes tripping on
Over these golden sands, which brighter gleam
To watch her pale-green kirtle flashing fleet
Above them, and her tinkling silver feet
That ripple melodies: quick,—yon circling rise
In the calm refluence of this gay cascade
Marked an old trout, who shuns the sunny skies,
And, nightly prowler, loves the hazel shade:
Well thrown!—you hold him bravely,—off he speeds,
Now up, now down,—now madly darts about,—
Mind, mind your line among those flowering reeds,—
How the rod bends,—and hail, thou noble trout!"

II.

"O, thou hast robbed the Nereids, gentle brother,
Of some swift fairy messenger; behold,—
His dappled livery prankt with red and gold
Shows him their favourite page: just such another
Sad Galatæa to her Acis sent
To teach the new-born fountain how to flow,
And track with loving haste the way she went
Down the rough rocks, and through the flowery plain,
Ev'n to her home where coral branches grow,
And where the sea-nymph clasps her love again:
We the while, terrible as Polypheme,
Brandish the lissom rod, and featly try
Once more to throw the tempting treacherous fly
And win a brace of trophies from the stream."

III.

"Come then, coy Zephyr, waft my feathered bait
Over this rippling shallow's tiny wave
To yonder pool, whose calmer eddies lave
Some Triton's ambush, where he lies in wait
To catch my skipping fly; there drop it lightly:
A rise, by Glaucus!—but he missed the hook,—
Another—safe! the monarch of the brook,
With broadside like a salmon's, gleaming brightly:
Off let him race, and waste his prowess there;
The dread of Damocles, a single hair,
Will tax my skill to take this fine old trout;
So,—lead him gently; quick, the net, the net!
Now gladly lift the glittering beauty out,
Hued like a dolphin, sweet as violet."

CHAPTER VII.

PRIZE POEMS, ETC.

In the course of my Oxford career I tried for two Newdigate Prize poems, "The Suttees" and the "African Desert," won respectively by Claughton, now Bishop of St. Albans, and Rickards, whose honours of course I ought to know, but don't. A good-looking and well-speaking friend of mine, E. H. Abney, now a Canon, was so certain that the said prizes in those two successive years were to fall to me, that he learnt my poems by heart in order to recite them as my speech-substitute in the Sheldonian Theatre at Commemoration, and he used frequently to look in upon me to be coached in his recital. It was rumoured that I came second on both occasions,—one of them certainly had a 2 marked on it when returned to me, but I know not who placed it there. However, my pieces were afterwards printed; both separately, and among my "Ballads and Poems," by Hall and Virtue, and are now before me. As an impartial and veteran judge of such literaria, I am bold to say they are far better than I thought, and might fairly have won Newdigate prizes, even as friend Abney & Co. were sure they would.

At the close of my University career came, of course, the Great Go, which I had to do as I did the Little Go, all on paper; for I could not answer vivâ voce. And this rule then, whatever may be the case now, prevented me from going in for honours, though I had read for a first, and hoped at least to get a second. Neither of these, nor even a third class, was technically possible, if I could not stand a two days' ordeal of vivâ voce examination, part of the whole week then exacted. However, I did all at my best on paper, specially the translations from classic poets in verse: whereof I'll find a specimen anon. The issue of all was that I was offered an honorary fourth class,—which I refused, as not willing to appear at the bottom of the list of all, alphabetically,—and so my tutor, Mr. Biscoe, not wishing to lose the honour for our college, managed to get it transferred to another of his pupils, Mr. Thistlethwaite, whose father wrote to thank me for this unexpected though not unmerited luck falling to his son.

One short presentable piece of verse-making in the schools is as below from Virgil: there were also three odes of Horace, a chorus from Æschylus, and more from other Greek and Latin poets.

"Sicilian Muses, sing we loftier strains!
The humble tamarisk and woodland plains
Delight 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 sublime
In new and glorious order; spring again
With 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 which goes 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 vast
No one can call the chastened strains bombast,
Though epitheted substantives immense
Claim for each lofty sound the caret sense," &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 arrayed
Each angry Don lifts high his injured head,
Or 'stands between the living and the dead.'
Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes wide
Primó, beware of truth, whate'er betide;
Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steer
Lest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer,
Watch above all, so not Saint Thomas 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 explore
That stream which eye had never tracked before,
Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begun
Flows 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 prayer
To reach that stream, though doomed to perish there!
That prayer was heard; by Niger's mystic flood
One 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 nigh
That stream he long'd and pray'd for wistfully,
Whose course, 'tis said, that no one can tell where
It 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 prayer
He'd find that stream,—if it was anywhere!
That prayer was heard, of course, though no one knows
Where this said Niger never flowed, or flows;
All that is known is, that a dreamer stood
In 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.'"

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!'"

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 after my 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 the north 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

SUNDRY PROVIDENCES.

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 may be 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 to him 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 the Asia's slippery 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 raging sea 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-piled
And tempest-worn, as ocean hurrying wild
Up it in thunder breaks and vainly raves,—
My haste hath sped me to the rippled sand
Where, arching deep, o'erhang on either hand
These halls of Amphitrité, echoing clear
The ceaseless mournful music of the waves:
Ten thousand beauteous forms of life are here;
And long I linger, wandering in and out
Among the seaflowers, tapestried about
All 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; it does require "a good deal of providence" to come to old age.

CHAPTER IX.

YET MORE ESCAPES.

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 an Ancient, 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 them the 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 afterwards reason 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 own part, 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?"

CHAPTER X.

FADS AND FANCIES.

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 can truly 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 Barmecidal without 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 saw
That '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 withstands
The 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 pretend
My 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 fleas
And queer little monsters the microscope sees;
Is sometimes so muddy, and sometimes so mixt
With 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 imbibe
So freely the live animalcula tribe,
Unkilled and uncooked with a little wine sauce
Poured in, or of whisky or brandy a toss—
And gulp a cold draught of the colic, instead
Of 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 displace
Pipes, 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 I that brother'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 right
To be to them always a law and a light;
But moderate temperance is the vise way
To 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 youth in extremis is sure to go wrong,
For the pendulum swings with a multiplied force
When sloped from its even legitimate course.
I have known—who has not?—that a profligate son
Has 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 high
For 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 made
As 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 life
Transmuted, 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 free
To 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 of eau de vie in such 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 and are 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.

CHAPTER XI.

"SACRA POESIS" AND "GERALDINE."

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 have operated 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 the parturiunt montes theory. 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, and has 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 the Edinburgh 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 of The 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 with The Eclectic that 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 verdicts in this case, black and white are not more contradictory: e.g., let Blackwood be contrasted with the Monthly Review, or the Church of England Quarterly with the Weekly 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,—

"How fair and fresh is morn!
The dewbeads dropping bright
Each humble flower adorn,
With coronets bedight,
And jewel the rough thorn
With tiny globes of light,—
How beautiful is morn!
Her scattered gems how bright!"

There,—isn't that charming? he said,—little aware of whom he asked the amiable query. But when I went on with the second verse, he opened his eyes wider and wider as I added:

"There is a quiet gladness
On the waking earth,
Like the face of sadness
Lit with chastened mirth;
There is a mine of treasure
In those hours of health,
Filling up the measure
Of creation's wealth!"

Of course, discovery of the author was unavoidable: so we collided and coalesced, and I rejoiced to find in this "Angel unaware" no less a celebrity than John Hughes of Donnington Priory, father of the still greater celebrity (then a youth) Tom Hughes of Rugby and "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Some time after I spent several pleasant days at his fine old place in Berks, and made happy acquaintance with the brightest old lady I ever met, his mother, who had known Burns and Byron and Scott; as also with his pleasant good wife and her clever sons, one of whom, in the ripeness of time, married a then charming little girl, the heiress-ward of my host, and since well appreciated in society as a grande dame; wife also to one famous for a Rugby in both hemispheres, for rifledom, the White Horse of Wilts, and now full-fledged county judgeship. These excellent friendships survive many long years and will be transplanted elsewhere hereafter. All this grew from a casual encounter outside a coach: but such is life; what we call accidents are all providences, and we are guided inch by inch and minute by minute. Tom Hughes succeeded as a county judge in Yorkshire my old schoolfellow, St. John Yates, mentioned on a recent page in connection with Andrew Irvine's turkeycock irascibility.

"Watch little providences: if indeed
Or less there be, or greater, in the sight
Of Him who governs all by day and night,
And sees the forest hidden in the seed:
Of all that happens take thou reverent heed,
For seen in true Religion's happier light
(Though not unknown of Reason's placid creed)
All things are ordered; all by orbits move,
Having precursors, satellites, and signs,
Whereby the mind not doubtfully divines
What is the will of Him who rules above,
And takes for guidance those paternal hints
That all is well, that thou art led by Love,
And in thy travel trackest old footprints."

CHAPTER XII.

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY.

And this may well be a fitting place wherein to record the origin, progress, and after long years the full completion of what is manifestly my chief authorial work in life, "Proverbial Philosophy." To ensure accuracy, and not leave all the details to oftentimes unfaithful memory, I will give a few extracts from "a brief account" of the book, set down in 1838, at the beginning of Volume I. of "My Literary Heirloom," now grown to many volumes, containing newspaper cuttings, anecdotes, and letters and scraps of all sorts relating to my numerous works.

"In the year 1828, when under Mr. Holt's roof at Albury (anno ætatis meæ 18), I bethought myself, for the special use and behoof of my cousin Isabella, who seven years after became my wife, that I would transcribe my notions on the holy estate of matrimony; a letter was too light, and a formal essay too heavy, and I didn't care to versify my thoughts, so I resolved to convey them in the manner of Solomon's Proverbs or the 'Wisdom' of Jesus the Son of Sirach: and I did so,—successively, in the Articles first on Marriage, then Love, then Friendship, and fourthly on Education: several other pieces growing afterwards. Whilst at Albury, my cousin showed some of these to our rector, Hugh M'Neile, who warmly praised them, and recommended their publication; but, regarding them as private and personal, I would not hear of it, and in fact it was nine years before they saw print; thus literally, though I meant it not then, exemplifying the Horatian advice, 'nonumque premantur in annum.' However, one day in August 1838, Mr. Stebbing, whose chapel, in the Hampstead Road I used to attend when living at Gothic Cottage, Regent's Park, in my first years of marriage, visiting me and urging me to write something for the Athenæum, which he was then editing, I was induced to show him these earliest essays; but I declined to give them to him, whereat he was angered; perhaps the rather in that I objected to piecemeal publication, possibly also casting some reproach (as the fashion of the day then was) upon magazine and journalistic literature generally. That I made an enemy of him was evidenced by a spiteful little notice in the Athenæum of April 21st (three months after my first series was published) stating that it was 'a book not likely to please beyond the circle of a few minds as eccentric as the author's.' The same false friend excluded me altogether from any notice in the Examiner wherein he had some literary influence." To this day these reviews have been my foes, which I regret.

"Still, Mr. Stebbing did me substantial good; he praised the idea as 'new, because a resuscitation of what was very old,'—and as of my own origination in these latter days, and as a good vehicle for thoughts on many matters: and he promised his valuable assistance to a young author's fame,—performing as above. So, after a last interview with him at his house, wherein I conclusively refused him, I wrote my Preface at once, jotting down (as I recollect at the street corner post opposite Hampstead Road Chapel) on the back of an old letter my opening paragraph,—

"'Thoughts that have tarried in my mind, and peopled its inner chambers,' &c., &c.

"In ten weeks from that day I had my first series ready,—supposing it then all I should ever write;—the same assurance of a final end having been my delusion at the close of each of my four series. My first publisher was Rickerby of Abchurch Lane, who produced a beautifully printed small folio volume with ornamental initials, and now very scarce: it came to a second edition, but brought me no money,—and the third edition failing to sell, it was in great part sent to America; where N. P. Willis finding a copy, fancied the book that of some forgotten author of the Elizabethan era, and quoted it week after week in a periodical of his, The Home Journal, as such: years afterwards, when he met me in London, he was scared to find that one whom he had thought dead three hundred years was still alive and juvenile and ruddy.

"It might be thought indelicate in me to quote at length the many pleasant greetings of the press to my first odd volumes; suffice it to say, that the kind critics were with few exceptions unanimous in commendation; and some great names, as Heraud, Leigh Hunt, and St. John particularly favoured me,—the latter prophesying a tenth edition: but I must still condescend to pick out at the end of this paper a few of the plums of praise wherewith my early publication was indulged, if only to please the numerous admirers of my chief 'lifework.' One comfort is that no one of my reviewers all my life through has ever been bought or rewarded. As to the less fulsome style of criticism, I was supposed by the Spectator to have 'written in hexameters,'—as if David or Solomon had ever imitated Homer or some more ancient predecessor of his; and the Sun fancied that I had 'culled from Erasmus, Bacon, Franklin, and Saavedra,' whereas I was totally ignorant of their wisdoms: Saavedra I have since learned is Cervantes. The Sunday Times finds 'Proverbial Philosophy' 'very like Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life,"' but I may say I never saw that neat little book of maxims till my brother Dan gave it to me fourteen years after my Philosophy was public property; I am also by this critic supposed to have 'imitated the Gulistan or Bostan of Saadi,'—whereof I need not profess my total ignorance: however, the writer kindly says of me, 'if he fail to make himself heard, the fault will be rather in the public than in him.' The Metropolitan propounds that 'a book like this would make a man's fortune in the East, but we are afraid that philosophy in proverbs has no great chance in the West: we should recommend the author to get it translated into Arabic.'" [I have since heard that some of it has been.] Let this be enough as to those first fruits of criticism, which might be extended to satiety; but I decline to become "inebriated with the exuberance of my own verbosity," as Beaconsfield has it about Gladstone.

To carry on the story of my old book, its second series was due to Harrison Ainsworth, at all events instrumentally. For, just as he was establishing his special magazine, he asked me to help him with a contribution in the style of that then new popularity, my Proverbs. This I sturdily declined; for in my young days, it was thought ungentlemanlike to write in magazines, though dukes, archbishops, and premiers do so now: even authorship for money was thought vulgar: but, when there greeted me at home a parcel of well-bound books as a gift from the author, being all that were then extant of Ainsworth's, I was so taken aback by his kindly munificence that I somewhat penitentially responded thereto by an impromptu chapter on "Gifts," wherewith I made the quarrel up and he was delighted: one or two others following. However, I was too quick and too impatient to wait for piecemeal publication month by month,—seeing I soon had my second series ready: and so, leaving Rickerby as an unfruitful publisher (though, as will soon appear, he produced other books for me) I went to Hatchards; with whom I had a long and prosperous career—receiving annually from £500 to £800 a year, and in the aggregate having benefited both them and myself—for we shared equally—by something like, £10,000 a piece. But in the course of time, the old grandfather and the father of the house, excellent men both, went severally to the Better Land, and I had published other books elsewhere, as will be seen, anon: and, amongst other things, Mr. Bertrand Payne, who represented the respectable poetic house of Moxon, desired to include me in his Beauties of the Poets, and in order to that, having previously obtained license both from me and Messrs. Hall & Virtue to select specimens of my lyrics for his volume, asked me to let him add a few bits of Proverbial; to this I willingly assented, but found myself repulsed by the temporary chief at Hatchards'—lately a subordinate—with a direct refusal to permit any portion of my book, of which they had a three years' lease then nearly out, to be included in the specimen volume until, the whole remainder copies were sold off. Mr. Payne on that immediately bought all they had, writing a cheque of £900 in payment down,—whereof I got one-half, as I should have done if sold at Hatchards'. I then of course went equitably over to Moxon's,—and not long after published my third series with that house, at Mr. Payne's suggestion and solicitation: it was not a financial success, any more than others in that quarter; but I was paid by having my later thoughts on topics of the day so handsomely published at no cost of mine. The house of Moxon having its reverses,—and a fourth and final series of "Proverbial Philosophy" having grown up meanwhile, I concluded to go to Ward & Lock, that my four series might for wider circulation be all included in one cheap volume, beautifully got up, and with them I have since had some small success: for though the royalty is only about a penny a volume, the numbers licensed have been an edition of 20,000 succeeded in the course of years by another of 30,000; and I still leave the book with them so far as that cheap issue is concerned.

As, however, I desired to meet the wish of many friends and others of the public who often asked for a handsomer form, suggesting a reproduction of Hatchards' quarto, with additional illustrations for the new matter, I applied to Cassell, and made arrangements to have the whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to meet (as Cassell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle and artisan class; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring on a new sale. I did not then know that Cassell's had numerous serials already on hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; and so I was a little surprised and vexed to find that my book was after all to appear as a whole and not in numbers, and that at a higher price, half-a-guinea, in these cheap times quite prohibitive, I protested vainly as to this; as I did also at the unsatisfactory character of the illustrations to the third and fourth series, promised to be equal to Hatchards' first and second, which had cost £2000: but Cassell's additions were cheaply and insufficiently supplied by old German plates, adapted as much as might be to my words for illustration. This manifest inferiority of the last half of the volume, as well as its too great price, stopped the sale,—and after a time with a high hand all the copies were sold off by auction, to the loss of both publisher and author. As I had supplied gratis the plates of Hatchards' edition, buying up the half not mine and giving the other, I found myself thus mulcted in a large sum, for which I have only to show in return about a hundredweight of wood-blocks and stereotypes:—which may be bought by any publisher at bargain price. Altogether the whole affair was unsatisfactory and disappointing. Individuals may be genial, honest, and considerate, but a company or a partnership simply looks to the hardest bargain in the shrewdest way. Of all this I'll complain, vainly enough, no more.

In their several places, many anecdotes about "Proverbial Philosophy" shall duly appear: I may mention one or two now, as timely. When that good old man, Grandfather Hatchard, more than an octogenarian, first saw me, he placed his hand on my dark hair and said with tears in his eyes, "You will thank God for this book when your head comes to be as white as mine." Let me gratefully acknowledge that he was a true prophet. When I was writing the concluding essay of the first series, my father (not quite such a prophet as old Hatchard) exhorted me to burn it, as his ambition was to make a lawyer of me, the Church idea having failed from my stammering, and he had very little confidence, as a man of the world, in poetry bringing fortune. However, it did not get burnt, though I had some difficulty in persuading him to let me get it printed instead. The dear good man lived to bless me for it, especially for my essay on Immortality, which I know affected him seriously, and he gave me £2000 as a gift in consequence.

As I may have been only too faithfully frank in mentioning this curious literary anecdote,—which, as known to others, I could scarcely have suppressed,—it is only fair to the memory of my dear and honoured father that I should here produce one of his very few letters to me, just found among my archives and bearing upon this same subject. It was written to me at Brighton, and is dated Laura House, Southampton, October 16, 1842:—

"My dearest Martin,—Anything that I could say, or any praise that I could give respecting your last volume would, in my estimation, fall very far short indeed of its merits. I shall therefore merely say that I look upon your chapter upon Immortality, not only as a most exquisite specimen of fine, sound, and learned composition, but as combating in the most satisfactory manner the wisdom of infidelity, almost perfect. I only hope that you may receive the just tribute of the literary community: your own feelings as the author of that chapter must be very enviable. God bless you, dearest, dearest Martin.—Believe me, ever your affectionate father and sincere friend,