diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386-8.txt | 5706 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 148741 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 154677 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386-h/19386-h.htm | 5833 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386.txt | 5706 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 19386.zip | bin | 0 -> 148602 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 17261 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19386-8.txt b/19386-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c08fd66 --- /dev/null +++ b/19386-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5706 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Author's Mind + The Complete Prose Works of Tupper, Volume 5 (of 6) + +Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper + +Release Date: September 26, 2006 [EBook #19386] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +AN AUTHOR'S MIND; + +THE BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES: + + +"A BOOKFUL OF BOOKS," OR "THIRTY BOOKS IN ONE." + + +EDITED BY + +M.F. TUPPER, ESQ., M. A. + + +"En un mot, mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en +général; ainsi, une et autres en particulier; et par spécial, +moymême."--PASQUIER. + + + HARTFORD: + PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. + 1851. + + + + +ANNOUNCEMENT. + +BY THE EDITOR. + + +The writer of this strange book (a particular friend of mine) came to me +a few mornings ago with a very happy face and a very blotty manuscript. +"Congratulate me," he began, "on having dispersed an armada of +head-aches hitherto invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its +legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to +persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and +rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found +Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his +strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, +hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet +looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, an thou +lovest me, congratulate." + +Wider and wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober +friend so voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it +was a set speech, prepared for an impromptu occasion; nevertheless, as +he was clearly in an enviable state of disenthraldom from +thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. And then +this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache! here was an anodyne +infinitely precious to one so brain-feverish as I: had all this pleasure +and comfort arisen from such common-place remedials as a dear young +lover's courtesy or a deceased old miser's codicil, I should long ago +have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, my friend was never +known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in the +discovery; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was +naturally enough exhibiting itself in a "What on earth----?" he broke +out with the abruptness of an Abernethy, "Read my book." + +Well, I did read it; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound, +can readily believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very +small portion of older material, it had been at chance intervals rapidly +thrown off in a couple of months, (the old current-quill style,) chiefly +with the view of relieving a too prolific brain: it appeared to me a +mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind; an honest, indeed, but often +useless exposure of multifarious fancies--some good, some bad, and not a +few indifferent; an incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand +thoughts, little worth the printing, if the very writing were not indeed +superfluous. Nevertheless, with all its faults, I thought the book a +novelty, and liked it not the less for its off-hand fashion; it had +something of the free, fresh, frank air of an old-school squire at +Christmas-tide, suggestive as his misletoe, cheerful as his face, and +careless as his hospitality. Knowing then that my friend had been more +than once an author--indeed, he tells us so himself--and perceiving, +from innumerable symptoms, that he meditated putting also this before +the world, I thought kindly to anticipate his wishes by proposing its +publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose +these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to +be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white +bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, +the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of +immortality, printer's-ink? these----" I stopped him, for this other +mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite--"Yes, I did." An +involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause proceeded thus: +first, a promise not to burn the book; then a Bentley to the rescue, +with accessory considerations; and then, the due administration of a +little wholesome flattery: by this time we had obtained permission, +after modest reluctance pretty well enacted, to transform the deformity +of manuscript into the well-proportioned elegance of print. But, this +much gained, our author would not yield to any argument we could urge +upon the next point, viz: leave to produce the volume, duly fathered +with his name. "Not he indeed; he loved quiet too well; he might, it was +true, secretly like the bantling, but cared not to acknowledge it before +a populous reading-world, every individual whereof esteems himself and +herself competent to criticize!" Mr. Publisher, deeply disinterested, of +course, bristled up at the notion of any thing anonymous; and the only +alternative remaining was the stale expedient of an editor; that editor, +in brief, to be none other than myself, a very palpable-obscure: and let +this excuse my name upon the title-page. + +Now, as editor, I have had to do--what seems, by the way, to be regarded +by collective wisdom as the best thing possible--nothing: my author +would not suffer the change of a syllable, for all his seeming +carelessness about the THING, as he called it; so, I had no +more for my part than humbly to act the Helot, and try to set decently +upon the public tables a genuine mess of Spartan porridge. + +M. F. T. + +_Albury, Guildford._ + + + + +AN AUTHOR'S MIND: + +THE + +BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES. + + + + +A RAMBLE. + +In these days of universal knowledge, schoolmaster and scholars all +abroad together, quotation is voted pedantry, and to interpret is +accounted an impertinence; yet will I boldly proclaim, as a mere fact, +clear to the perceptions of all it may concern, "This book deserves +richly of the Sosii." And that for the best of reasons: it is not only a +book, but a book full of books; not merely a new book, but a +little-library of new books; thirty books in one, a very harvest of +epitomized authorship, the cream of a whole fairy dairy of quiescent +post-octavos. It is not--O, mark ye this, my Sosii, (and by the way, +gentle ladies, these were worshipful booksellers of old, the Murrays and +the Bentleys of imperial Rome,)--it is not the dull concreted elongation +of one isolated hackneyed idea--supposing in every work there _be one_, +a charitable hypothesis--wire-drawn, and coaxed, and hammered through +three regulation volumes; but the scarcely-more-than-hinted abstractions +of some forty thousand flitting notions--hasty, yet meditative Hamlets; +none of those lengthy, drawling emblems of Laertes--driven in flocks to +the net of the fowler, and penned with difficult compression within +these modest limits. So "goe forth, littel boke," and make thyself a +friend among those good husbandmen, who tend the trees of knowledge, and +bring their fruit to the world's market. + +Now, reader, one little preliminary parley with you about myself: here +beginneth the trouble of authorship, but it is a trouble causing ease; +ease from thoughts--thoughts--thoughts, which never cease to make one's +head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease from dreams by night and +reveries by day, (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's +children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army,) +harassing the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a +definite life; ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of +aërial forget-me-nots, clamouring to be recorded. O, happy unimaginable +vacancy of mind, to whistle as you walk for want of thought! O, mental +holiday, now as impossible to me, as to take a true school-boy's +interest in rounders and prisoner's base! An author's mind--and remember +always, friend, I write in character, so judge not as egotistic vanity +merely the well playing of my _rôle_--such a mind is not a sheet of +smooth wax, but a magic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions; no +empty tenement, but a barn stored to bursting: it is a painful pressure, +constraining to write for comfort's sake; an appetite craving to be +satisfied, as well as a power to be exerted; an impetus that longs to +get away, rather than a dormant dynamic: thrice have I (let me confess +it) poured forth the alleviating volume as an author, a real +author--real, because for very peace of mind, involuntarily; but still +the vessel fills; still the indigenous crop springs up, choking a better +harvest, seeds of foreign growth; still those Lernæan necks sprout +again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and +controvert--to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly, it were +enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive; to be fitted with a +colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaïdes might not +keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to +ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, +perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often +cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of +a man--fret, wear, worry him; to be irritable, is the conditional tax +laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery +makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of +coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a +texture; they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a +tougher scabbard; the river, not content with channel and restraining +banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate exacting armies of the +Ideal and the Causal persecute MY spirit, and I would make a +patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace: I write +these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase; +I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the +priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental nurselings; a dire +resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruction of the literary +populace superfoetating in my brain--plays, novels, essays, tales, +homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and +rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of +maltreated Aristotle: I will exhibit them in their state chaotic; I will +addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and +secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten +on me. + +The world is too full of books, and I yearn not causelessly to add more +than this involuntary unit: bottles, bottles--invariable bottles--was +the one idea of a most clever Head at Nieder-Selters; books, +books--accumulating books--press upon my conscience in this literary +London: despairing auctioneers hate the sound, ruined publishers dread +it, surfeited readers grumble at it, and the very cheese-monger begins +to be an epicure as to which grand work is next to be demolished. +Friendships and loves tremble at the daily recurrence of "Have you read +this?" and "Mind you buy that;" wise men shun a blue-belle, sure that +she will recommend a book; and the yet wiser treat themselves to +solitary confinement, that they may not have to meet the last new batch +of authors, and be obliged to purchase, if not to peruse, their +never-ending books. I fear to increase the plague, to be convicted an +abettor of great evils, though by the measure of a little one. I am +infected, and I know it: but for science-sake I break the quarantine, +and in my magnanimity would be victimized unknown, consigning to a +speedy grave this useless offspring, together with its too productive +parent, and saving of a race so hopeless little else than their +prëdetermined names--in fact, their title-pages. + +But is that indeed little? Speak, authors with piles of ready-written +copy, is not the theme (so often carried out beyond, or beside, or even +against its original purpose) less perplexing than the after-thought +thesis? Bear witness, readers, bit by a mysterious advertisement in the +'_Morning Post_,' are names, indeed, not matters of much weight? Press +forward, Sosii aforesaid, and answer me truly, is not a title-page the +better part of many books? Cheap promises of stale pleasure, false hopes +of dull interest, imprimaturs of deceived fancy, lying visions of the +future unfulfilled, title-pages still do good service to the cause +of--bookselling. + +And, to commence, let me elucidate mine own--I mean the first, the head +and front of this offending phalanx--mine own, _par excellence_, '_An +Authors Mind_:' such in sooth it shall be found, for richer or poorer, +for better or for worse; not of selfish, but of common application; not +so much individually of mine own, as generically of authors; a medley +of crudities; an undigested mass, as any in the maw of Polypheme; a +fermenting hotchpotch of half-formed things, illustrative, among other +matters, of the Lucretian theory, those close-cohering atoms; a farrago +of thoughts, and systems of thoughts, in most admired disorder, which +would symbolize the Copernican astronomy, with its necessary clash of +whirling orbs, about as well as the intangible chaos of Berkeleyan +metaphysics. + +So much then on the moment for the monosyllable "Mind;"--whereof +followeth, indeed, all the more hereafter; but--"An author's?"--what +author's? You would see my patent of such rank, my commission to wear +such honourable uniform. Pr'ythee be content with simple assurance that +it is so; consider the charm of unsatisfied curiosity, and pry not; let +me sit unseen, a spectator; for this once I would go _in domino_. +Heretofore, "credit me, fair Discretion, your Affability" hath achieved +glory, and might Solomonize on its vanity at least as well as poor +discomfited, discovered Sir Piercie Shafton: heretofore, I have stood +forth in good causes, with helm unbarred, and due proclamation of name, +style, and title, an avowed author; and might sermonize thus upon +success, that a little censure loseth more friends than much praise +winneth enemies. So now, with visor down, and a white shield, as a young +knight-candidate unknown, it pleases my leisure to take my pastime in +the tourney: and so long as in truthful prowess I bear me gallantly and +gently, who is he that hath a right to unlatch my helmet, or where is +the herald that may challenge my rank? Nevertheless, inquisitive, +consider the mysteries that lie in the Turkish-looking _sobriquet_ of +"Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I +never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in +"Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but +that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault +with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this +shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to +unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less said of +so diaphanous a mystery, the better. + +And let me remark this of the mode anonymous; a mode, indeed, to +purposes of shame, and slander, and falsity of all kinds too often +prostituted for the present, bear with it; sometimes it is well to go +disguised, and the voice of one unseen lacks not eager listeners; we +address your judgment, unbiased by the prejudice or sanction of a name: +we put forth, lightly and negligently, those lesser matters which +opportunity hath not yet matured; we escape the nervous pains, the +literary perils of the hardier acknowledged. Only of this one thing be +sure; we--(no, I; why should unregal, unhierarchal I affect +pluralities?)--I hope to keep inviolate, as much when masked as when +avowed, the laws of truth, charity, sincerity, and honour; and, +although, among my many booklets, the grave and the gay will be found in +near approximation, I trust--will it offend any to tell them that I +pray?--to do no ill service at any time to the cause of that true +religion which resents not the neighbourhood of innocent cheerfulness. I +show you, friend, my honest mind. + +I by itself, I; odious mono-literal; thinnest, feeblest, most +insignificant of letters, I dread your egotistic influence as my bane; +they will not suffer you, nor bear with a book so speckled with your +presence. Still, world, hear me; mercifully spare a poor grammarian the +penance of perpetual third persons; let an individual tender conscience +escape censure for using the true singular in preference to that +imposing lie, the plural. Suffer a humble unit to speak of himself as I, +and, once for all, let me permissively disclaim intentional self-conceit +in the needful usage of isolated I-ship. + +These few preliminaries being settled, though I fear little to the +satisfaction of either party concerned, let us proceed--further to +preliminarize; for you will find, even to the end, as you may have found +out already from the beginning, that your white knight is mounted rather +on an ambling preambling palfrey, than on any determinate charger; +curveting and prancing, and rambling and scrambling at his own unmanaged +will: scorning the bit and bridle, too hot to bear the spur, careless of +listing laws, and wishing rather playfully to show his paces, than to +tilt against a foe. + +An author's mind, _quà_ author, is essentially a gossip; an oral, +ocular, imaginative, common-place book: a _pot pourri_ mixed from the +_hortus siccus_ of education, and the greener garden of internal thought +that springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain; a compound +of many metals flowing from the mental crucible as one--perchance a base +alloy, perchance new, and precious, and beautiful as the fine brass of +Corinth; an accidental meeting in the same small chamber of many +spiritual essences that combine, as by magnetism into some strange and +novel substance; a mixture of appropriations, made lawfully a man's own +by labour spent upon the raw material; corn-clad Egypt rescued from a +burnt Africa by the richness of a swelling Nile--the black forest of +pines changed into a laughing vineyard by skill, enterprise, and +culture--the mechanism of Frankenstein's man of clay, energized at +length by the spark Promethean. + +And now, reader, do you begin to comprehend me, and my title? '_An +Author's Mind_' is first in the field, and, as with root and fruit, must +take precedence of its booklets; bear then, if you will, with this +desultory anatomization of itself yet a little longer, and then in good +time and moderate space you will come to the rudiments--bones, so to +speak--of its many members, the frame-work on which its nerves and +muscles hang, the names of its unborn children, the title-pages of its +own unprinted books. + +Philosophers and fools, separately or together, as the case may be--for +folly and philosophy not seldom form one Janus-head, and Minerva's bird +seems sometimes not ill-fitted with the face of Momus--these and their +thousand intermediates have tried in all ages to define that quaint +enigma, Man: and I wot not that any pundit of literature hath better +succeeded than the nameless, fameless man--or woman, was it?--or haply +some innocent shrewd child--who whilom did enunciate that MAN IS A +WRITING ANIMAL: true as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational +as Euclid, a discerning, just, exclusive definition. That he is "capable +of laughter," is well enough even for thy deathless fame, O Stagyrite! +but equally (so Buffon testifies) are apes and monkeys, horses and +hyenas; whether perforce of tickling or sympathy, or native notions of +the humorous, we will not stop to contend. That he actually is "an +animal whose best wisdom is laughter," hath but little reason in it, +Democrite, seeing there are such obvious anomalies among men as suicidal +jesters and cachinating idiots; nevertheless, my punster of Abdera, thy +whimsical fancy, surviving the wreck of dynasties, and too light to sink +in the billows of oblivion, is now become the popular thought, the +fashionable dress of heretofore moping wisdom: crow, an thou wilt, jolly +old chanticleer, but remember thee thou crowest on a dunghill; man is +not a mere merry-andrew. Neither is he exclusively "a weeping animal," +lugubrious Heraclite, no better definer than thy laughter-loving foe: +that man weeps, or ought to weep, the world within him and the world +without him indeed bear testimony: but is he the only mourner in this +valley of grief, this travailing creation? No, no; they walk lengthily +in black procession: yet is this present writing not the fit season for +enlarging upon sorrows; we must not now mourn and be desolate as a poor +bird grieving for its pilfered young--is Macduff's lamentable cry for +his lost little ones, "All--what, all?" more piteous?--we must now +indulge in despondent fears, like yonder hard-run stag, with terror in +his eye, and true tears coursing down his melancholy face: we must not +now mourn over cruelty and ingratitude, like that poor old worn-out +horse, crying--positively crying, and looking imploringly for merciful +rest into man's iron face; we must not scream like the wounded hare, nor +beat against our cage like the wild bird prisoned from its freedom. +Moreover, Heraclite, even in thine own day thou mightest well have heard +of the classic wailings of Philomel for Atys, or of consumptive Canens, +that shadow of a voice, for her metamorphosed Pie, and have known that +very crocodiles have tears: pass on, thy desolate definition hath not +served for man. + +With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and +learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a +calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but +he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his +nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons, +and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying +rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly +contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling +strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite--what a name of +hungry omen for the imperial devourer!--plausibly insinuates man to be +"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with +domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true, +the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa +glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a +gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care, +all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question, +the kitchen _is_ a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme: +still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily +dinners--man--MAN, I say, is not altogether a compact of edible +commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere +congeries of food and pickles; moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame +hath (or used to have, "in my warm youth, when George the Third was +king,") automatons, [pray, observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre +enough to indite _automata_; we conquering Britons stole that word among +many others from poor dead Greece, who couldn't want it; having made it +ours in the singular, why be bashful about the plural! So also of +memorandums, omnibuses, [you remember Farren's _omni_BI!] +necropolises, gymnasiums, eukeirogeneions, and other unlegacied +property of dear departed Rome and Greece. All this, as you see, +is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, Gingel has automatons, that will +serve you up all kinds of delicate viands, pleasant meats, and +choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing of Jones' patent +all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus: no mine +Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of +extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion; little, indeed, as you +may credit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for +feeding. Remember Æsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, above +them all, do not overlook the head. + +What think you then of "a featherless biped?" gravely suggests a rusty +Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you never had +the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas; the poor bare _bipes +implumis_, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay, +and _risibilis_ to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old +festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we +to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the +notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, +thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the +poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite +of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as +useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and +coronation armour)--in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough +of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own +all-conquering quills--in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my +faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in +spite, I say, of copying presses, manifold inditers, and automaton +artists, MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL. + +Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one definition: +but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of +Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of +Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself +by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my +casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in +leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at +this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual +misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your +feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery--go: my track lays away from +the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy +rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding +river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just +dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday +thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold +brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a +working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up of +holidays. + +A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a moment +link our reasonings, and solder one stray rivet; man being a writing +animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's +the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder +and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe--that +imagery of his Maker--that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual, +abstraction, manhood: but, what then is WRITING? Ye tons of +invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences +of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of +unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical +experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations +of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in +all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of +you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor +deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only--it is +yet a good purpose--to dress the common soil of human kindness, without +attaining to the praise of wreaths and chaplets ever hanging in the +Muses' temple; flowers withered on the stalk, whose blooming beauty no +lover's hand has dropped upon the sacred waters of Siloa, like the +Hindoo's garland on her Ganges; prolix, vain, ephemeral letters +(especially enveloped penny-posters)--and sparing only some few redolent +of truth, wisdom, and affection--your bulky majority of flippant trash, +staid advices, dunnings, hoaxings, lyings, and slanderings, degrade you +to a lower rank than that we take on us to designate as "writing." + +And what, O what--"how poor is he that hath not patience!"--shall we +predicate of the average viscera of circulating libraries?--abominable +viscera!--isn't that the word, my young Hippocrates?--A parley--a +parley! and the terms of truce are these: If this present pastime of +mine (for pastime it is, so spurn not at its logic,) be mercifully +looked on by you, lady novelists and male dittoes--yet truly there are +giants in your ranks, as Scott, and Ward, and Hugo, and Le Sage, +towering above ten thousand pigmies--if I be spared your censures +well-deserved, interchangeably as toward your authorships will I +exercise the charitable wisdom of silence: a white flag or a white +feather is my best alternative in soothing or avoiding so terrible a +host; and verily, to speak kinder of those whose wit, and genius, and +graphic powers have so smoothed this old world's wrinkled face of care, +many brilliant, many clever, many well-intended caterers to public +amusement, throng your ill-ordered ranks: still, there are numbered to +your shame as followers of the fool's-cap standard, the huge corrupting +mass of depraved moralists, meagre trash-inditers, treacherous +scandal-mongers, men about town who immortalize their shame, and the +dull, pernicious school of feather-brained Romancists: and take this +sentence for a true one, a _verum-dictum_. But enough, there are others, +and those not few, even far less veniable; ye priers into family +secrets--fawning, false guests at the great man's open house, eagerly +jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded conversation of the +hospitable board--shame on your treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye +countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us +takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without +mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often +falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a +Harlequin whole the _disjecta membra_ of some great hacked-up +reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write? Writing is +the concreted fruit of thinking, the original expression of new +combinations of idea, the fresh chemical product of educational +compounds long simmering in the mind, the possession of a sixth sense, +distinguishing intelligence, and proclaiming it to the four winds; +writing is not labour, but ease; not care, but happiness; not the petty +pilferings of poverty, but the large overflowings of mental affluence; +it begs not on the highway, but gives great largess, like a king; it +preys not on a neighbour's wealth, but enriches him; it may light, +indeed, a lamp, at another's candle, but pays him back with brilliancy; +it may borrow fire from the common stock, but uses it for genial warmth +and noble hospitality. + +Remember well, good critic, (for verily bad there be,) my purposes in +this odd volume--this queer, unsophisticate, uncultivated book: to empty +my mind, to clear my brain of cobwebs, to lift off my head a porters's +load of fancy articles; and as in a bottle of bad champaign, the first +glass, leaping out hurryskurry, at a railroad pace boiling a gallop, +carries off with it bits of cork and morsels of rosin, even such is the +first ebullition of my thoughts: take them for what they are worth, and +blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do you +suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their +shallowness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty +reasoning and pellucid vanity?--There I have saved you the labour of a +sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a +little, perhaps, your patience may find me otherwise; of clearer flow, +but flatter flavour: these desultorinesses must first of all be +immolated, for in their Ariel state they vex me, but I bind them down +like slaving Calibans, by the magic of a pen; and glad shall I be to +victimize my monsters, eager to dissipate my musquito-like tormentors; +yea, I would "take up arms against a sea"--["Arms against a sea?" +dearest Shakspeare, would that Theobald, or Johnson's stock-butt, "the +Oxford Editor," had indeed interpolated that unconscionable image! It +has been sapiently remarked by some hornet of criticism, that +"Shakspeare was a clever man;" but cleverer far must that champion +stand forth who wars with any prospect of success upon seas; perhaps +Xerxes might have thought of it--or your Astley's brigand, who +rushes sword in hand on an ocean of green baize. Who shall cure me of +parentheses?]--well, "a sea of troubles, [thoughts trouble us more than +things--I sin again; close it;] and by opposing, end them;" that is, by +setting forth these troublous thoughts opposite, in stately black and +white, I clip their wings, and make them peck among my poultry, and not +swarm about my heaven. But soon must I be more continuous; turn over to +my future title-pages, and spare your objurgation; a little more of this +medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better +accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of +authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be +grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy +clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green +young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with systematic +skill. + +As an author, meanwhile, let man be most specifically characterized: a +real author, voluntary in his motives, but involuntary as regards his +acts authorial; full of matter, prolific of images and arguments, +teeming, bursting, with something, much, too much, to say, and well +witting how to say it: none of your poor devils compulsory from +poverty--Plutus help them!--whose penury of pocket is (pardon me) too +often equitably balanced by their emptiness of head; and far less one of +the lady's-maid school, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets +at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's +reticule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions +for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the +moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock: but a man who has it +weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist, +refute, enjoin: a man--frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen, +as the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and +sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance +upon carpet-work; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy +lessons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the +more coerulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly +geranium, miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs--these +we masculine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have +accounted your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sévigné and +Somerville, Edgeworth and De Staël, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and +Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less +accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated +slander: riding with the self-conceited _cortège_ of male critics, my +boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of _lèze majesté_: but I repudiate +the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship +no fear: how much has man to learn from woman! teach us still to look on +humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on +heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant +calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers--making +yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to +hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural +dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if +you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill +becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta, +another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing, +return we to our author; to wit, a man, _homo_--a human, as they say in +the west--with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen +competent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly. + +Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves +far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our +ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that +make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write a book: and of +this triad of needfuls, who perceives not the superior and innate +majesty of the last requisite?--"Build a house?" I humbly conceive, and +steal my notion from the same ancestral source, that, in nine cases out +of ten, fools build houses for wise men to live in; besides, if houses +be made a test of supreme manhood, your modern wholesale runner-up of +lath and plaster tenements, warranted to stand seven years--provided +quadrilles be excluded, and no larger flock of guests _than six_ be +permitted to settle on one spot--such a jackal for surgeons, such a +reprobate provider for accident-wards as this, would be among our +heroes, a prize-man, the flower of the species. "Children" too?--very +happy, beautiful, heart-gladdening creations--God bless them all, and +scatter those who love them not!--but still for a proof of more than +average humanity, somewhat common, somewhat overwhelming: rabbits beat +us here, with all our fecundity, so offensive to Martineau and Malthus. +But as to "books"--common enough, too, smirks gentle reader: pardon, +courteous sir, most rare--at least in my sense; I speak not of flat +current shillings, but the bold medallions of ancient Syracuse; I heed +not the dull thousands of minted gold and silver, but the choice +coin-sculptures of Larissa and Tarentum. There do indeed flow hourly, +from an ever-welling press, rivers of words; there are indeed shoaling +us up on all sides a throng of well-bound volumes--novels, histories, +poems, plays, memoirs, and so forth--to all appearance, books: but if by +"books" be intended originality of matter, independent arguments, water +turned wine, by the miracle of right-thinking, and not a mere +re-decantering of dregs from other vessels--these many masqueraded +forms, these multiplied images of little-varied likenesses, these +Protean herds, will not stay to be counted, nor abide judgment, nor +brook scrutiny, but will merge and melt by thousands into the one, or +the two, real, original, sterling books. We live in a monopolylogue of +authorship: an idea goes forth to the world's market-place well dressed +from the wardrobe of some master-mind; it greets the public with a +captivating air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical; +it comes out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a +cookery-book, a tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an +abstract _ism_, or a concrete _ology_; till the poor worn-out, +dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably +affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father, +for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two +minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been +the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung +from the seed of some singular book, or of books counted in the dual. + +Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too much +whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I question not +that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of--I will say, +unintended, plagiarism; you are thieves--patience--I thieve from +thieves; Diogenes cannot see me any more than you; you copy phrases, I +am perpetually and unconsciously filching thoughts; my entomological +netted-scissors, wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are +always within reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted +pill-boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in +spinning thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the +like _métier_ of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of +volumes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your +success depends upon rëusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone +and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies, +rëconsidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in +the warehouse of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly +digesting, as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated +ages ago. + +Is it necessary to remind you--dropping this lightsome vein for a +precious moment--that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at the +top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down +instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?--I stick to +my title, '_An Author's Mind_,' and that with a laudable scorn of +concealment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser +than it is; then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of +speech, or my sarcasms mingled with charity; for consistency with me +were inconsistent. + +Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a +palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth +time a _cacoethes_; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth. +Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the +Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of +transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with +leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is +poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it _is_ +fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes +little thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation +over, the product will be clarified. Judge me too, am I not consecutive? +I've shown man to be a writing animal; and writing, what it is and is +not; and meanwhile have been routing recreatively at pen's point whims, +and fancies, and ideas, and images, pulled in manfully by head and +shoulders: and now--after an episode, quite relevant and quite +Herodotean, concerning the consequences of a bit of successful +authorship on a man's scheme of life, to illustrate yet more the +"author's mind"--I shall proceed to tell all men how many books I might, +could, should, or would have written, but for reiterated and legitimated +_buts_, and how near of kin I must esteem myself to the illustrious J. +of nursery rhymes, being, as he is or was, "Mister Joe Jenkins, who +played on the fiddle, and began twenty tunes, but left off in the +middle." Moreover, no one can be ignorant of the close consanguinity +recognised in every age and every dictionary between I and J. But now +for the episode: + +If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the +showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with +here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, +in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of +vision; the trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns; +the slightest change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the +whole mixture a poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his +equanimity thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his +whole wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those +useful reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns--spurs of +diligence, incentives to better things--are exaggerated into sixfold +spears, and terribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achæans: a careless +fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, +stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with +folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord +paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its +warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for +that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated +morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure +rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last +an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and +haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day +by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is +somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my +way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a +fairer thesis; he that hates verse--and the Muses now-a-days are too +old-maidish to look many lovers--may skip it, and no harm done; but one +or two may like this stave on + + +LIFE. + + I saw a child with a kaleidoscope, + Turning at will the tesselated field; + And straight my mental eye became unseal'd, + I learnt of life, and read its horoscope: + Behold, how fitfully the patterns change! + The scene is azure now with hues of Hope; + Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange; + With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright; + Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold; + Made glorious by Religion's purple light; + Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold; + So, good or evil coming, peace or strife, + Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old, + In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life. + +It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yonder +prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with somewhat of +malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead?--Categorically, sir, +[there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables,] +categorically, sir, to this: of all life's turns and twists, few things +produce more change to the daring _debutant_ than successful authorship; +it is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness +among those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field +of vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact, +it fixes on it a prëdestinated "author's mind." + +An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of +metaphysical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a whirling +scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! what +a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored depths of an +ever-undiscovered country! That strange world hath a structure and a +furniture all its own; its chalcedonic rocks are painted with rare +creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness; forms of other +spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs; seeds of unknown plants, relics +of unlimnèd reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a +fanciful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its +fertile soil: and then its lawless botany; flowers of glorious hue hung +upon the trees of its forests; luscious fruits flung liberally among the +mosses of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored +water-lilies dancing in its bright cascades; and this, too, a world, an +inner secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a +peculiar creation; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the +dragon and the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and +herds of uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Who can sound its seas, +deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height +beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its +caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen +fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions, +an over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a +full, independent, generous--a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly, +such--bear witness--is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos +of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or +imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; +"for the time present"--I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on +that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law--"hereof let this little +taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant, +a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and +philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole +consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for +getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the +tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is +complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss? +and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility +on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even +if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls +unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I +must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your +estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of +success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal +who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to +that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among +gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper, +a _chevalier d'industrie_? And then those hounds upon the bleeding +flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics, +(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how +suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in +no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my +betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in +general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he +their debtor. But who can be ignorant how frequently some hapless writer +is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, that a flagging magazine may +be served up with _sauce piquante_, and pander to the world for its +waning popularity by the malice of a pungent article? who, while as a +rule he may honour the bench of critics for patience, talent, and +impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, not seldom of +occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly condemnation; +where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax shield of anonymous +reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the foe fair-exposed +whom he dares not fight with?--But, as will be seen hereafter, I +trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than this: Is it not +a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no excuse for the +writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all he may be +innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good-natured world, +on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes either that the +author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary +bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art +not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as +sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for +corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor +maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and of them more anon. + +What moreover shall we say of chilling friendships, near estrangements, +heartless lovers loitering behind, shy acquaintance dropping off? +Verily, there is a mighty sifting: you have dared to stand alone, have +expounded your mind in imperishable print, have manifested wit enough to +outface folly, sufficient moral courage to condemn vice, and more than +is needful of good wisdom to shame the oracles of worldliness: and so +some dread you, some hate, and many shun: the little selfish asterisks +in that small sky fly from your constellatory glories: you are +independent, a satellite of none: you have dared to think, write, print, +in all ways contrary to many; and if wise men and good be loud in their +applause, you arrive at the dignity of manifold hatreds; but if those +and their inferiors condemn, you sink into the bathos of multiplied +contempts. Of other wrongs somewhen and where, hereafter; meanwhile, a +better prospect glows on the kaleidoscopic field--a flattering accession +of new and ardent friends: "Sir," said an old priest to a young author, +"you have made a soft pillow for your head when it comes to be as white +as mine is;" a pretty saying of sweet charity, and such sink deep: as +for the younger and the warmer, being mostly of the softer sex, some +will profess admiring sensations that border not a little on idolatries; +others, gayer, will appear in the dress of careless, unskillful +admiration; not a few, both men and women, go indeed weakly along with +the current stream of popularity, but, to say truth, look happiest when +they find some stinging notice that may mortify the new bold candidate +for glory; while, last and best, a fewer, a very much fewer, do +handsomely the liberal part of friends, commending where they can, +objecting where they must, sincere in sorrow for a fault, rejoicing +without envy for a virtue. + +Many like phenomena has authorship: a certain class of otherwise +humanized and well-intentioned people begin to regard your scribe as a +monster--not a so-called "lion" to be sought, but some strange creature +to be dreaded: Perdition! what if he should be cogitating a novel or a +play, and means to make free with our characters? what if that libellous +cöpartnership of Saunders and Ottley is permitted to display our faults +and foibles, flimsily disguised, before a mocking world? Disappointed +maidens that hover on the verge of forty, and can sympathize with +Jephtha's daughter in her lonely mournings, causelessly begin to fear +that a mischievous author may appropriate their portraits; venerable +bachelors, who have striven to earn some little local notoriety by the +diligent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling +in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque; +table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff +intends cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence; the twinkling +stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose +very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before +some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided +themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as +the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings +in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so +looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how +dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets +instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most +uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and +wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to +drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical +precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid! +those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim +and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated +character of the general, and not experimentally; so, flinging self +aside, let me speak what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown +a man with bays, and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of +rejoicing; is the victor there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as +Nemean heroes should be or does he not rather droop instantly again into +the obscure unit among a level mass, only the less welcome for having +stood up, a Saul or a Musæus, with his head above his fellows? Verily, +no man is a proph--Enough, enough! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious +calling, and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah; +enough, enough! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of +fervent, overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the +eyes--there, well born in beauty--there perpetually (so your fondness +hopes) to live--slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest +daughter; the Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching +head, and stands in her immortal independence; an Eve, his own heart's +fruit, welcomes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work, +bodily; your communion has commenced with those of times to come; your +mind has produced a witness to its individuality; there is a tablet +sacred to its memory standing among men for ever. + +A thinker is seldom great in conversation, and the glib talkers who have +silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder in his +deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos--(let Caliban be +swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often unexplained, +because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and lightly +for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportunities +in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs; such +heart-emptyings yield heart-ease: an author, who has done his good work +well--for such a one alone we speak--while, privately, he scarce could +have refreshed mankind by petty driblets--in the perpetuity, publicity, +and universal acceptation of his high and honourable calling, does good +by wholesale, irrigates countries, and gladdens largely the large heart +of human society. And are not these unbounded pleasures, spreading over +life, and comforting the struggles of a death-bed? Yes: rising as +Ezekiel's river from ankle to knee, from knee to girdle, from girdle to +the overflowing flood--far beyond those lowest joys, which many wise +have trampled under foot, of praise, and triumph, and profit--the +authorship of good, that has made men better; that has consoled sorrow, +advanced knowledge, humbled arrogance, and blest humanity; that has sent +the guilty to his prayers, and has gladdened the Christian in his +praises--the authorship of good, that has shown God in his loveliness, +and man in his dependence; that has aided the cause of charity, and +shamed the face of sin--this high beneficence, this boundless +good-doing, hath indeed a rich recompense, a glorious reward! + +But we must speed on, and sear these hydra-necks, or we shall have as +many heads to our discourse, and as puzzling, as any treatise of the +Puritan divinity. Let us hasten to be practical; let us not so long +forget the promised title-pages; let it at length satisfy to show, more +than theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming +projects, and then casts out its half-made progeny; how scraps of paper +come to be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts, +thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; +how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order, +each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal, +educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen +precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own true +crystal. + +Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as +heretofore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall +follow a full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now +in the book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last +times, that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be +pleased herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one +mind should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a +performance so various, inconsistent, and unusual; premising, also, that +wherein I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is +unwittingly and unwillingly; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a +man must read harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising +this much farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger, +neither using up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so; +and that, whether I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify +and perfect any of these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and +booksellers, STEAL NOT; for so surely as I catch any one thus +behaving--and truly, my masters, the temptation is but small--I will +stick a "_Sic vos, non vobis,_" on his brazen forehead. + +Wait! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant of my +mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying utterances +before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; I would pray a +catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, and the +undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your pardons +universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, strangely and +Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caérphilli, out of the perpendicular +of truth; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, for good +or for evil; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhallowed +special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; I am +guilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on the +powerful gusts of feeling that burst upon my irritable breast; my heart +is no smooth Dead Sea, but the still vexed Bermoothes: therefore I would +print my penitence; I would publish my confessions; I would not hide my +humbleness; and it pleases me to pour out in sonnet-form my +unconventional + + +APOLOGY TO ALL. + + --For I have sinn'd; oh! grievously and often; + Exaggerated ill, and good denied; + Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften; + And Truth's own light unkindly misapplied: + Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd, + When some stern judgment, haply erring wide, + Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell + Other men's deeds all evil! Oh, my heart! + Renew once more thy generous youth, half perish'd; + Be wiser, kindlier, better than thou art! + And first, in fitting meekness, offer well + All earnest, candid prayers, to be forgiven + For worldly, harsh, unjust, unlovable + Thoughts and suspicions against man and Heaven! + +Friends all, let this be my best amendment: bear with the candour, +homely though it may be, of your author's mind; and suffer its further +revelations of unborn manuscript with charitable listening; for they +would come forth in real order of time, the first having priority, and +not the best, ungarnished, unweeded, uncared-for, humbly, and without +any further flourish of trumpets. + + * * * * * + +Serjeant Ion--I beg his pardon, Talfourd--somewhere gives it as his +opinion, that most people, in any way troubled with a mind, have at some +time or other meditated a tragedy. Truly, too, it _is_ a fine vehicle +for poetical solemnities, a stout-built vessel for an author's graver +thoughts; and the bare possibility of seeing one's own heart-stirring +creation visually set before a crowded theatre, the preclusive echoes +of anticipated thundering applause, the expected grilling silence +attendant on a pet scene or sentiment, all the tangible, accessories of +painting and music, clever acting and effective situation, and beyond +and beside these the certain glories of the property-wardrobe, make most +young minds press forward to the little-likely prize of successful +tragedy. That at one weak period I was bitten, my honesty would scorn to +deny; but fortunately for my peace of mind, "Melpomene looked upon me +with an aspect of little favour," and sturdy truth-telling Tacitus made +me at last but lightly regardful of my subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was +visited with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my +fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon +other people's topics--for who can find any thing new under the +sun?--and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of +speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of +which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's +'_Lives of the Poets_' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of +some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment +my goodly aërial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an +after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed +me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to +tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four letters, then, + + +NERO; + +A CLASSICAL TRAGEDY: + +IN SEVEN SCENES. + +And now, in pity to an afflicted parent, hear for a while his +offspring's Roscian capabilities. First of all, however, (and you know +how I rejoice in all things preliminary,) let me clear my road by +explanations: we must pioneer away a titular objection, "in seven +scenes," and an assumed merit, in the term "classical." I abhor +scene-shifters; at least, their province lies more among pantomimes, +farces, and comedies, than in the region of the solemn tragic muse; her +incidents should rather partake of the sculpture-like dignity of +_tableaux_. My unfashionable taste approves not of a serious story being +cut up into a vast number of separate and shuffled sections; and the +whistle and sliding panels detract still more from the completeness of +illusion: I incline as much as is possible to the Classic unities of +time, place, and circumstances, wishing, moreover, every act to be a +scene, and every scene an act; with a comfortable green curtain, that +cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop, +mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away +with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet; +bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty of head-aches. + +But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the +utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of +weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one +scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons, +and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming +insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a +staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to +our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something +a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and +moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly +patriotic '_Henry the Fifth?_'--However, taking other grounds, the +epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern +method of its treatment: but of all this enough, for, on second +thoughts, perhaps we may do without the chorus. + +It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true +unity of time; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of +life, than the space of some three hours can allow for: we must +unavoidably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as +well have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet +is justified in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards +the goal of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates +arrests your critical ken, believe that it is not ignorantly careless, +but learnedly needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is +an utter inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light, +however hidden, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture, +it may charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his +most reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced +many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially +lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the +corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in +the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better +perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career. +Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to +gild the brass brow of vice; and verily, I have not spared my odious +hero; nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather +emperor,) I wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is +a soil for hope and charity; and that if despotism has high +prerogatives, its wealth and state are desperate temptations, whose +dangers mightily predominate, and whose necessary influences, if quite +unbiased, tend to utter misery. + +Now to introduce our _dramatis personæ_, with their "cast,"--for better +effect--rather unreasonably presumed. _Nero_--(Macready, who would +impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or not +by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every +Numismatist will vouch,)--a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality +and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion; +not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes, +and at times tempestuously cruel. _Nattalis_--(say Vandenhoff,)--his +favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing +the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to +all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise +mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and +glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and +licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own +country on the chief of her destroyers. _Marcus Manlius_--(who better +than Charles Kean?--supposing these artistic combinations not to be +quite impossible,)--a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine, +captain of Nero's body-guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and +faithful to his bad master amid conflicting trials. _Publius +Dentatus_--(any _bould_ speaker; besides, it would be rather too much to +engage all the actors yet awhile;)--a worthy old Roman, father of the +heroine. _Galba_, the chief mover in the catastrophe, as also the opener +of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, but well-intentioned patriot, +who ultimately becomes the next emperor. With _Curtius_ a tribune, +senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, &c. And so, after +the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as to a class inferior +to the very &c. of masculines--(of less intention withal than one of +those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasséed into +savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)--come we to the +women-kind. _Agrippina_, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother, +a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the +world who can awe her amiable son. _Lucia,_ (_you_ cannot be spared +here, clever Helen Faucit)--the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced +to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. _Rufa_, a +haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting +Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the +list. + +Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially, +so to speak, a _tableau_ in the commencement, and a _tableau_ of +situation in the end. Let us draw up upon scene _the first_. +Back-ground, Rome burning; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still +smoking; and a terminal altar in the garden. Plebs. running to and fro, +full of conventional little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and +other lumber, rescued from the flames; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,) +in a somewhat incendiary oration concerning poor men's calamities, and +against the powers that be, sends them to the capital with a procession +of flamines Diales and vestals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "_Ad +Capitolium, Ad Jovis solium_," and so forth] to good music. At the +end of the train come in Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite +hurriedly walks Galba, full of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism, +and old Rome's ruin. To these let there be added--to speak +mathematically--open-hearted Manlius; and let there follow certain +disceptatious converse about Nero, Manlius excusing him, extenuating his +vices by his temptations, giving military anecdotes of his earlier +virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle +monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows. After +disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a +moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl +hails him Cæsar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his +own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so +forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out +of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still +unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Cæsar; who, no +longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire +at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly +presides--_tableau_--and down drops the soft green baize. This first +act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many characters; and the +picture of the seven-hilled city, seen in a transparent blaze, might +give the followers of Stanfield a triumph. + +_Second_: The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of Nero's, +also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered +enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and +holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a pancratist, the +world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost in flatteries, +after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris +in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero _had_ gloriously fired Rome; +he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at +the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as +blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to +Phoenixes, and fire-kingships, and _coups-de-soliel_ falling from the +same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero should be +worshipped, and calls on the priest of Jupiter to set a good example. +None dare refuse, and the senate bend before him; whereupon enter, in +clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes, +and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice: all this pandering +to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of +these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the +haughty queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his +triumph, commands to bend too; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him +fiercely to task, objurgating likewise Rome's degenerate +gray-beards--great bustle--senate broken up hurriedly--and she, with a +"_feri ventrem_," dragged off to be killed by her son's order. Nero +alone with Nattalis by imperial command; his momentary compunction +nullified by the wily Iago, who turns off the subject smoothly to a new +object of desire: Publius was the only senator not in his place, and +Publius has a daughter, the fairest in Rome, Lucia--had not the emperor +noticed her among Agrippina's women? Nero, charmed with any scheme of +novelty that may change remorseful thoughts, is induced, nothing loth, +to attempt the subtle abduction of the heroine; a body-guard, headed as +always by Manlius, ready in the vestibule to escort him, and exit. +Nattalis, alone for a minute, betrays his own selfish schemes concerning +Lucia, who had refused him before, and alludes to his secret reasons for +urging on the maddened Nero to the worst excesses. + +_Third scene_ (or part, or _act_, if it must be so), expounds, in +fitting contrast to the foregoing, the tender loves of Lucia and +Manlius; a gentle home-scene, a villa and its terraced gardens: also, as +Lucia is a Christian, we have, poetically, and not puritanically, an +insight into her scruples of conscience as to the heathenism of her +lover: and also into _his_ consistent nobility of character, not willing +to surrender the religion of his fathers unconvinced. To them rushes in +Publius, who has been warned by friend Galba of the near approach of +Nattalis and a guard, to seize Lucia for disreputable Nero: no possible +escape, and all urge Lucia to imitate Virginia, Lucretia, and others of +like Dian fame, by cowardly self-murder; she is high-principled, and +won't: then they--the father and lover--request leave to kill her; +conflicting passions and considerable stage effect; Lucia, who with calm +courage derides the dastard sacrifice, standing unharmed between those +loving thirsty swords: in a grand speech, she makes her quiet departure +a test of Manlius' love, and her ultimate deliverance to be a proof to +him that her God is the true God, the God who guards the innocent. +Manlius, struck with her martyr-like constancy, professes that if indeed +she is saved out of this great trouble, he will embrace her faith, +renounce his own, and so break down the of wealth and rank, are alike +thrown away upon Publius; at last, the prince promises; and when +Publius, after a burst of earnest eloquence, proclaims the new pleasure +to consist in _showing mercy_, Nero's utter wrath, his hurricane of +hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying away old Publius to die +at the same stake with his daughter. + +_Seventh_: the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre; (I +mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured +behind, and those "human torches" at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned in +side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some of +the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in +white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and +soldiers guarding them: he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test +miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the +chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at +the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech, +characteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding +the fagot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius _do +it_--a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl, +up to Nero; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the +hidden armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself +Cæsar still, the inviolable majesty;--suddenly stopped by a centripetal +rush of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted +in despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero, +unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech. +Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his +treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral +justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil; Manlius and +Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing +them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted +by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Cæsar by the assembled +Romans. So, upon a magnificent _tableau_, slowly falls the lawny +curtain. + +Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling +about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of +Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence +of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in the matter +of London's; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspicions about +Galba's too probable _alibi_ in Spain. Tell me rather this: do I falsify +history in any thing more important than mere accidental anachronisms +and anatopisms? do I make an untrue delineation of character, blackening +the good, or white-washing the wicked? Do I not, by introducing Nero's +three greatest crimes so near upon his assassination, merely accelerate +the interval between causes and effect? And is not tragic dignity +justified in varnishing, with other compost than the dregs of Rome, the +exit of the last true Cæsar of the Augustan family? For all the rest, +good manager, provide me actors, and I am even now uncertain--such is my +weakness--whether this skeleton might not at some time be clad with +flesh and skin, and a decent Roman toga. I fear it will yet haunt me as +a '_Midsummer Night's Dream_,' destroying my quiet with involuntary +shreds and patches of long-metred blank; the notion is still vivacious, +albeit scotched: Alexandrine though the synopsis appear, it must not be +thrown on the highroad as a dead snake; nay, let me cherish it yet on my +hearth, and not hurl it away like a _bonum waviatum_; a little more +boiling up of Roman messes in my brain, and my tragedy might flow forth +spontaneously as lava. What if this book be, after all, a sort of +pilot-balloon, to show my huge Nassau the way the wind blows--a feeler +as to which and which may please? Whether or not this be so, I will +still confess on, emptying my brain of booklets, and, if by happy +possibility I can keep my secret, shall hear unsuspected, friend, _your_ +verdict. + + * * * * * + +I must rather hope, than expect, that my next bit of possible authorship +is not like the last, a subject forestalled. Scribbling as I find myself +for very listlessness in a dull country-house, there's not a publisher's +index within thirty miles; so, for lack of evidence to the contrary, I +may legitimately, for at least a brief period of self-delusion, imagine +the intoxicating field my own. And yet so fertile, important, +interesting a subject, cannot have been quite overlooked by the corps of +professed literary labourer's: the very title-page would insure five +thousand readers (especially with a Brunswicker death's-head and +marrow-bones added underneath). + + +OPIUM; + +A HISTORY; + +standing alone in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, +warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of +information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of +every calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of +poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of +increase, and the like; its human history, discovery as a drug; how, +when, where, and by whom cultivated; dissertations as to the possibility +of Chaldean, Pharaonic, Grecian, or Roman opium eating, with most +erudite extracts out of all sorts of scribes, from Sanchoniathon down to +Juvenal, on these topics; its medicinal uses, properties, accidents, and +abuses; as to whether it might not be used homoeopathically or in +infinitesimal doses, to infuse a love of the pleasures of imagination +into clodpoles, lawyers' clerks, and country cousins; its intellectual +possibilities of usefulness, stimulating the brain; its moral ditto, +allaying irritability; together with a dreadful detail of its evils in +excess, idiotizing, immoralizing, ruining soul and body. Plenty of stout +unquestionable statistics, from all crannies of the globe, to +corroborate all the above to the extreme satisfaction of practical men, +with causes and consequences of its insane local popularity. All this, +moreover, at present, with especial reference to China and the East; +added to the moral bearings of the Opium-war, and our national +responsibilities relative to that unlucky traffic. The metaphysical +question stated and answered, whether or not prohibition of any thing +does not lead to its desire; showing the increasing appetency of those +sottish Serics for the forbidden vice, and illustrating Gay's fable of +the foolish young cock, who ne'er had been in that condition, but for +his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so captivating a +form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken journeymen? +queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the humbug of +teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit of +grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring +demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating, +drinking, or smoking, for the wholesomer toddies, among factory folk and +the finest pisantry. Millions of anecdotes regarding Eastern Rajahs, +Western Locofocos, Southern Moors, and North-country Muscovites, as to +the drug in its abuses: strange cures (if any) of strange ailments of +mind or body by its prudent use: how to wean men and nations from those +deleterious chewings and smokings; with true and particular accounts of +such splendid self-conquests as Coleridge and De Quincey, and--shall I +add another, a living name?--have attained to. Then, again, what a field +for poetical vagaries, and madnesses of imagination, would be afforded +by the subject of opium-dreams! Now, strictly speaking, in order to +hallucinate honestly, your opium-writer ought to have had some +practical knowledge of opium-eating: then could he descant with the +authority of experience--yea, though he write himself thereby down an +ass--on its effects upon mind and body; then could he tell of luxuries +and torments in true Frenchified detail; then could he expound its pains +and pleasures with all the eloquence of personal conviction. But, as to +such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a +mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably +demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my +apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum +negus, to imagine myself--a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the +paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn +such a petty realm as the Solar System, with Cassiopeia, Boötes, and his +dog, to boot; an intellect, so ravished, that it feels all flame, or a +mass of matter so inert, that it lies for ages in the silent depths of +ocean, a lump of primeval metal: Madness, with the red-hot iron hissing +in his brain: Murder, with the blood-hound ghost, over land, over sea, +through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, ever tracking silently +in horrid calmness; the oppression of indefinite Guilt, with that Holy +Eye still watching; the consciousness of instant danger, the sense of +excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague wild fear, without +will or power to escape: spurring for very life on a horse of marble: +flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies--O, that universal +crash!--greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations of the +assembled dead--that hollow, far-echoing, malicious laughter--that +hurricane-sound of clattering skulls; to be pent up, stifling like a +toad, in a limestone rock for centuries; to be haunted, hunted, hooted; +to eat off one's own head with its cruel madly crunching under-jaw; +to--but enough of horrors: and as to delights, all that Delacroix +suggests of perfume, and Mahomet of Houris, and Gunter of cookery, and +the German opera of music: all Camilla-like running unexertive, all that +sea unicorns can effect in swift swimming, or storm-caught condors in +things aërial; all the rapid travellings of Puck from star to star, +system to system, all things beauteous, exhilarating, ecstatic--ages of +all these things, warranted to last. Now, multiply all these several +alls by forty-nine, and the product will serve for as exaggerated a +statement as possible of opium pandering to pleasure; yes, by +forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of +extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive +one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens +being the algebraic _n_, and if so, into their huge undefined +aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed +flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making +much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, excitation. The brain waltzing +intoxicated, the heart panting as in youth's earliest affection, the +mind broad, and deep, and calm, a Pacific in the sunshine, the body +lapped in downy rest, with every nerve ministering to its comfort; what +more can one, merely and professedly of this world of sensualism--an +opium-eater for instance--conceive of bliss? Such imaginative flights as +these, with its pungent final interrogatory, suggestive to man's +selfishness of joys as yet untried, might tempt to tamper with the dear +delight; whereas the plain statement of the most that opium could +minister to happiness, as contrasted with those false vain views of it, +remind me of Tennyson's poetical '_Timbuctoo_,' gorgeous as a new +Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth-obstructed kraals +dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, his soaring +fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in '_Der Freischutz_.' + +Let this then serve as a meagre sketch of my defunct treatise on opium: +think not that I love the subject, curious and fertile though it be; +perhaps, philosophically regarded, it is not a better one than _gin_; +but ears polite endure not the plebeian monosyllable, unless indeed with +a rëduplicated _n_, as Mr. Lane _will_ have it our whilom genie should +be spelt: accordingly, I magnanimously give up the whole idea, and am +liberal enough, in this my dying determination, to sign a codicil, +bequeathing opium to my executors. + + * * * * * + + +Novelism is a field so filled with copy-holders, so populously tenanted +in common, that it requires no light investigation to find a site +unoccupied, and a hero or heroine waiting to be hired. Nevertheless, I +seem to myself to have lighted on a rich and little-cultivated corner; +imagining that the subject is a good one, because still untouched, +founded on facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the +probable. He that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of +the Shakspearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of +hapless + + +CHARLOTTE CLOPTON, + +as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of +her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal +vault; he will hear something of her noble birth--her fine +character--her fascinating beauty--her short, innocent, eventful +life--her horrible death. Consider, too, the age and locality in which +she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters +that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim +dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of +her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest +by that of Charlotte herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted +parricide of years agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt +its curse upon the now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence, +still-not-acquitted family; a parricide consequent on passionate love, +differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating +feudal fathers--Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir +a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering +curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, +followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual +hatred, and the former found in his own park with the broken point of +his son's sword in him, the latter flying the realm: the curse has slept +for a generation; and now two fair daughters are all that remain to the +high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir +descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering +curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story, +whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, +to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young +Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage, +as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to +his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's +joy the greater, Saville has interest sufficient to meet the old +knight's humour of keeping up the ancient family name, by getting it +added to his own; so that the Beauvoir hatred and parricidal curse seem +likely to be frustrated. But--the first hindrance to their union is poor +sister Margaret's secret and infatuated love for that scheming villain +Rowland, her then too probable seduction, melancholic madness, and +suicide: successively upon this follow the last illnesses and deaths of +the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful ubiquity terrifies +in their very chamber of disease; and as the too likely consequence of +such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite sensibility, +Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage, +gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible +trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all the +secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who thereby +gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that silent +chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride: she, +all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-consciousness; +and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the curse +complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured mind +over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives an +involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the curse, +she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced than ever. +Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe: a +catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, _quite true_. +Fully aware of all that is going on--the preparations for burial, the +misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe--she is placed in +the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his +last long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault +under Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive! +And then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the +church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the +curse: how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault +opened; and the wretch Rowland--partly from curiosity, partly from +malice--determined to be there to see. As they and some church-followers +come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate +plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and +the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, in her +shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair shoulders, +rushes out the maniac Charlotte: in phrensied half-reason she has seized +Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has strangled him, +and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of Saville--who, as +having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and who leaves the +country for ever--little or nothing is more said: and Clopton Hall +remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats. + +P.S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in +ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recorded her experiences in +the vault, by writing with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates. + +Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth: a +true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long +since extinct: the house, now rëbuilt and rëstyled--the vault--the +picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often +are the ways of Providence! how frequently the innocent suffer for the +guilty!)--the gloomy well--and something extant of the story--remains +still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically, +one should go there, and gain materials on the spot: and nothing could +be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century +costumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions; accessories of the +humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's +own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the +assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned +recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though +justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full +reward. + +Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill! +Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the +kingdom!--As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and +unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the +_Buried-alive-one_!--is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that +would pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel, +criminal, and useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In +emptying my head of the notion, I have ministered too much already: but +the sample of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes, +and poisons no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor +beautiful Charlotte! shall not be disturbed by me; thy misfortunes sleep +with thee. Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than +Werter's, so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume +measure, is capable of being fabricated into something of deep, +romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in +such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic +school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned +sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual +passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the +waters, but Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth. + +Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a morsel; +be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and spare your +gasconade: the expediency of a sample has been cleverly suggested, and +WE _ego et canis meus_, royal in munificence, do graciously +accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any +rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract +which explains itself--the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will +suppose preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt. + + * * * * * + +"That bitter speech shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain: +it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to +be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such +conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused +moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than +honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous +world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her--when the cold finger +of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her +altered form--now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting +more scorpion than ever--to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with +having rightfully inherited _a curse_--to be told, in a sort of fiendish +triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's +fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed, +had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin--to know, to hear, yea, from +his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous +youth--of her too free, unsuspicious affection--had calmly been +contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love--here +was misery, here was madness! + +"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind +the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret: +his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still +haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered +one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered. + +"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine; +her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized; +but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of +trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for +Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of +disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the +heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of +perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister, +suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled +asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay +fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never +was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on +her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started +at their strange wild glare: they glittered with a freezing brilliancy, +and stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad? +She bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation; +her cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse; her +hair, still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down +loose and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls +stood on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to +strike the brain; her eyes were set in a steady horror; slowly, with +dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than +herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering, +fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door: so, like a +ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and +away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for +her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it, +and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence +to him. But, see! she has silently passed by; her hand is on the lock of +the hall-door; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind her, +as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns +upon its hinge, and she, still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither, +oh God!--whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the +old knight's guests at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely +preferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the +dreary white apartment looking on the moat--nay, the haunted room of the +parricide himself--to encountering the dangers and darkness of a +night-return so desperate; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire, +near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the +splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her--but cannot rescue +from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful +creature, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which +way did the maniac turn?--whither in that desolate gloom shall Charlotte +fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's +study, she rushes back in terror to the hall; and then--Help, +help!--torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance +among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by +cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance +about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in +moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who +anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her +knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her +eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and so the live-long +night--that night of doubt, and dread, and dreariness--through bitter +hours of confusion and dismay, they sought poor Margaret--and found her +not! + +"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of a +terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour, +and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten +fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with +Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With +the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied +fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds about her face, and +twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the shallow pool might +not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay scarcely half immersed +in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about, +appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and +the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the +hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the +overflowing margin of the pool." + + * * * * * + +Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not +a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better +educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served +up with higher seasoning as a savoury _ragout_: but you get it in +simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to +sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may +be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding +to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation. + + * * * * * + +Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal +curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce +as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as +no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known +fear, and no man also--from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan +Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified +Van-Diemanite--can honestly swear himself free from the influence of +some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet +with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected +with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of +in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self, +(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore +induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen +round their chief, throng about the topic of + + +THE MARVELLOUS. + +A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of +admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy +publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts, +dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true +vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, +but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially +detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, +no stories from the '_Terrific Register_,' nor fancies of hysterical +females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins +should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should +propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's +'_Philosophy of Sleep_,' Scott's '_Demonology_,' treatises on +Apparitions, and many a rare black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might +lend us here their aid; the British Museum is full of well-attested +ghost-stories, and there are very few old ladies unable to add to the +supply: then, this ghost department might be climaxed by the author's +own experience; forasmuch as he is ready to avouch that a person's fetch +was heard by many, and seen by some, in an old country-house, a hundred +miles away from the place of death, at the instant of its happening. + +As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross +were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools +quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the +Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal +Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about +the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, to our church, +commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a tale of no less than +eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a poor friend, who died +on the next, which none could be expected to believe unless I delivered +it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the facts. Dreams +also--strange, vague, mysterious word; there is a gloomy look in it, a +dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep: the records of public +justice will show many a murder revealed by them, as instance the Red +Barn; more than one poor client, in the clutch of a "respectable" +attorney, has been helped to his rights by their influence; from +Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the oppressors of mankind have +in those had kindly warning. Dreams--how many millions false and +foolish, for the one proving to be true!--but that one, how clear, +determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other agency than +imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers! Who has not tales to +tell of dreams? A warning not to go on board such and such a ship--which +founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon the mind, concerning +friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in the manner and at the +time of its occurrence; the fore-shown coming of an unexpected guest; +the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: these, and others like these, +many can attest, and I not least. And of other marvels, though here left +unconsidered, yet might much be said: truths so strange, that the pages +of romance would not trench on such extravagance; combinations so +unlikely, that thrice twelve cast successively by proper dice, were but +probability to those. Thus, in authorial fashion, has the marvellous +dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I suggest a hand-book thereof to +catering booksellers and the insatiable public. + + * * * * * + +Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs in +a _vis-à-vis_, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and +propriety enters strong protest; an emancipated parrot attracts my +sympathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for +I dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought +into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders +dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint +song of liberty behind their prison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a +school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my +antipathies; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the +honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as +_compagnons de voyage_; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room. +Nevertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if +you will) for the animal creation: often have I walked on in weariness, +rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus; and +my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured scion +of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like--for we learn +from Æsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be +unpopular--is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is +my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. Bishop Butler, we +may all of us remember, in 'THE _Analogy_' argues that the +objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that +which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be +shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now, +for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be +extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with +equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, +and--dare we add?--of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young +lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground +without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's +young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be +mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and +the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this, +there _is_ a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in +some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals +may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that St. Paul, +arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type +of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God +care for oxen?"--or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly, +though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable?--and the +implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are +left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to +think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his +creatures: in a certain sense + + "He sees with equal eye, as God of all, + A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;" + +and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent +creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some +laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple +consideration that [Greek: melei] is not so strictly rendered "care for" +as [Greek: kedetai]. Scripture, then, so far from militating against the +possible truth, that animals have souls, would seem, by a side-long +glance, to countenance the doctrine: and now let us for a passing moment +turn and see what aid is given to us by moral philosophy. + +No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a +sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no +conscience, necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty +and tyranny, without the chance of compensation for sufferings +undeserved. Neither can any good government be so partial, as (limiting +the whole existence of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one +of a litter to be pampered with continual luxuries, and another to be +tortured for all its little life by blows, famine, disease--and in its +lingering death by the scientific scalpels of a critical Majendie or a +cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, that in the so-called parallel case +of partialities among men--the this-world's choice of a Jacob, the +this-world's rejection of an Esau--the answer is obvious: there are two +scales to the balance, there is yet another world. Far be it from us to +think that all things are not then to be cleared up; that the innocent +little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be +heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an +overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and +example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside +as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain +every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless +extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, no +explanation; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they have +died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or +cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different +the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in +various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to +justify the ways of God to"--brutes: we need not then consider, with a +certain French abbé, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for +their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, +account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits +of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not +regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible +deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends +itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of +guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, +have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His +handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why--in that +Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth +shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were "caught up +into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand +saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy +season on this renovated globe--tell me why there should not be some +tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure, +as they once ministered in pain? And for the rest, the other nine, what +hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the +large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from +enjoying some emancipate existence--we need not perhaps accord them +more of immortality than justice, demands for compensation--for a +definite time, a millennium let us think, in scores of those million +orbs that twinkle in the galaxy? + + Space stretches wide enough for every grain + Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas, + Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart + As far as sun from sun. + +Shall I then say what hinders?--the littleness of man's mind, refusing +possibility of room for those countless quadrillions; and the +selfishness of his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose +doctrine (certainly too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level +with mankind, and + + "Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky, + His faithful dog shall bear him company." + +Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his kingdom, +give hope of after-life to all creation: Saint Antony of Padua did waste +time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes; but may they not find +blessings, though ignorant of priests?--And now, suffer me, in my +current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this +topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess, +in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with +ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zoöphyte and a caterpillar have +brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know +whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked +with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang +outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses +instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is +moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary +disposal of what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to +ourselves for exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which +is called Soul. But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral +sense? Obviously, since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in +the scale of being, and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we +ought to be able to take the best instances of animal morals from those +creatures which have come most within the influence of human example; as +pets of every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a +sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is +a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and +who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection, +in a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an +educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though +limited in speech, said many a witty thing?--Again, read some common +collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there +between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of +sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, whose +solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? The +soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle-field; +and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shepherd's +requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high sense of duty +in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, and that in +the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor menaced blows +can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed to his care? Once +more: Who does not recognise individuality of character in animals? A +dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, any domesticated creature, +will act throughout life, in a certain course of disposition, at least +as consistently as most masters: it will also have its whims and ways, +likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows; and, verily, +in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its monarch to +the blush. + +But upon this theme--meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful, +illogical--my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended +barely to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for +name to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as + + +PSYCHOTHERION, + +AN INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT ON THE SOULS OF BRUTES; + +And my thoughts have run on thus far so little conclusively (I humbly +admit to you), that we will, to save trouble, leave the riddle as +unsolved as ever, and gain no better advantage than thus having loosely +adverted to another fancy of your author's mind. + + * * * * * + +Not yet is my mind a simple freeman, a private, unincumbered, individual +self-possessor: its slaves are not yet all manumitted; I lack not +subjects; I am no lord of depopulated regions; albeit my aim is indeed +akin to that of old Rufus, and Goldsmith's tyrannical Squire of Auburn; +I wish to clear my hunting-grounds, to make a solitude, and call it +peace. Slowly, but still surely, am I working out that will. Meanwhile, +however, there is no need to advertise for heroes; they are only too +rife, clinging like bats to the curtains of my chambers of imagery, or +with attendant satellites hanging in bunches, as swarming bees about +their monarch, to the rafters of my brain. Selection is the hardest +difficulty; here is the labour, here the toil; because for just +selection there should be good reasons. Now, amongst other my +multitudinous authorial projects, this perhaps is not the worst; namely, +by a series of dissimilar novels, psychological rather than religious, +and for interest's sake laid in diverse ages and countries, to +illustrate separately the most rampant errors of the Papacy. For +example, say that Lewis's '_Monk_' is a strong delineation of the evils +consequent on constrained and unchosen celibacy; though its colouring be +meretricious, though its details offend the moralities of nature, still +it is a book replete to thoughtful minds with terrible teaching--be not +high-minded, but fear. In like manner, guilty thoughts dropped upon +innocent young hearts in that foul corner, + + +THE CONFESSIONAL, + +might make a stirring tale, or haply a series of them: the cowled +hypocrite suggesting crime to those whose answer is all innocence; his +schemes of ambition, or avarice, or lust, slowly elaborated by the +fiend-like purposes to which he puts his ill-used knowledge of the human +heart; his sacrilegious violation of the holy grievings made by mistaken +penitence. History should bring its collateral assistance: the Medicean +Queens, Venice, bloody Spain, hard-visaged monks calmly directing the +engines of torture, the poison of anonymous calumny, and dread secrets +more dreadfully betrayed, could furnish much of truthful precedent. The +bad obstructions placed between the sinner and his God by selfish +priestcraft; the souls that would return again, like Noah's weary dove, +enticed by ravens to forsake the ark, mate with them, and feed on their +banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal +harms brought out in full detail; the progress of this world's misery in +the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the +absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the sunny plains they +topple over; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort; the +actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors; the prominent +characters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,) +whose ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple +about means, bloody, bad, vindictive, atheistic; and then his victims, a +youth that he trains from infancy to the sole end of poisoning, subtly +and slowly, all who stand in his path; a girl who loves this youth, and +who, flying from the foul friar in the day of temptation, betakes her to +the mountains, and ultimately saves her lover from his terrible +destination in guilt, by hiding him in her own haven of refuge, the +persecuted little church; and with these materials to work upon, I need +hardly detail to you an intricate plot and an obvious _dénouement_. + +This class of theme, it is probable, has exercised the talents of many; +but as the evils of confessing to deceitful man, and of blind trust in +his deleterious advice, have not specifically met my eye, the subject is +new to me, and may be so to others. Still, I stay not now further to +enlarge upon it; I must press on; and will not cruelly encourage the +birth of thoughts brought forth only to be destroyed, like father +Saturn's babes--the anthropophagite. + +A good reason for selection at last presents itself. Sundry collateral +ancestors of mine [every body from Cain downwards must have had +ancestors; so no quibbling, please, nor quarrelling about so exploded an +absurdity as family-pride,] were lucky enough in days lang syne to +appropriate to themselves, amongst other matters, a respectable +allowance of forfeited monastic territory; and I know it by this token: +that in yonder venerable chest of archives and muniments, rest in their +own dust of ages, duly and clearly assorted, all those abbey deeds from +the times of Henry Beauclerc. Here's a fine unlooked-for opportunity of +making dull ancestral spots classic ground, famous among men; here's a +chance of immortalizing the crumbling ruins of an obscure, but +interesting, abbey-church; here's a fair field for dragging in all that +one knows or does not know, all that parchments can prove, or fancy can +invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place +of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind of +the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and +why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak, +rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between +the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gentle blood, +familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and +Ratcliffe? Why not press into the service of instructive novelism truths +stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, and names of higher +note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes? + +All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in + + +THE PRIOR OF MARRICK. + +And now for a story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it +is one--both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite +incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our +prior was once a good man--an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl +in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting +family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And +wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very +nursery, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who +had buckled on his harness, and fallen in the wars: they loved, of +course, and the deeper, because secretly and without permission: they +were too young to marry, and indeed had thought little of the matter; +still, substance and shadow, body and soul, were scarcely more needful +to each other, or more united. But--a hacking cough--a hectic cheek--a +wasting frame, were to blue-eyed Mary the remorseless harbingers of +death, and Eustace, standing on her early grave, was in heart a widower: +henceforth he had no aim in life; the cloister was--so thought he, as +many do--his best refuge, to dream upon the past, to soothe his present +sorrows, and earn for a future world the pleasures lost in this. Time, +the best anodyne short of what Eustace could not buy at +Rome--true-healing godliness--alleviates his grief, and makes him less +sad, but not wiser; years pass, the desire of prëeminence in his own +small world has hitherto furnished incentives to existence, and he find +himself a prior too soon; for he has nothing more to live for. Yes: +there is an object; the turmoil of small ambition with its petty cares +is past, and the now motiveless man lingers in yearning thought on the +only white spot in his gloomy journey, the green oasis of his desert +life, that dream of early love. He has long loved the fair, quiet image +of our Lady of Marrick, unwittingly, for another Mary's sake; +half-oblivious of the past in scheming for the present, he has knelt at +midnight before that figure of the Virgin-mother, and knew not why he +trembled; he thought it the ecstacy of devotion, the warm-gushing flood +of calmness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees +it, he knows it; there is, indeed, good cause: how miraculously the +white marble face grows into resemblance with _hers!_ the same sainted +look of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and +unruffled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip, +the same wild compassion in the eye! Great God--he loves again!--that +staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness; +the image is now dearer than the most sacred; there is a halo round it, +like light from heaven: he adores its placid, eternal, changeless +aspect; if it could move, the charm would half dissolve; he loves it--as +an image! And then how rapturously joins he with the wondering choir of +more stagnant worshippers, while they yield to this substantial form, +this stone-transmigration of his love, this tangible, unpassionate, +abiding, present deity, the holy hymns of praise, due only to the unseen +God! How gladly he sings her titles, ascribing all excellence to her! +How tenderly falls he at her feet, with eyes lighted as in youth! How +earnestly he prays to his fixed image--_to_ it, not _through_ it, for +his heart is _there_! How zealously he longs for her honour, her worship +among men--hers, the presiding idol of that Gothic pile, the hallowed +Lady, the goddess-queen of Marrick! Stop--can he do nothing for her, can +he venture nothing in her service? Other shrines are rich, other images +decked in gold and jewels; there is yet an object for his useless life, +there are yet ends to be attained, ends--that can justify the means. He +longs for wealth, he plots for it, he dares for it: he plans lying +miracles, and thousands flock to the shrine; he waylays dying men, and, +by threatened dread of torments of the damned, extortionizes conscience +into unjust riches for himself; he accuses the innocent, and reaps the +fine; he connives at the guilty, and fingers the bribe. So wealth flows +in, and the altar of his idol is hung with cloth of gold, her diadem is +alight with gems, costly offerings deck her temple, bending crowds kneel +to her divinity. Is he not happy? Is he not content? Oh, no: an +insatiate demon has possessed him; with more than Pygmalion's insanity, +he loves that image; he dreams, he thinks of that one unchanging form. +The marvelling brotherhood, credulous witnesses of such deep devotion, +hold him for a saint; and Rome, at the wish of the world, sends him, as +to a living St. Eustatius, the patent of canonization: they praise him, +honour him, pray to him; but he contemptuously (and they take it for +humility) spurns a gift which speaks of any other heaven than the +presence of that one fair, beautiful, beloved statue. A thought fills +him, and that with joy: he has heard of sacrifices in old time, +immolations, offerings up of self, as the highest act of a devout +worshipper; he cares not for earth nor for heaven; and one night, in his +enthusiastic vigils, the phrensy of idolatry arms that old man's own +weak hand against himself, and he falls at the statue's feet, +self-murdered, _its_ martyr. + +Here were scope for psychology; here were subtle unwindings of motive, +trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. All ages, +before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even to +excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the ends +of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger into which +the wisest of old time were entrapped: we scarcely allow that the +Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man and a shrewd, when we see +him fall before his monster; we have not wits to understand how the +Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties could be so besotted. +For this superior illumination of mind, let us thank not ourselves, but +the Light of the world; and, warned by the history of ages, let us +beware how we place created things to mediate between us and the most +High; let us be shy of symbolic emblems--of pictures, images, +observances--lest they grow into forms that engross the mind, and fill +it with a swarm of substantial idols. + +Now, this tale of the '_Prior of Marrick_' would, but for the present +premature abortion, have seen daylight in the form of an +auto-biography--the catastrophe, of course, being added by some +brother-monk, who winds up all with his moral: and to get at this +auto-biographical sketch--a thing of fragments and wild soliloquies, +incidentally laying bare the heart's disease, and the poisonous +breathings of idolatrous influence--I could easily, and after the true +novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, somewhat as follows: Let me go +gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or cart, say for a sportsman's +pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon +the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former +beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an +antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general +huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the +sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively +at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in +the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as +thus. Our sexton has got a name among his neighbours for his capital +double-leather brogues, warranted to carry you dry-shod through a river; +and, warmed by my brandy-flask and _bonhomie_, considering me moreover +little likely to set up a rival shop, cunningly communicates his secret: +he puts parchment between the leathers--Parchment, my good man? where +can you get your parchment hereabouts? I spoke innocently, for I thought +only of ticketing some grouse for my friends southward: but the question +staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the uncharitable +conclusion--he had stolen it. And then follows confession: how, among +the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak chest--broke it +open--no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing,"--except parchment; a lot of +leaves tidily written, and--warranted to keep out the wet. A few +shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I promising as extra to +send a huge bundle of ancient indentures in place of the precious +manuscript. Thus, in the way of Mackenzie's '_Man of Feeling_,' we +become fragmentary where we fear to be tedious; and so, in a good +historic epoch, among the wars of the Roses, surrounded by friars and +nuns, outlaws and border-riders, chivalrous knights and sturdy bowyers, +consign I to the oblivescent firm of Capulet and Co. my happily +destroyed '_Prior of Marrick_.' + + * * * * * + +A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition +towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady +it. Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer +in its season the addition of the serious. Amongst other wholesome +topics of of meditation--for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, +although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated--the +study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the +writing propensity of your author's mind. On most matters it has been my +fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of +opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with +very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are +concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality or novelty. To my own +conscience, however, these things are reversed; for contemplation has +produced that as new to my own mind, which may be old to others deeper +read, and has thought those ideas original, which are only so to its own +fancy. Very little, then, must such as I reasonably hope to add on +Prophetical Interpretation; the Universal Wisdom of two millenaries +cannot be expected to gain any thing from the passing thought of a +hodiernal unit: if any fancies in my brain are really new, and hitherto +unbroached upon the subject, it can scarcely be doubted but that they +are false; so very little reliance do principles of catholicity allow to +be placed upon "private interpretations." + +With thus much of apology to those alike who will find, and those who +will not find, any thing of novelty in my notions, I still do not +withhold them. By here a little and there a little, is the general mind +instructed: it would be better for the world if every mighty tome really +contributed its grain. + +The prophecies of Holy Writ appear to me to have one great peculiarity, +distinguishing them from all other prophecies, if any, real or +pretended; and that peculiarity I deferentially conceive to be this: +that, whereas all human prophecies profess to have but one fulfilment, +the divine have avowedly many true fulfilments. The former may indeed +light upon some one coincidence, and may exult in the accident as a +proof of truth; the latter bounds as it were (like George Herbert's +sabbaths) from one to another, and another, through some forty +centuries, equally fulfilled in each case, but still looking forward +with hope to some grander catastrophe: it is not that they are loosely +suited, like the Delphic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that +they, by a felicitous adaptation, sit closely into each era which the +Architect of Ages has arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a +loose bag, which would hold and involve with equal ease almost any +circumstance; biblical prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone, +though not all similar in perfection, its own true casts will fit: or +again, in another view of the matter, accept this similitude: let the +All-seeing Eye be the centre of many concentric circles, beholding +equally in perspective the circumference of each, and for accordance +with human periods of time measuring off segments by converging radii: +separately marked on each segment of the wheel within wheel, in the way +of actual fulfilment, as well as type and antitype, will appear its +satisfied word of prophecy, shining onward yet as it becomes more and +more final, until time is melted in eternity. Thus, it is perhaps not +impossible that every interpretation of wise and pious men may alike be +right, and hold together; for different minds travel on the different +peripheries. So our Lord (to take a familiar instance) speaks of his +second advent in terms equally applicable to the destruction of one +city, of the accumulated hosts at Armageddon, and of this material +earth: Antiochus and Antichrist occur prospectively within the same pair +of radii at differing distances; and, in like manner and varying +degrees, may, for aught we can tell, such incarnations of the evil +principle as papal Rome, or revolutionary Europe, or infidel +Cosmopolitism; or, again, such heads of parties, such indexes of the +general mind, as a Cæsar, an Attila, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a--whoever +be the next. So also of hours, days, years, eras; all may and do cöexist +in harmonious and mutual relations. Good men, those who combine prayer +with study, need not fear necessary difference of result, from holding +different views; the grand error is too loosely generalizing; a little +circle suits our finite ken; we cannot, as yet, mentally span the +universe. These crude and cursory remarks may serve to introduce a +likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have given entertainment, and +which, with others of a similar sort, were once to have come forth in an +essay-form, headed + + +THE SEVEN CHURCHES; + +moreover, for aught that has come across my reading, to be additionally +styled '_A New Interpretation, for these Latter Days_.' Without desiring +to do other than quite confirm the literal view, as having related +primarily to those local churches of old times, geographically in Asia +Minor; without attempting to dispute that they may have an individual +reference to varieties of personal character, and probably of different +Christian sects; I imagine that we may discover, in the Apocalyptic +prospect of these seven churches, an historical view of Christianity, +from the earliest ages to the last: beginning as it did, purely, warmly, +and laboriously, with the apostolic emblematic Ephesus, and to end with +the "shall He find faith on earth" of lukewarm Laodicea: thus Smyrna +would symbolize the state of the church under Diocletian, the +"tribulation ten days:" Pergamus, perhaps the Byzantine age, "where +Satan's seat is" the Balaam and Balak of empire and priesthood; +Thyatira, the avowed commencement of the Papacy, "Jezebel," &c.; Sardis, +the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the +rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, +(the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its +decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, +this were possible. + +The elucidation of these several hints might show some striking +confirmations of the notion; which, as every thing else in this book, +would humbly claim your indulgence, reader, for my sketches must be +rapid, and their descriptions brief. Concurrently, however, with this, +(which I know not whether any prophetic scholiasts have mentioned or +not,) there may be deduced a still further interpretation, equally, as +far as I am concerned, underived from the lucubrations of others. This +other interpretation involves a typical view of the general +characteristics of Christendom's seven true churches, as they are to be +found standing at the coming of their Lord; the Asiatic seven may be +assimilated, in their religious peculiarities, with the national +Protestant churches of modern Europe: what order should be preserved in +this assimilation, unless indeed it be that of eldership, it might be +difficult to decide; but, excluding those communities which idol-worship +has unchurched, and leaving out of view such anomalies as America +presents, having no national religion, we shall find seven true churches +now existing, between which and the Asiatics many curious parallels +might be run: the seven are, those of England, Scotland, Holland, +Prussia, perhaps Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. Without professing to +be quite confident as to the list, the idea remains the same: it is but +a light hint on a weighty subject, demanding more investigation than my +slender powers can at present compass. It is merely thrown out as +undigested matter; a crude notion let it rest: if ever I aspire to the +dignity and dogmatism of a theological teacher, it must be after more +and deeper inquiry of the Newtons, Faber, Frere, Croly, Keith, and other +learned interpreters, than it is possible or proper to make in a hurry: +volumes have been, and volumes might be again, written for and against +any prophecy unfulfilled; it is dangerous to teach speculations; for, if +found false, they tend to bring holy truths into disrepute. Let me then +put upon the shelf, as a humble layman should, my hitherto +unaccomplished prophetical treatise; and receive its mention for little +more than my true revelation of another phase of authorship. + + * * * * * + +And many like attempts have been hazarded by me in the mode theological; +though, from some cause or other, they have mostly fallen abortive. Were +mention here made of the more completed efforts of your author's mind, +in this walk of literature, or of others, it might too evidently lay +bare the mystery of my mask; a piece of secret information intended not +as yet to be bestowed. But this book--purporting to be the medley of my +mind, the _bonâ fide_ emptying of its multifarious fancies--must of +necessity, if honest, pourtray all the wanings and waxings of an +ever-changing lunar disposition: so, haply you shall turn from a play to +a sermon, from a novel to a moral treatise, from a satire or an epigram +to a religious essay. Such and so inconsistent is authorial man. Here +then, in somewhat of order, should have followed lengthily various other +writings of serious import, half-fashioned, and from conflicting reasons +left--perhaps for ever--half-finished. But considering the crude and +apparently careless nature of this present book, and taking into account +the solemn and responsible manner in which such high topics ought +invariably to be treated, I have struck out, without remorse or mercy, +all except a mere mention of the subjects alluded to. The contiguity of +lighter matter demands this sacrifice; not that I am one of those who +deem a cheerful face and a prayerful heart incongruous: there is danger +in a man, however religious, when his brow lowers, and his cheek is +stern; so did Cromwell murder Charles; so did Mary (though bigoted, +sincere,) consign Cranmer to the flames and Jane to the scaffold: +innocence and mirth are near of kin, and the tear of penitence is no +stranger to the laughter-loving eye. But I ramble as usual. Let it +suffice to say, that in accordance with common prejudices, I suffer my +mind to be shorn of its consecrated rays; for albeit my moral censor has +spared the prophetical ideas, and one or two other serious sobrieties, +on the ground that, although they are mere hints, they are at all events +hints of good, still more experimental and more hazardous pieces of +biblical criticism have been not unwisely immolated. The full cause of +this will appear in the mere title of the first of these half-attempted +essays, viz: + + +THE WISDOM OF REVISION; + +whereof my predication shall be simply and strictly _nil_. + +The next piece of serious study, as yet little more than a root in my +mind, was to have fructified in the form of + + +HOMELY EXPOSITIONS, + +or domestic readings in Scripture for daily use in family worship, with +an easy, sensible, useful sort of commentary; a book calculated +expressly for the understandings, wants, vices, temptations, and +peculiarities of household servants, and quite opposed to the usual +plans of injuriously raising doubts to lay them, of insisting upon +obsolete Judaisms, of strict theological controversy, of enlarging to +satiety on the meaning of passages too obvious to require explanation, +and ingeniously slurring over those which really need it; indeed, of +pursuing the courses generally adopted by the mass of commentators. + +A further notion extended to + + +LAY SERMONS, + +whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being +each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and +their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and +images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service +of illustrating Gospel truths. + +Another religious essay has been relinquished, although to a great +degree effected, from the apprehension that it may suggest matter +fanciful or false: also, in part, from the material being perhaps of too +slender a character to insist upon. Its name stood thus, + + +SCRIPTURAL PHYSICS; + +being an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Holy Writ in matters of +natural science; for example, cosmogony, geology, the probable centre of +the earth, the vitality and circulation of the blood, hints of magnetism +and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's +shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other +spheres, the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics, +much of recondite natural history:--all these can be easily proved to be +alluded to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew +Scriptures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated +some of this, although I have never met with his writings; and a great +deal more of it is mentioned in notes and sermons which many have read +or heard. Until, therefore, I become surer of neither invading the +provinces of others, nor of detracting from their wisdom, let those +ill-written fancies still lie dormant in my desk. + +A fifth tractate on things theological, still in the egg state, was to +have been indued with the rather startling appellation of + + +AN APOLOGY FOR HEATHENISM; + +especially as contrasted with practical atheism, which, truth to tell, +is the contradictory sort of religion most universally professed among +the moderns: working out the idea, that any-how it is better to have +many objects of veneration than none, and that, although idol-worship is +a dreadful sin, still it is not so utterly hopeless as actual +ungodliness. That, among the heathens, temporal judgment ever vindicated +the true Divinity; whereas the consummation of the more modern +unworshiping world will be an eternal one: so, by the difference in +punishments comparing that of their criminalities. Showing also that, +however corrupted afterwards by impure rites and fatuous iniquities, +heathenism was, in its most ancient form, little more than the +hieroglyphic dress of truth: this exemplified by Moses and the brazen +serpent, by interpretations of Grecian mythology, shown, after the +manner of perhaps too ingenious Lord Bacon, to be consistent with +philosophy and religion; by the way, in which Egyptian priests satisfied +so good and shrewd, though credulous, a mind as that of Herodotus; by +Hesiod's '_Theogony_;' by the practical testimony of the whole educated +world in earliest times to the deep meaning involved in idolatrous +rites; by the mysteries of Eleusis in particular; by the characters of +all most enlightened heathens--as Cicero, Socrates, and +Plato--(half-convinced of the Godhead's unity, and still afraid to +disavow His plurality,) contrasted with those of the school of Pyrrho, +and Lucretius, and the later Epicureans. The possibility of early +allusions to the Trinity, as "Let us make man," _etc._, having led to +the idea of more than one God; and if so, in some sort, its veniality. + +All the above might be applied with some force, and, if so, with no +little value, to modern false semblances of religion, and non-religion; +to Roman Catholicism, with its images, its services in an unknown +tongue, its symbols, its adoption of heathen festivals, its actual +placing of many Gods in the throne of One; to Mammonism, as practically +a religion as if the golden calf of Babylon were standard at Cornhill; +to Voluptatism--if I may fabricate a name for pleasure-hunters, +following still, with Corybantic fury, the orgic revels of Osiris or +Astarte: in brief, to all the shades of human heresy, on this side or on +that of the golden mean, the worship of one true God, as revealed to us +in His three mysterious characters. + +But, query? Has not all this, and the very title, for any thing I know, +been done already by another, by a wiser? and, if so, by whom?--Speak, +some friend: it is the misfortune of mere thinkers (and this present +amygdaloid mass, this breccia book, exemplifies it well) to stumble +frequently upon fancies too good not to have been long ago appropriated +by others like-minded. A read, or heard, hint may be the unerring clue, +and we vainly imagine some old labyrinth to be our new discovery: +education renders up the master-key, and we come to regard ancient +treasuries as wealth of our own amassing, from which we deem it our +right to filch as recklessly as he from the mint of Croesus, who so +filled his pockets--ay, his mouth--that we read he [Greek: hebebusto]. +Who, in this age of literature, can be fully condemned, or heartily +acquitted of plagiarism? An age--and none so little in advance or in +arrear of it as I--of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas +unpatented, and books that have outlived copy-right. But this has +detained us long enough: for the present, my brain is quit of its +heathenish exculpations: let us pass on; many regiments are yet to be +reviewed; their uniforms [_Hibernicè_] are various, but their flag is +one. + +A last serious subject--(they grow tedious)--is a fair field for +ingenious explanation and Oriental poetry, + + +THE SIMILES OF SCRIPTURE: + +(of course "similes" is an English word: the author of a recent '_Essay +on Magna Charta_' has been _learned_ enough to write it "similæ," for +which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely +follow Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at "similia;" and, +though Shakspeare does write it "similies," it may stoutly be contended +that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior's "similes" is the +purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.) + +The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt and +happy: for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and propriety, +and strict resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the +whirlwind,"--"as when a standard-bearer fainteth"--"as the rushing of +mighty waters,"--"as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,"--"as a +dream,"--"as the morning dew,"--"as"--but the whole book is a garden of +similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude." +It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation +deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush, +and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle's example, it too frequently +converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry +of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment, +its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night, +falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive +only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of +a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an +episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of +Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and +Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the +'_Canticles_,' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an +apple-tree among the trees of the wood:" now, amongst us, an apple-tree +is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the +Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more +correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to a +Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps +the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or some +other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image, +until shown to be a wine-skin. "Who is this that cometh out of the +wilderness, like pillars of smoke?"--probably intending the +swiftly-rushing columns of _sand_ flying on the wings of the whirlwind. +"Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened +into fountains--tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in +showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it +might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity +and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a +like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who +will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose, +with a tower, and admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair +which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this +vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar +and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be +more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an +English ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the +horse swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being +afraid as a grasshopper." A thousand like instances could be displayed +with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for +good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best +advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one +so slenderly hinted at, as '_The Wisdom of Revision_,' therefore has +been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf +till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the +object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to +other themes of a more sublunary aspect. + + * * * * * + +One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's +mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome, +unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour +humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I +was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital, +and noble-minded thesis, no other than + + +HOME. + +Alas, for the epidemy to which, few can doubt, ideas are subject! Alas, +for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is +disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing +will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "Olla Podrida," a "Book +without a name," or some other such like _rechauffée_ publication; +whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived +long before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite +advertisements--at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my +poor epic: scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings, +and divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative +lay;" scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of +metrical specimens; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to me in +black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's '_Home, an +Epic_.' So, as in the case of '_Nero_,' and haply of other subjects, had +it come to pass, that my high-mettled racer had made another false +start; that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been +self-appropriated, was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the +flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into +the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all +those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a +subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, +besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, _if_ only one could manage it +well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and +Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I am full of moral +land-marks, and would not (poetically speaking) for the world move +rooted termini into other people's grounds. Whether the field has been +well or ill preoccupied I wot not, having neither seen the poem nor +heard its maker's name: therefore shall my charity hope well of it, and +mourn over the unmerited oblivion which generally greets modern +poetry--yea, upon its very natal-day. Nevertheless, as an upright man +will never wish barefacedly to steal from others, so does he determine +at all times to claim independently his own: to be robbed, and not +resent it (I speak foolishly), is the next mean thing after pilfering +itself; and rash will be thy daring, O literary larcener! (can such +things be?) if thou art found unpermissively appropriating even such +sorry spoil as these poor seedlings of still possible volumes. + +Prose and verse are allowed to have some disguising differences, at +least in termination; and as we must not--so hints the public +taste--spoil honest prose, bad as it may be, with too much intermixture +of worse verse, it will be prudent in me to be sparing of my specimens. +Yet, who will endure so _staccato_ a page of jerking sentences as a +confirmed synopsis?--"Well, any thing rather than poetry," says the +world; so, for better or worse, I will jot down prosaically a few of my +all but impromptu imaginings on Home. + +After some general propositions, it would be proper to indulge the +orthodoxy of invocation; not to Muses, however, but to the subject +itself; for now-a-days, in lieu of definite deities, our worship has +regard to theories, doctrines, and other abstract idolisms: and +thereafter should follow at length an historical retrospect of domestic +life, from the savage to the transition states of hunters and warriors; +Nimrods and New Zealanders; Actæons and Avanese, Attilas, Roderics, and +all the Ercles' vein or that of mad Cambyses, Hindoos and Fuegians, +Greece, Egypt, Etruria, and Troy, in those old days when funds and taxes +were not invented, but people had to fight for their dinner, and be +their own police: so in a due course of circumconsideration to more +modern conditions, from ourselves as central civilization, to Cochin +China, and extreme Mexico, to Archangel and Polynesia. + +Divers national peculiarities of the _physique_ of homes; as, Tartars' +tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffre kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea +palm-thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth. Then, a +wide view of the homes of higher society, first Continental, afterwards +British through all the different phases of comfort to be found in +heath-hovels, cottages, ornées, villas, parsonage-houses, squirealities, +seats, town mansions, and royal palaces. Thus, with a contrastive peep +or two about the feverish neighbourhood of a factory, up this musty +alley, and down that winding lane, we should have considered briefly all +the external accidents of home. The miserable condition of the homeless, +whether rich or poor; an oak with its tap-root broken, a house on +wheels, a boat without a compass, and all that sort of thing: together +with due declamation about soldiers spending twenty years in India, +shipwrecked Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out +hopelessly forever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other +absentees, voluntary or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton +affluence, poor laws, mendicancy, and Ireland; not omitting some +thrilling cases of barbaric destitution. + +Now come we lawfully to descant upon matters more mental and +sentimental--the _metaphysique_ of the subject--the pleasures and pains +of Home. As thus, most cursorily: the nursery, with its dear innocent +joys; the school-boy, holiday feelings and scholastic cruelties; the +desk-abhorring clerk; the over-worked milliner; the starving family of +factory children, and of agricultural labourers, and of workers in coal +mines and iron furnaces, with earnest exhortations to the rich to pour +their horns of plenty on the poor. England, once a safer and a happier +land, under the law of charity: now fast verging into a despotic +centralized system, kept together by bayonets and constables' staves. +Home a refuge for all; for queens and princes from their cumbrous state, +as well as for clowns from their hedging and ditching. The home of love, +and its thousand blessings, founded on mutual confidence, religion, +open-heartedness, communion of interest, absence of selfishness, and so +on: the honoured father, due subordination, and results; the loving +wife, obedient children, and cheerful servants. Absolute, though most +kind, monarchy the best government for a home; with digressions about +Austria and China, and such laudable paternal rule; and _contra_, bitter +castigation of republican misrule, its evils and their results, for +which see Old Athens and New York, and certain spots half-way between +them. + +The pains of home: most various indeed, caused by all sorts of opposite +harms--too much constraint or too little, open bad example or impossible +good example, omissions and commissions, duty relaxed by indulgence, and +duty tightened into tyranny; but mainly and generally attributable to +the non-assertion or other abuse of parental authority. The spoiled +child, and his progress of indulgence, unchecked passions, dissipation, +crime, and ruin. Interested interlopers, as former friends, relatives, +flatterers, and busy parasites, undermining that bond of confidence +without which home falls to pieces; the gloomy spirit of reserve, +discouraging every thing like generous open-heartedness; menial +influences lowering their subject to their own base level; discords, +religious, political, and social; the harmful consequence of +over-expenditure to ape the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier; +foolish education beyond one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking +lessons in Italian, and opera-stricken butcher's-boys strumming the +guitar; immoral tendencies, gambling, drinking, and other dissipations; +and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for +all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, +invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular +crash of a stout-expiring overture. + +It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done; +but the difficulty is--not so much to do it, answers writer, as to +escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and +how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these +ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand +good grist, ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters. +But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed +should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused, +uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the +very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be +for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could +brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an +embryo?--Let then a few shreds and patches suffice--a brick or two for +the house: and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty; for +what man of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the +Muses, the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be +pensioned on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great +heir-at-law, Prose Prose, Esq.? + +With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober +seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work +into a respectable commencement; I don't pretend it _is_ one; but +_valeat quantum_, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for, +unaltered, + + Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast, + Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast, + Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest, + Haven of refuge found and peace possest, + Oasis in the desert, star of light + Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night, + All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground + Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round, + Imperial realm amid the slavish world, + Where Freedom's banner ever floats unfurl'd, + Fair island of the blest, earth's richest wealth, + Her plague-struck body's little all of health, + Home, gentle name, I woo thee to my song, + To thee my praise, to thee my prayers belong: + Inspire me with thy beauty, bid me teem + With gracious musings worthy of my theme: + Spirit of Love, the soul of Home thou art, + Fan with divinest thoughts my kindling heart; + Spirit of Power, in pray'rs thine aid I ask, + Uphold me, bless me to my holy task; + Spirit of Truth, guide thou my wayward wing; + Love, Power, and Truth, be with me while I sing. + +_V'la_: my consolation is that somewhere may be read, in hot-pressed +print, too, many worse poeticals than these, which, however, nine +readers out of ten will have had the worldly wisdom to skip; and the +tenth is soon satiated: yet a tithe is something, at least so think the +modern Levites; so, then, on second thoughts, a victim who is so good a +listener must not be let off quite so cheaply. However, to vary a little +this melancholy musing, and to gild the compulsory pill, Reserve shall +be served up sonnet-wise. (P. S. I love the sonnet, maligned as it is +both by ill-attempting friend and semi-sneering foe: of course, in our +epic, Reserve ambles not about in this uncertain rhyme, but duly stalks +abroad in the uniform dress; iambically still, though extricated from +those involutions, time out of mind the requisite of sonnets.) Stand +forth to be chastised, unpopular + + +RESERVE. + + Thou chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane, + Lethargic poison of the moral sense, + Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain, + Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence, + Fly from the threshold, traitor--get thee hence! + Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind; + Mistrusting none but self, injurious self, + Of and to others wishing only good; + With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind, + Suggesting all the world a viperous brood + That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf: + Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood, + Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve, + Beneath thy dull domestic curse, Reserve. + +Without professing much tendency to the uxorious, all may blamelessly +confess that they see exceeding beauty in a good wife; and we need never +apologize for the unexpected company of ladies: at off-hand then let +this one sit for her portrait. Enduring listener, will the following +serve our purpose in striving worthily to apostrophize + + +THE WIFE. + + Behold, how fair of eye, and mild of mien, + Walks forth of marriage yonder gentle queen: + What chaste sobriety whene'er she speaks, + What glad content sits smiling on her cheeks, + What plans of goodness in that bosom glow, + What prudent care is throned upon her brow, + What tender truth in all she does or says, + What pleasantness and peace in all her ways! + For ever blooming on that cheerful face + Home's best affections grow divine in grace; + Her eyes are ray'd with love, serene and bright; + Charity wreathes her lips with smiles of light; + Her kindly voice hath music in its notes; + And heav'n's own atmosphere around her floats! + +Thus, wife-like, for better or worse, is the above _portrait charmant_ +consigned to the dingy digits of an unidistinguishing printer's-devil; +so doth Cæsar's dust come to stop a bung-hole. One morsel more, about +children, blessed children, and for this bout I shall have tilted +sufficiently in the Muses' court; or, if it must be so said, unhandsome +critic, stilted to satiety in false heroics: stay--not false; judge me, +my heart. Suppose then an imaginary parent thus to speak about his + + +INFANT DAUGHTERS. + + Oh ye, my beauteous nest of snow-white doves, + What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? + My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, + My pretty flock of loving little girls, + My stores of happiness with least alloy, + My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! + Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm + On a young yearning mother's cradling arm; + The soft angelic smiles of natural grace + Tinting with love that other little face; + And the sweet budding of this sinless mind + In winning ways, that round my heart-strings wind, + Dear winning ways--dear nameless winning ways, + That send me joyous to my God in praise. + +Enough! not heartlessly, but to shame the heartlessness of YOUR +_ennui_, let me veil those holiest affections; yes, even at the risk of +leaving nominatives widowed of their faithful verbs, will I, until +required, epicise no more. Let these mauled bits be intimations of what +a little care might have made a little better. Gladly will I keep all +the remainder in a state quiescent, even to doubling Horace's wholesome +prescription of nine years: for it is impossible but that your fervent +poet, in the heat of inspiration, (credit me, lack-wits, there is such a +thing,) should blurt out many an unpalatable bit of advice, rebuke, or +virtuous indignation against homes in general, for the which sundry +conscience-stricken particulars might uncharitably arraign him. But +divers other notions are crowding into the retina of my mind's-eye: I +must leave my epic as you see it, and bid farewell, a long farewell, to +'_Home_.' Still shall my egotism have to appear for many weary pages a +most impartial and universal friend to the world of bibliopolists; I +cater multifariously for all varieties of the literary profession: +booksellers at least must own me as their friend, though the lucky purse +of Fortunatus saves me from being impaled upon the point of poor +Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [----] the questionable praise of +being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and +Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, +and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my +versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, +shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious +monosyllable.--Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on +those who love you. + + * * * * * + +To any one, much in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very +unsatisfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the +chaotic cobwebs of his mind; as he plods along penning it, a thousand +fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his +ever-teeming hot imagination cannot away with the slow process of +concreted composition. For me, I must write impromptu, or not at all; +none of your conventional impromptus, toils of half-a-day, as little +instantaneous as sundry patent lights; no working-up of laborious +epigrams, sedulously sharpened antitheses, or scintillative trifles, +diligently filed and polished; but the positive impromptu of longing to +be an adept at shorthand-writing, by way of catching as they fly those +swift-winged thoughts; not quick enough by half; most of those bright +colours unfixed; most of those fair semi-notions unrecorded. To say +nothing of reasons of time, there being other things to do, and reasons +of space, there being other things to write. And thus, good friend, +affectionately believe the best of these crude intimations of things +intellectual, which the husbandry of good diligence, and the golden +shower of Danæ's enamoured, and the smiles of the Sun of encouragement +might heretofore have ripened into authorship; nay, more, perhaps may +still: believe, generously, that if I could coil off quietly, like +unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics, +analytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and +better-defined proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I +would, and that I would, if the game were worth its candle. + +But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that +small-tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself +within the narrowest limits; a _diable boiteux_, not the huge spirit of +the Hartz; concentrated meat-lozenges, not _soup maigre_; pocket-pistols +of literature, not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a +mightier mass of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from +very brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable +plains of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are +left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is +abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the +friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing +by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon +on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than +he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and +down those airy promontories. + +I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of +yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this +unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject, +another work in my unseen circulating library, + + +THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM, + +ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES. + +Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating +booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It +might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical +wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from +antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked +the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story. +There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each +other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all +the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of +the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and +ages of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to +_ennui_. As thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern +favourite raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver +all upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith +falls into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might +concern the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end--delirium +tremens, or spontaneous combustion: better, perhaps, as less vulgarian, +the grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The +"Watch your opportunity" of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes of +some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napoleon of +war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the world, might +seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as their fellows +have served them well or ill; but a brief history of some hypocrite's +life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylobatist's +resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like a stork, +might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for Periander's +aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyramid-building +old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish proverbial +perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber clearing, +will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising "moderation in +all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal application, as +to pleasures, riches, and rank; or especially perhaps as preferring true +temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some +Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent +honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old +English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to +Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain +has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too +precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a +cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too +deeply seated in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such +caustic surgery as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by +patent gold-salve. + +Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and +illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I +trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original--ay, and more +entertaining, too--than the common run of magazine adventures. It may +not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my +unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men +about town, and ladies of the _pavé_. I protest against gilding crimes, +and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good +Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those +bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite +acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and +graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if +the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty, +care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and +Co.--inimitable Pickwick--hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and +escapes of murderers, aroint ye! + +Why then should I throw this cargo overboard?--Friend, my ship is too +full; _if_ I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it +within the limits of its originating fit, these things all might be less +abortive. But I doubt if my glorification of Greek aphorisms ever +reaches any higher apotheosis than the airy castles sketchily built +above. + + * * * * * + +Similar in idea with these last tales, but essentially more sacred as to +character, would be an illustrative elucidation of the seven last +sayings of our Blessed Lord, when dying in the crucifixion. The Romish +Church, in some of her imposing ceremonies, has caused the sayings to be +exhibited on seven banners, which are occasionally carried before the +holy cross: from this I probably derived the idea of detaching these +sentences from the frame-work of their contexts, and regarding them in +some sort as aphorisms. For a name, not to be tautologous, should be +proposed a Græco-Anglicism, + + +THE HEPTALOGIA; + +OUR SAVIOUR'S SEVEN LAST SAYINGS. + +The addition of "hagia" might be rather too Attic for English ears; and +I know not whether "the Sacred Heptalogia" would not also be too +mystical. This series of tales is capable of like illustration with the +last, except in the matter of portraits, unless indeed some eminent +fathers of the church, or some authenticated enamels, gems, or coins, +(if any,) displaying our Lord's likeness, served the purpose; and of +course the character of the stories should not be much in dissonance +with the sacredness of the text. The first might well enforce +forgiveness of enemies, especially if their hatred springs from +misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:" +many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial +torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere +conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid +among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might +enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the +efficacy of repentance: the certainty of hope and life being +co-extensive, so that it might still be said of the seeming worst, the +brigand and the blasphemer, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" +a story to check presumption, while it encourages the humility of +pentitent hope; the details of a prodigal's career and his return, say +a falsely philosophizing German student, or the excesses of some not +ungenerous outburst of youthful wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate +Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy +son--behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in +Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabæan mother, and her noble +children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the +Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the +case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth, +necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My +God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--the confidence of _my_ God +still, even in His recognised judgments trusted in as merciful: the +history of many an unrecorded Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear +children; an aged merchant beggared by the roguery of others, and his +very name blamelessly dishonoured; the extremity of a martyr's +sufferings; or some hunted soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;" +which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a +thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge--or physically also, in +some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of +Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the +torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip +Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught +from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings +might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more +advisable to shape the publication into seven sermons: but this, it will +at once be perceived, is not the present object; the word "sermons" has +to most men a repulsive sound, and a tale, similar in disguised motive, +may win, where an orderly discourse might unhappily repel: a teacher's +best influences are the indirect: like the conquering troops at +Culloden, his charge will be oblique; his weapon will strike the +unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, "It is +finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary value +of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed; but, more +generally, to display the evils and dangers of leaving mental, +spiritual, or even worldly good designs unfinished: a tale of natural +procrastination conquered, difficulties overcome, prejudices broken +down, and gigantic good effected: a Russian Peter, a literary Johnson, a +missionary Neff, a Wesley, or a Henry Martyn. The seventh, descanting +upon noble patience, and agonies vanquished by faith, the death and +glorious expectance of a martyr, the end of one of Fox's heroes; +"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Of necessity in these +Christian tales there would be more of sameness than in those heathen; +because it would be improper and impolitic, with such theses, to enter +much into the lower human passions and the common events of life. But my +intentions of further proceeding in this matter have, as at present, +very sensibly subsided; for many wise and many good might reasonably +object to making those holy last dying words mere pegs to hang moral +tales upon. The idea might please one little sect, and anger half the +world; I care not to behold it accomplished, and question my own +capabilities; only, as it has been an authorial project heretofore +conceived by me, suffer it to boast this brief existence. + + * * * * * + +It is scandalously reported of some folks that they are not musical, a +calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my own +convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I partly +acquiesce; that is to say--for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to +explain a little--although I _am_ charmed with all manner of music, +still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an +English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every +reason to despise my taste: especially if I add that Welsh songs, and +Scotch and Irish national melodies--[where are our English +gone?]--rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. And now this next +little notion is scarcely of substance sufficient to assume the garb of +authorship: it is little more than a passing whim, but I choose for the +very notion's sake to make it better known. Except in a very few +instances--as Haydn's '_Seasons_,' e.g.--Oratorios, from some +conventional idea of Lent, we may suppose, seem obligated to concern +matters sacred. Of course, every body is aware of the prayerful meaning +of the name; but we know also that a madrigal has long ago put off its +monkish robe of a hymn to the Virgin, and worn the more laic habit of a +love song. Now, it is a fact, that very many good men who delight in +Handel's melody, and of course cannot object to psalms and anthems, +entertain conscientious objections to hearing the Bible set to music in +a concert-room; and sure may we all be, that, unless the whole thing be +regarded as a religious service, (in a mixed gay company who think of +sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, +and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise, +and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing +despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a +mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor +splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, +the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some +lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen, +delighted with its melody, without the needless offence of seeming to +countenance idolatry; why should they not have solemn music, new or +ancient as may be adapted, administering to their patriotism, or their +tragic interests, or historic recollections, without grating against +their feelings of religious veneration?--To be specific, let me suggest +a subject, and show, for the benefit of any Pindar of this day, its +musical capabilities: we are, or ought to be as Englishmen, all stirred +at the name of + + +ALFRED; + +and he would minister as well to the harmonies of an oratorio as Abel, +or Jephtha, Moses, or St. Paul--nay, as the Messiah, or the last dread +Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied the +Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here for +gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot band, +and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly +royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of +children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the +churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot +in their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old-country-staves: +a storm might occur, with elemental crash: the succeeding silence of +nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight; their +war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in their +camp and in their cups; the hurlyburly of the fight--a hail-stone chorus +of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and clattering +horse-hoofs; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat between +Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor and bass; the +routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the conquerors +pressing on in steady overwhelming concord; how are the mighty +fallen--and praise to the God of battles! + +Most briefly, then, thus: there is religion enough to keep it solemn, +without being so experimental as to intrude upon personal prejudice. The +notion is too slight, and too slenderly worked out, even for admission +here, if I were not still, my shrewd and mindful reader, sedulously +endeavouring to get rid of all my brain-oppressing fancies: and this, +happening to come uppermost as I write, finds itself caught, to my +comfort. It is commended, if worth any thing, to the musical proficient: +for I might as well think of adding a note to the gamut as of trying to +compose an oratorio. + + * * * * * + +The authorial mind is infinitely versatile: books and book-making are +indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but +still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of +idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous +departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical +discovery, music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture as below, +give it exercise continually. The authorial mind never is at rest, but +always to be seen mounted and careering on one hobby-horse or other out +of its untiring stud. If the coin of some rude Parthian, or the +fragments of some old Ephesian frieze, serve not as a scope for its +present ingenuities, it will break out in a new method of grafting +raspberries on a rosebush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or +the safest machinery for a steamer. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_ is a rule +of moderation it repudiates; incessant energy provokes unabated +meddling, and its intuitive qualities of penetration, adaptation, and +concentration, are only hindered by the accidents of life from carrying +any one thing out to the point at least of respectable attainment. Look +at Michael Angelo; poet, painter, sculptor, architect, and author: and +if indeed we are not told of Milton having modeled, or Horace having +built up other monuments than his own imperishable fame, still nothing +but manual habit and the world's encouragement were wanting to perfect, +in the concrete, the conceptions of those plastic minds. Who will deny +that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a +heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic +architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, +the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the +delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine +poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and +Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or +Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest in this argument, the +heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of an Omniscient Author, +fairly written in a universal tongue of grandeur and beauty, of skill, +poetry, philosophy, and love. + +But let me not seem to prove too much, and so leap over my horse instead +of vaulting into the saddle: though authorship may claim thus +extensively every master-mind, from the Adorable Former of all things +down to the humblest potter at his wheel fashioning the difficult +ellipse; still, in human parlance, must we limit it to common +acceptations, and think of little more than scribe, in the name of +author. Nevertheless, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly +flung out, nurtured in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced +into foolish accusations of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is +general, (as if forsooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity, +and not liberally broadcast that he may run that reads,)--let such crude +considerations excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the +provinces of other men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal +division of labour, may be proved good by working well; but its lowering +influences on the individual mind cannot be doubted: that an intelligent +man should for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist +pin-heads, or wind cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving; +and while I grant great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make +some use of that argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to +exercise the mind on all things. Thus, in my assumed métier of +authorship, let notions be extenuated that popularly concern it little, +and yield admittance to any thought that may lead to that Athenian +desideratum, "some new thing." + +While the echoes of the name of Alfred still linger on the mind, and our +patriotism looks back with gratitude on his thousand virtues unsullied +by a fault, (at least that History, seldom so indulgent, has +recorded,)--while we reflect that in him were combined the wise king, +the victorious general, the enlightened scholar, the humble Christian, +the learned author, the excellent father, the admirable MAN in +all public and private relations, in domestic alike with social duties, +I cannot help wishing that forgetful England had raised some +architectural trophy, as a worthy testimonial of Alfred the noble and +the good. Whether Oxford, his pet child--or Westminster Hall, as mindful +of the code he gave us--or Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of +those sons of thunder whom the genius of Alfred first raised up to man +our wooden walls--should be the site of some great national memorial, +might admit of question; but there can be none that something of the +kind has been owing now near upon a thousand years, and that it will +well become us to claim boastingly for England so true, so glorious a +hero. With a view to expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the +topic in author-fashion, it has come into my thought how much we want a + + +LIFE OF ALFRED: + +my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered +from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old +time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written +originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a +popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a +translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified +dilution of '_Don Quixote_,') the primary source should be again +consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon +coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me +in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by +pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it +may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the +light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that +early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should +the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English +version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among +the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray +pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with +the world for writing so much before he reads. + +But this is an accessory--an episode; I plead for a statue to King +Alfred: and--(now for another episode; is there _no_ cure for these +desperate parentheses?)--_apropos_ of statues, let me, in the simple +untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some +recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more +presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a +scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin, +or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet +high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an +unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a +countenance so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I +presume that Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any +thing on its summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne +of higher and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,) +is the most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns: now, +Pompey, or, as some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus, +had that fine pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus; +at least, this is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie +three or four other columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and +believed to have been intended to support the triglyph of some new +temple. Pompey's idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either +entering the harbour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or +the like; but apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its +acknowledged ornament as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be +an architectural absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or +nothing to support: an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower +decorated with shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a +pyramid, or a Waltham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these +supporting nothing on their apices,) in fact, _any thing but_ a +Corinthian or Tuscan, or other regular pillar, seems to be permissable; +but for base, shaft, and capital to have nothing to do but lift a +telescopic man from earth's maternal surface, does look not a little +unreasonable; and therefore as much out of taste, as for the marble arch +at Buckingham Palace to spend its energies in supporting a flag-staff. + +The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit of +criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,) +because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the +recognised orders of architecture; it partakes rather of the character +of a triumphal tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly +from the rest; the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his +positive exploits; he does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon, +but like a gallant climber treading on his conquests: and, as to +Phocas's column at Rome, I shall only say, that it illustrates my +meaning, except in so far as an immense base to the super-imposed +statuere deems it from the jockey imputation of carrying too light a +weight. Now, with respect to the Nelson memorial, your meddlesome scribe +had an unexhibited notion of his own. Mehemet Ali is understood to have +given certain two obelisks respectively to the French and English +nations: the Parisians appropriated theirs, and have set it up, +thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an emblem of what African +conquest has been in the heartside of France; but we English, less +imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have permitted our _petit +cadeau_ to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, unclaimed and +unconsidered. + +Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour: and +if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have +proposed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by +shallow Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the +principal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an +alto-relievo of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid: the +globe and wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame, +and his now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance; a +sphinx, or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt, +should sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three +remaining doorways would be represented closed, and carved externally +with some allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile, +Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my +métier, (a happy métier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my +limnèd outline for the Nelson testimonial: the real interesting antique +needle, rising from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and +pointing to the skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk +raised upon a heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an +interior alto-relievo. + +It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an _alibi_ +prevented me from seeing, included several obelisks; but the +peculiarities I should have insisted on, would have been first to make +good use of the real thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and, +next, to have had our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the +eye. + +But to return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great +and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove +of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns +reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic +in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so +put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of +sticking heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the +summit of a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce +a most unlikely and chaotic treatise on + + +NATIONAL MEMORIALS. + + * * * * * + +Politics are a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a +Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My +principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of +self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet +coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice +principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend +reader, hear me profess myself honestly--if you approve, or +shamelessly--if you _will_ so think it--"a rabid Tory!" At least, by +such a nomenclature sundry veracious journals, daily leaders of the +public opinion, would call me, were such a groundling as I prominent +enough to attract their indignation; and, from all that can be gathered +from their condemnatory clauses against others like minded, I have no +little reason to be proud of the title. For, on collation of such +clauses with their causes, I find, and therefore take (under correction +always) the rabid Tory to be--a temperate lover of order, whom his +mother has taught to "fear God," his father to "honour the king," and +his pastor to "meddle not with them who are given to change." A rabid +Tory, in matters of national expenditure, remembers to have heard an old +unexploded proverb, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and +there is that withholdeth what is due, but it tendeth to poverty;" and +he is by no means sure that a certain mismanaged nation is not +immolating her prosperity to what actuaries would call economical +principles. A rabid Tory is bigoted enough to entertain a ridiculous +fear of that generation abstraction, Catholic Rome, whom further he is +sufficiently vulgar-minded to consider as a lady of easy virtue arrayed +in the colours of a cardinal: he thinks one Luther to be somewhat more +than a renegade monk; and is childish enough to venerate, when a man, +the same Liturgy which his grandmother had taught him when a boy. For +other matters, the higher born, the better bred, the more classically +educated, and the more extensively possessed of moneys and lands our +honest-spoken Tory may be, ten to one the more is he afflicted with this +rabbies: and his mad propensities become positively criminal, when, as a +magistrate or a captain of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in +honourable duty to quell the enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots, +whose innocent wishes rise no higher than to subvert the existing order +of things, to secure for themselves a reasonable share of parks, +palaces, and pocket-money, and (as the very justifiable means for so +happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in the temple of Freedom the rogues +who would object to being robbed, and the tyrants who would be bloody +enough to fight for life and liberty. + +A rabid Tory--you see it is a pet name of mine--feels no little contempt +for a squeezable character; and he is well assured, from history as well +as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived and died +upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cowards, whom +the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle induced to run +away, _relictis non bene parmulis_--the clamorous cohort of bullies, +whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly induced to +eat their words--the volunteer company of light-heeled swindlers, whom +nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has neglected to +inform how--every one, in short, whose grand maxim (_quocunque modo +rem_) is temporizing expediency, and with whom the cogent argument "you +shall" has more force than the silly conscience-whisper of "you +ought,"--contributes to swell the band which the professor of Toryism, +the abstracted follower of principles and not of men, has the honour of +beholding in the angle of his diagram, inscribed "contradictory." Not +that your true Tory believes so ill of _all_ his adversaries; there are +some few geese among the cranes; an Abdiel here and there, who has long +felt irksome in the host, but for false shame is there still; sundry +men, having ambitious or illuminated wives, and too amiable, or too +prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at home; some thronging the +opposite benches, because their fathers and grandfathers topographically +occupied those same seats--a decent reason, supposing similarity of +places and names, to insure similarity of principles and practice; and +some--I dislike them not for honesty--confessing and upholding the +republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an +unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment. Now, the rabid +Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your +midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to +any thing for an extra per centage--all these are his detestation: and +although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the +adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the +one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds--- with +neither money nor religion. Thus much of my reasonable rabies. + +One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we +have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong; if right, +do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do +a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is +false morality, and, therefore bad government. Why should not honesty +and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be guilty +of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? It +is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem +unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate the +noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him +abdicate rather than do wrong. + +But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading +deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to +set before the world of faction + + +A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS, + +which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be +synonymous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over +many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me +freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory: +for I fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one +who is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as +is common among arguers, _my_ doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to +reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay +them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned +Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little +tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of +absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the +dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency +for so great a task being conceded--no small supposition, by the way,) +much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fearful +example made of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for conduct very analogous +with numberless instances of modern Liberalism; the rights of rulers, as +well as of the governed; of kings, as well as people; the connexion +subsisting now, as through all former ages, between church and +state--well indeed and deeply argued out already by such great minds as +Coleridge and Gladstone, but perhaps, for general usefulness, requiring +a more brief and popular discourse; the question of passive obedience; +the true though unfashionable doctrine of man's general depravity +invalidating the consignment of power to the masses; and so forth. There +are, however, if Scripture is to be held a constitutional guide, some +examples to a certain extent contrary to the argument: as, elective +monarchy in the case of Saul; non-legitimate succession in families even +where election is omitted, as in the case of Solomon; and, honestly to +say it, many other difficulties of a like nature. In fact, upon the +whole, this distinction might be drawn; that although the Bible at large +favours what we may, for shortness' sake, term Conservative politics, +still it would not be easy to deduce from its page as code of rules, so +necessarily of a social, temporary, and accidental nature: The principle +is given, but little of the practice; the seed of true and undefiled +religion produces among other good fruit what we will call Conservatism, +but we must be very microscopic to detect that fruit in the seed: of +this admission let my _Liberal_ adversary make--as indeed he will--the +most; but let him remember that truth has always been most economically +distributed. It is a material too costly to be broadcast before swine; +and in slender evidence lurks more of moral test, than in stout +arguments and open miracles. At any rate, as unfitted for the task, I +leave it. For any thing mine un-book-learned ignorance can tell, the +very title may be as old as Christianity itself; it is a good name, and +a fair field. + +This manual was commenced in the form of familiar letters to a radical +acquaintance, whom I had resolved to convert triumphantly; but John +Locke disarmed me, without, however, having gained a convert: he made me +drop my weapon as Prospero with Ferdinand; but the fault lay with +Ferdinand, for want of equal power in the magic art. + + * * * * * + +"MEASURES, NOT MEN" is, as we have hinted already, the +ground-work of a true Tory's political creed; and measures themselves +only in so far as they expound and are consistent with principles. A man +may fail; the stoutest partisan become a renegado; and the pet measure +of a doughtiest champion may after all prove traitorous, unwise, +unworthy: but principle is eternally an unerring guide, a master to +whose words it is safe to swear, a leader whose flag is never lowered in +compromise, nor sullied by defeat. Defalcations of the generally +upright, derelictions of duty by the usually noble-minded, shake not +that man's faith which is founded on principle: for the cowardice, or +rashness, or dishonesty of some individual captain, he may feel shame, +but never for the _cause_ in which such hold commissions; he may often +find much fault with _soi-disant_ Tories, but never with the 'ism they +profess. We over-step their follies; we disclaim their corruptions; we +date above their faults; we wash our hands of their abuses. An +abstracted student in his chamber, building up his faith from the +foundations, and trying every stone of the edifice, takes little heed of +who is for him, and who against him, so Conscience is the architect, and +the Master of the house looks on approving. A man's mind is but one +whole; be it palace or hovel, feudal stronghold or Italian villa, it is +all of a piece: a duly subordinated spirit bears no superstructure of +the Radical, and the friable soil of discontented Liberalism, is too +sandy a foundation for ponderous fanes of the religious. + +I rejoice in being accounted one of those unheroic, and therefore more +useful, members of society, who profess to be by no means ambitious of +reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) well at +ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in his +case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached the acme +of human felicity; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, to +exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, of +royalty, and fully crediting that _never-quoted_ sentiment of +Shakspeare's "Uneasy," &c., my motto, within the legitimate limits of +right reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of +Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, "Whoever's king, I'll be +subject!"--ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While, +however, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing +circumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in +courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,) +still in mere speculation, and irrespectively of things as they are, our +abstract musings tended to approve the original word in its unextended +gender. Every one of Edmund Burke's school would honour the ensign of +Divine vice-regency wherever he found it; but, apart from this +uninquisitive respect, he will claim to be reasonably patriotic, +patriotically rational; habit encourages to practice one thing, but +theory may induce to think another. Now, little credence as so +unenlightened so illiberal an integer as I give to an equalization in +the rights of man, certainly on many accounts my blindness gives less to +the rights of women with man, and very far less to those rights over +man: it might be inconvenient to be specific as to reason; but the +working of an ultra-republican scheme, in which females should ballot as +well as males, would briefly illustrate my meaning. Barbarism makes +gentle woman our slave; right civilization raises her into a loving +helpmate; but what kind of wisdom exalts her into mastery? + +Readily, however, shall sleep in dull suppression sundry comments on a +certain Rhenish law, whereof my author's mind had at one time studiously +cogitated a grave and wholesome homily. For our censor of the press, one +strait-laced Mr. Better Judgment, has, "with his abhorred shears," +clipped off the more eloquent and spirited portion of a trenchant +argument concerning--the revealed doctrine of a superior sex, the social +evils of female domination, church-headships considered as to type and +antitype, improper influences, necessary hindrances, anomalous example, +feminine infirmities, and an infinitude more such various objections +springing out of this fertile subject. Thereafter might have come the +historical view, evils and perils, for the majority of instances, +following in the wake of such mastery. However, to leave these +questionable matters quiescent, the principles of passive obedience +mildly interpose, forbidding to stir the waters of commotion, although +with healing objects, for the sake of an abstract theory; there is +ill-meant change enough afloat, without any call for well-intentioned +meddlers to launch more. So, judicious after-thought resolves rather to +strengthen too-much-weakened authority, in these ungovernable times, +than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at +the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking +away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish +magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that +injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far +too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to +be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always +under shelter of a domino, and protesting against any who would move my +mask, I confess to + + +WOMAN, A SUBJECT: + +it was a mere speculative argument; a flock of fancies now roaming +unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion--"black, +white, and gray, with all their trumpery." + + * * * * * + +Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are to me +what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions +little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a +very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many +pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction +of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile +wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil +wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it; +and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been used +scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest as +my own, though fixed in full hostility--and so, courteously be entreated +for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to regard me as +sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. We have heard of +women marrying men they may detest, in order to get rid of them: even +with such an object is here indited the last I ever intend to say about +politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this page will cease to +haunt my brain; and let no one doubt but that after relief from these +pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, less unamiable, +less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, suffer with all +brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my patriotic +conscience; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's mind in +consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. Every +successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece of what my +view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has +pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day, +session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound +in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena: +eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation +and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries. +Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals, +and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal +centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism +ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full +patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged, +Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of _any_ kind preferred to sober +Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect +wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the +constitution:--these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel +Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly +let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto, +surnamed + + +FALSE STEPS; + +BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN; + +a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity, +destined at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found +all that sort of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in +numberless newspaper articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge +requisite, and my little practice in controversy, could have managed, +that I wisely drew in my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided +upon not proceeding political pamphleteer, till, on awaking some fine +morning, I find myself returned to parliament for an immaculate +constituency. + +Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor +despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not +trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend +"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his +after-dinner topic: but we will cut him short; for, in fact, nothing can +be more provoking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than +this perpetual intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me, +with matters they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate. + + * * * * * + +A poet is born a poet, as all the world is well aware; and your +thorough-paced lawyer is not less born a lawyer; while the junction of +these two most militant incompatibles clearly bears out the hackneyed +quotation as above, with the final misfit, that is, "_non fit_." Your +poetaster at the bar is that grotesque ideal, which Flaccus thought so +funny that his friends _must_ laugh; (although really, Romans, it _is_ +possible to contemplate a sort of sphinx figure, "a human head to a +horse's neck," and so on, varied plumes and all, without much chance of +a guffaw;) and yonder sickly-looking clerk, perched upon his high stool, +penning "stanzas while he should engross," is the lugubrious caricature +of Apollo on his Pegassus, with Helicon for inkstand. + +It may be nothing extraordinary that, jostled in so wide a theatre as +ours of the world, chance-comers should not, at once or at all, +comfortably find their proper places; but that wise-looking chaperons, +having with prospective caution duly taken a box, should by malice +prepense thrust all the big people in front, and all the little folks +behind, is rather hard upon the latter, and not a little foolish in +itself. Even so in life: who does not wish a thousand times he could +help some people to change places? Look at this long fellow, fit for +Frederick of Prussia's regiment of giants: his parents and guardians +have bent him double, broken his spirit, and spoiled his paces, by +cramming him, a giraffe in the stable, between that frigate's gun-decks +as a middy: while yonder martial little bantam, by dint of exaggerated +heels, and exalted bear-skin, peeps about among his grenadiers, much as +Brutus and Cassius did with their collossal Cæsar. So also of minds: +look at brilliant Burns, the exciseman; and quaintly versatile Lamb, the +common city clerk: Look at--had you only patience, you should have +examples by the gross; but, to make a shorter tale of it, (I presume +this shows the etymology of cur-tail,) just think over the pack of your +acquaintance, and see if you could not shuffle those kings, queens--yes, +and knaves too--more to your satisfaction, and their own advantage: at +least, so most folks imagine, silly meddlers as they are; for, after +all, what with human versatility, and the fact of a probationary state, +and the influence of habit, and the drudging example set by others, +things work so kindly as they are, that, notwithstanding misfits, the +wiser few must be of Pope's mind, "whatever is, is right;"--ay, that it +is. + +A year or two ago--if your author is little better than one of the +foolish now, what in charity must he have been then?--I took it upon me +to indite an innocent, stingless satire, whereof for samples take the +following. Skip them one and all; you will, if you are wise, for they +bear the ban of rhyme, are peevish, dull, ill-reasoned; but if you are +not wise, (and, strange to say, malicious people tell me there are many +such,) you may wish to see in print a metred inconclusive grumble. Take +it, then, if you will, as I do, merely for a change; at any rate, your +manciple has furnished this buttery of yours with ample choice of +viands; and omnivoracious as man may be--gormandizing, with gusto, fat +moths in Australia, cockchafers at Florence, frogs in France, and snails +in Switzerland, equally as all less objectionable meats, drinks, fruits, +roots, composites, and simples--still, in reason, no one can be expected +or expect himself to like every thing: have charity, for what suits not +one man's taste may please the palate of another; so hear me +complacently turn + + +"KING'S EVIDENCE," + +and give heed to certain confessions, extorted under the _peine forte et +dure_ of a whilom state legal. Yet, when I come to consider of this, +(_mihi cogitanti_, as school themes invariably commenced,) it strikes my +memory that all confessions, short of the last dying one, are weak and +foolish impertinence; whether Jean Jacques or Mr. Adams thought so, or +caused others to think so, are separate topics beside the question: for +myself, I will spare you a satire dotted with as many I's as an Argus +pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome +contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's +cast-off mistress, the Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine +amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be +tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still +unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning +innumerable black sheep that crowd about a woolsack; especially of +certain "highly respectables," whom the omnipotence of parliament (no +less power presumably being competent) commands to be accounted +"gentlemen." Should then my meagre sketches seem but little spiteful, +accord me credit for tolerance at the expense of wit, (yea, in mine own +garbled satire, hear it Juvenal!) and view them kindly in the same light +as you would sundry emasculated extracts from a discreet Family +Shakspeare. Indignation ever speaks in short sharp queries; and it is +well for the printer's pocket that the self-experience hereof was +considered inadmissible, for a new fount of notes of interrogation must +have been procured: as it is, we are sailing quietly on the Didactic +Ocean, and have, I fear, been engaged some time upon topics actionable +on a charge of _scandalum magnatum_. Hereof then just a little sample: +let us call it '_A Judgment in the Rolls Court_;' or in any other; I +care not. + + Precedent's slave, this mountebank decides + As great Authority, not Reason, guides. + "'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say + Faults can be mended at this time of day, + For Coke himself declared--no matter what-- + Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not? + And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan, + Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man: + I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just, + My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must; + That _very_ learned Lord could not be wrong. + Besides, in fact, it has been settled long, + For the great case of Hitchcock versus Bundy + Decided--(Cro. Eliz. per Justice Grundy), + That [black was white];--and so, what can I say? + Landmarks are things must not be moved away: + I cannot put the clock of Wisdom back, + And solemnly pronounce that black _is_ black. + Though plaintiff has the right, I grant it clear, + I must be ruled by Hoax and Hitchcock here: + Equity follows, does not mend the laws: + Therefore declare, defendant gains the cause." + +Then, as virtuously bound, Indignation interrogates sundry +ejaculations; or, if you like it better, ejaculates sundry +interrogations: as thus, take a brace: + + If right and reason both combine in one, + Why, in God's name, should justice not be done? + If law be not a lie, and judgments jokes, + Why not _be just_, and cut adrift Lord Hoax? + +After a vast deal more in this vein of literature--for you perceive my +present purpose is dissection in part of this ancient rhyme--we arrive +at a magnanimous-- + + No! Right shall have his own, put off no longer + By rule of Former, or by whim of Stronger; + Nor, because Jack goes tumbling down the hill, + Shall precedent create a tumbling Jill. + Public opinion soon shall change the scene, + And wash the Law's Augæan stable clean; + Sweep out the Temple, drive the sellers thence, + And lead, in novel triumph, Common Sense. + +Verily, this is of the dullest, but it is brief: endure it, and pray you +consider the deadliness of the topic, and the barbarous cruelty +wherewith courtesy has clipped the wings of my poor spite. Let us turn +to other title-pages; assuring all the world that no specific mountebank +has been here intended, and that nothing more is meant than a nerveless +blow against legal cant, quainter than Quarles's, and against that +well-known species of Equity, which must have been so titled from like +antiquated reasons with those that induced Numa and his company to call +a dark grove, lucus. + + * * * * * + +How many foes, in this utilitarian era, has that very unwarrantable +vice, called Poetry! All who despise love and love-making, all who +prefer billiards to meditation, all who value hard cash above mental +riches, feel privileged to hate it; while really, typographers, the +illegible diamond print in which you generally set it up, whether in +book, or newspaper, or handbill, or magazine, induces many an +indifferent peruser to skip the poem for the sake of his eye-sight. I +presume that the monosyllable, rhyme, comprehends pretty nearly all that +the world at large intends by poetry; and, in the same manner as certain +critics have sneered at Livy--no, it was Tacitus--for commencing his +work with a bad hexameter, so many a reader will now-a-days condemn a +whole book, because it is somewhere found guilty of harbouring a +distich. But poetry, friend World, means far other than rhyme; its +etymology would yield "creation," or "fabrication," of sense as well as +sound, and of melody for the eye as well as melody for the ear. So did +[_epoiese_] Milton; and so did not---- Well, I myself, if you will. Yet, +in fact, there are fifty other kinds of poetries, beside the poetry of +words: as the poetry of life--affection, honour, and hope, and +generosity; the poetry of beauty--never mind what features decorate the +Dulcinea, for this species of poetry is felt and seen almost only in +first love; the poetry of motion, as first-rates majestically sailing, +furiously scudding waves, bending corn-fields, and, briefly, all things +moveable but railway-trains; the poetry of rest, as pyramids, a tropical +calm, an arctic winter, and generally all things quiescent but a +slumbering alderman; the poetry of music, heard oftener in a country +milkmaid's evening song, than in many a concert-room; the poetry of +elegance, more natural to weeping willows, unbroken colts, flames, +swans, ivy-clad arches, greyhounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those +_pirouette_-ing and _very_ active _danseuses_ of the opera; the poetry +of nature, as mountains, waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all +manner of landscapes, except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art, +acqueducts, minarets, Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate +designs; the poetry of ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers; +and the poetry of awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr. +trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of +impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose, +(for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace: +for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of +doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to +its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will +save her from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your +innumerous dull lyrics--ay, and mine--your unnatural heroics--I too have +sinned thus--your up-hill sonnets--that labour of folly have I known as +well--in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the +cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it: as an +average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or +a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the +age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly +may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has +lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has +robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men +of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try +a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom +the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with +advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at '_Johnson's +Lives_.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without +rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?--With a +few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope--and +shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?--are there,) a more wretched +set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The +poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the +lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulsome flattery of +titles, and foolish adoration of painted shepherdesses: poor weak +hobbling lines, eked out by 'eds and expletives, often terminated by +false rhymes, and made lamer by triplets and dreary Alexandrines; +ill-selected subjects, laboured, indelicate, or impossible similes, +passions frigid as Diana, wit's weapons dull as lead. Yet these (many +exceptions doubtless there were, and many redeeming _morceaux_ even in +the worst, charitable reader, but as of the rule we speak not falsely), +these are the poets of England, the men our great grandfathers delighted +to honour, the feared, the praised, the pensioned, and those whom we +their children still denominate--the poets! Praise, praise your stars, +ye lucky imps of Fame! who could tolerate you now-a-days?--You lived in +golden times, when Dorset, Harley, Bolingbroke, Halifax, and Company, +gave away places of a thousand a-year, as but justly due to any man who +could pen a roaring song, fabricate a fulsome sonnet, or bewail in +meagre elegiacs the still-resisting virtue of some persecuted Stella! +Happy fellows, easy conquisitors of wealth and fame, autocrats of +coffee-houses, feted and favoured by town-bred dames! In those good old +times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was sure to lead to a +Ministry-of-State, and even an epigram produced its pension: to be a +poet, or reputed so, was to be--eligible for all things; and the +fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe +with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the +past--and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long farewell, +children of oblivion! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King, +Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore: ye who, in that day of very small +things, just rose, as your Leviathan biographer so often testifies, "to +a degree of merit above mediocrity:" ye who--but (Candor and good +Charity, I thank you for the hint,) limited indeed is my knowledge of +your writings, ye long-departed poets, whom I thus am base enough to +pilfer of your bays; and therefore, if any man among you penned aught of +equal praise with "_My Mind to me a Kingdom is_," or "_No Glory I covet, +no Riches I want_," humbly do I cry that good man's pardon. Believe that +I have only seen the château of your fame, but never the rock on which +it rested; and therefore candidly consider, if I might not with reason +have accounted it a castle in the air? + +Now, after this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of +old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny +would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring +exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with +those slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with +poetry; in public I abjure and do renounce the minx: and although +privately my author's mind is so silly as to doat right lovingly on such +an ancient mistress, and has wasted much time and paper in her praise or +service, still that mind is sufficiently self-possessed in worldly +prudence, as to set seemingly little store on the worth of an +acquaintance so little in the fashion. Therefore I disown and disclaim + + +A VOLUME OF POETICS, + +ill-fated offspring of a foolish father; miscellaneous collection of +occasionals and fugitives, longer or shorter, as the army of Bombastes. +Poetical as in verity I must confess to have been, (using the word +"poetical" as most men use it, and the words "have been" in the sense of +Troy's existence,) there must have lingered in me, even at that +hallucinating period, some little remnant of prosaic wisdom; for it is +now long since that I consigned to the most voracious of elements all +the more love-sick rhythmicals, and all the more hateful satiricals. +Now, I will maintain that act of incremation to be one of true heroism, +nearly equal to the judgment of Brutus; nor less is it matter of +righteous boasting to have immolated (warned by Charles Lamb's ghost) +divers albuminous preparations, which to have to do, were, Clio knows, +little pleasure, and to have done, we all know, as little praise. Such +light follies are like skeins of cotton, or adjectives, or babies, unfit +to stand alone; haply, well enough, times and things considered, but +totally unworthy to be dragged out of their contexts into the +imperishability of print; it is to take flies out of treacle, and embalm +them in clear amber. As to sonnets, what real author's mind will not, +if honest, confess to the almost daily recurrence of that symptom of his +disease? With mine, at least, they have increased, and are increasing; +yea, more--as a certain statesman suggested of Ireland's multitudinous +_pisantry_, or as tavern patriots declare of the power of the +crown--they ought to be diminished. Nevertheless, resolutely do I hope +that some of these at least are little worthy of the days of good Queen +Anne. + +In matters of the sacred muse, lengthily as others have I trespassed +heretofore; the most protracted _fytte_, however, made a respectable +inroad on a new metrical version of the '_Psalms_,' attempting at any +rate closer accuracy from the Hebrew than Brady's, and juster rhymes +than Sternhold's: but this has since been better done by another bard. +On the whole budget of exploded poeticals is now legibly inscribed "to +be kept till called for," a period rather more indefinite than the +promise of a spendthrift's payment. Let them rest in peace, those +unfortunate poetics! + +There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry +metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really +_waste-failures_ as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westphalias. +For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be +more desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt +upon the tinder-box of social intercourse; and to detach such a sentence +from its producing circumstances, is about as efficacious a method of +producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet +grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than +abortive efforts at the humorous; the stream of conversation instantly +freezes up; the disconcerted punster wears the look of his well-known +kinsman, the detected pickpocket; and a scribe, so mercilessly suicidal +as regards his better fame, deserves, when a plain blunt jury comes to +sit upon the body, to be found in mystical Latin, _felo de se_, or in +plain English "a fellow deceased." + +"There shall come in the last days, scoffers;" those same last days in +which "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." It +is true that these phrases (quoted with the deepest reverence, though +found in lighter company) are forcibly taken from their context; but +still, the judgment of many wise among us will agree that they present a +remarkable coincidence: in this view of the case, and it is a most +serious one, the concurrent notoriety of humour having just arisen like +a phoenix from its ashes, of railroads and steamboats having partially +annihilated space, and of the strides which education, if not intellect, +has made upon the highroad of human improvement, assumes an importance +greater than the things themselves deserve. To a truly philosophic ken, +there is no such thing as a trifle; the ridiculous is but skin-deep, +papillæ on the surface of society; cut a little deeper, you will find +the veins and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride +the notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books +of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular +views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil +and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick +upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are +flying forward before a storm. As symptoms of changing nationality, and +of a disposition to make fun of all things ancient and honourable, and +wise, and mighty, and religious, they serve to evidence a state of the +universal mind degenerated and diseased. Still, let us not be too +severe; and, as to individual confessions, let not me play the +hypocrite. Like every thing else, good in its good use, and evil only in +abuse of its excesses, humour is capable of filling, and has filled, no +lightly-estimable part in the comedy of temporal happiness. What a good +thing it is to raise an innocent and cheerful laugh; to inoculate +moroseness with hearty merriment; to hunt away misbelieving care, if not +with better prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations; +to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour +has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after +office-drudgery--an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. +Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more +than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic +panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you +on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who +lanterns his path by the glaring eyes of his own truncated head); and +when it ceases to become merely the casual scintillation, the flitting +_ignus fatuus_ of a summer evening--then only is wit to be condemned. +Often, for mine own poor part in this most mirthful age, have I had + + +HEARTY LAUGHS, + +IN PROSE AND VERSE; + +but take no thought of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in +the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's +hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing +inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who +dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, these +acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some fifty +more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby, +and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention--(but that +artists are authors)--laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and +inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently +ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age +more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would cease +to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in that wake, to be +reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do harm to his own +reputation? There are professors enough in this quadrangle of the +college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing obesity, without +so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours on the world: and +surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, thundering their +mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. Paul's, may well +frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as the frog with +the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like Bottom's +Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as your +sucking-dove. + + * * * * * + +Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great +distinguishing characteristic of an author's mind; pen and ink are to +it, what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we +do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the +other--their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest +that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged +OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more +provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe +unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to +prove some printed hand-book _quite wrong_ in the number of steps up a +round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the +once fair fame of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how +pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story +of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of +friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and +to taste the dulcet joys of those first essays at authorship. A great +charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the +mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters +that have made it memorable: moreover, for fixing scenery on the mental +retina, as well as for comparison of notes as to an _alibi_, for duly +remembering things heard and seen, as well as for being humbled in +having (as a matter inevitable) left unseen just the best lion of the +whole tour, journals are a most praiseworthy pastime, and usually rank +among the earliest efforts of an embryo author's mind. + +It is a thing of commonest course, that, in this age of inveterate +locomotion, your present humble friend, now talking in this candid +fashion with your readership, has been every where, seen every thing, +and done his touristic devoirs like every body else about him: also, as +a like circumstance of etymological triviality, that he has severally, +and from time to time, recorded for self-amusement and the edification +of others all such matters as holiday-making school-boys and +boarding-misses, and government-clerks in their swift-speeding vacation, +and elderly gentlemen vainly striving to enjoy their first fretful +continental trip, usually think proper to descant upon. Of such +manuscripts the world is clearly full; no catacomb of mummies more +fertile of papyri; no traveller so poor but he has by him a packet of +precious notes, whereon he sets much store: every tourist thinks he can +reasonably emulate clever Basil Hall, in his eloquent fragments of +voyages and travels; and I, for my part, a truth-teller to my own +detriment, am ashamed to confess the existence of + + +A DECADE OF JOURNALS; + +which of olden time my _cacoethes_ produced as regularly as recurred the +summer solstice. Unlike that of Livy's, I am satisfied that this poor +Decade be irrevocably lost; but, for dear recollection's sake of days +gone by, intend it at least to be spared from malicious incremation. +Records of roamings in romantic youth, witnesses of wayward way-side +wanderings, gayly with alliterative titles might your contents, _à la +Roscoe_, be set forth. But--what conceivable news can be told at this +time of day about the trampled Continent, and the crowded British isles? +Had my luck led me to Lapland or Formosa, to Mexico or Timbuctoo, to the +top of Egyptian pyramids or the bottom of Polish salt-mines, my +authorship would long since have publicly declared, in common with many +a monkey, that it had "seen the world." As things are, to Bruce, +Buckingham, Belzoni, and that glorious anomaly, the blind brave Holman, +let us leave the harvest of praise, worthy to be reaped as their own by +modern travellers. + + * * * * * + +More, yet more, most exemplary of listeners; and a web or webs of very +various texture. Let any man tell truths of himself, and seem to be +consistent, if he can. From grave to gay, from simple to severe, is the +line most expressive of such foolish versatility as mine; _varium et +mutabile semper_, to one thing constant never. I have heard, or read, +among the experiences of a popular preacher, that one of his most +vexatious petty temptations, was the rise of humorous notions in his +mind the moment he stepped into the pulpit; and it is well known that +many a comic actor has been afflicted with the blackest melancholy while +supporting right facetiously his best, because most ludicrous character. +Let such thoughts then as these, of the frailties incident to man, serve +to excuse the present juxtaposition of fancies in themselves +diametrically opposite. + +It is proper to preamble somewhat of apology before announcing the next +presumptuous tractate; presumptuous, because affecting to advise some +thousands of men whose office alike and average character are sacred, +and just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired counsel? Read +the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously inflamed for the +cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against sundry lukewarm +cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love with the +Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-extenuated evils of +omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and truly, not long +since, for few things in this book can boast of higher antiquity than a +most modern existence, some things being the birth of an hour, some of a +day, a week, or a month; and not more than one or two above a twelve +month's age.--Alas, for Horace's forgotten counsels!--alas, for Pope's +and Boileau's reiterated prescription of revisal for--_morbleu et +parbleu_--nine years!] I wrote then a good cantle of an essay addressed +to the clergy on some matters of judicious amelioration, which we will +call, if you please--and if the word hints be not objectionable-- + + +LAY HINTS. + +Now, as to the unclerical authorship of this, it is wise that it be done +out of métier. Laymen are more likely to gain attention in these +matters, from the very fact of their influence being an indirect one, +speaking as they do rather from the social arm-chair, the high-stool of +the counting-house, or the benches of whilom St. Stephen's, than _ex +cathedrâ_ as of office and of duty. + +It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote +tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have +commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic +let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of +taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a +Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so +commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. +Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, +appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture--Gothic, +Norman, and Saxon: the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted +up with galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a +steeple. But all this is useless gossip. + +Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet +strongholds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as +perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same +communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like +parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one +will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain +conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and +repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of +a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population. +Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of +congregational accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary +lecture-rooms present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient. +But all this again is vain talking--a very empty expenditure of words; +we must be satisfied with churches as they are; and, after all, let me +readily admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as +belfries; (probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of +Ireland;) and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds +perfect what theory condemns as wrong, so--let these things pass. + +Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate and +abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ringers, +and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost every +hallowed precinct: pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad +companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and +ever-grumbling menials. Next, give more sublunary heed, we beseech you, +to the comforts or discomforts incidental to doors, windows, stoves, +paint, dust, dirt, and general ventilation; consider the cold, fevers, +lumbagos, rheums, life-long aches, and fatal pains too often caught +helplessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country +church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of +time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly +that insubordinate phalanx of _soi-disant_ musicians, a rustic +orchestra; and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the +huntsman's horn, the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the +wry-necked pipe. Much is being now done for congregational psalmody; but +when will country folks give up their murderous execution of the +fugue-full anthem, and when will London congregations understand that +the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? +When shall Bishop Kenn's '_Awake my soul_,' cease to be our noonday +exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our +eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon +discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if +possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk; +insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise +in the scale of society one of the leaders of its worship: as, at +present, these stagnant, recreant, ignorant clerks are sad +stumbling-blocks; no help to the congregation, and a nuisance to its +minister. In reading--suffer this foolishness, my masters--fight against +the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull formality; we take you +for earnest living guides to our devotion, not mere dead organs of an +oft-repeated service; quicken us by your manner; a psalm so spoken is +better than the sermon. In more fitting places has your author long ago +delivered his mind concerning matters of a character more directly +sacred than shall here find room; as, the sacrament with its holy +mysteries, and the many things amendable in ordinary preachments; but +for these my unseasonable Wisdom shrouds itself in Silence: therefore, +to do away with details, and apply a general rule, above all things, and +in all things, strive by judicious acquiescence with human wants, and +likings, and failings too, if conscientiously you can, as well as by +spirited and true devotion, to break down the sluggish mounds of needful +uniformity, and to build up round the church a rampart of good sense: +and so, Heaven bless your labours! A word more: if it be possible, take +no fees at a baptism, and let it not be thought, by either rich or poor, +that an entrance into Christ's fold must be paid for; no, nor at a +burial; but let the service for the Christian dead be accorded freely, +without money and without price. To a wedding, the same ideas are not +perhaps so closely applicable; therefore we will generously suffer that +you keep your customs there; but on the introduction of a little one to +the bosom of the church, or restoring the body of a saint to Him who +made it of the dust, nothing can be more repulsive to right religious +feelings than to be bothered by a fee-seeking clerk, thrusting in your +face an itching palm: to the poor, these things are more than a mere +annoyance; they amount to a hardship and a hindrance; for such demands +at such seasons are often nothing less than a bitter extortion upon the +self-denial of conscientious duty. + +More might be added; but enough, too much has been alluded to. Nothing +would strengthen the bulwarks of our Zion more than such easy reforms as +these: recent happy revivals in our church would thus be more +solidified; and where, as now, many have been lulled to slumber, many +grieved, many become disgusted or Dissenters, our sons and our daughters +would grow up as the polished corners of the temple, and crowds would +throng the courts of our holy and beautiful House. + +Suffer thus far, clerical and lay, these crude hints: in all things have +I studied brevity, throughout this little bookful; therefore are you +spared a perusal of my reasons, and so be indulgent for their absence. I +"touch your ears" but lightly; be you for charity, as in old Rome, my +favourable witnesses. + + * * * * * + +My before-mentioned Censor of the press had a very considerable mind to +dock all mention of the following intended _brochure_. But I answered, +Really, Mr. Judgment, (better or worse, as occasion may register your +Agnomen,) you must not weigh trifles in gold-assaying scales; be not so +particular as to the polish of a thumb-nail; endure a little incoherent +pastime; count not the several stems of hay, straw, stubble--but suffer +them to be pitch-forked _en masse_, and unconsidered: it is their +privilege, in common with that of certain others--lightnesses that froth +upon the surface of society. Moreover, let me remind your worship's +classicality that no one of mortals is sapient at all times. Item, that +if friend Flaccus be not a calumniator, even the rigid virtue of the +antiquer Cato delighted in so stimulant a vanity as wine hot. So give +the colt his head, and let it go: remembering always that this same +colt, as straying without a responsible rider, is indeed liable to be +impounded by any who can catch him; but still, if he be found to have +done great damage to his master's character, or to a neighbour's fences, +the estray shall rather be abandoned than acknowledged. Let then this +unequal work, this ill-assorted bundle of dry book-plants, this +undirected parcel of literary stuff, be accounted much in the same +situation as that of the wanton caitiff-colt, so likely to bait a-pound, +and afterwards to be sold for payment of expenses, in true bailiff-sense +of justice. And let thus much serve as discursive prolegomena to a +notion, scarcely worth recording, but for the wonder, that no professed +writer (at least to my small knowledge) has entered on so common-sense a +field. Paris, I remember, some years ago was inundated with copies of a +treatise on the important art of tying the cravat; every shop-window +displayed the mystic diagrams, and every stiff neck proclaimed its +popularity. This was my yesterday's-conceived precedent for entertaining +the bright hope of illuminating London on the subject of shaving: + + +ANTI-XURION; + +A CRUSADE AGAINST RAZORS, + +should have been my taking title; and perchance the learned treatise +might have been characteristically illustrated with steel cuts. Shaving +is a wider topic than most people think for; it is a species of insanity +that has afflicted man in all ages, deprived him of nature's best +adornment in every country under heaven. So contradictorily too; as +thus: the Spanish friar shaves all but a rim round his head, which rim +alone sundry North American aborigines determine to extirpate; John +Chinaman nourishes exclusively a long cue, just on that same inch of +crown-land which the P.P. sedulously keeps as bare as his palm: all the +Orientals shave the head, and cherish the beard; all the Occidentals +immolate the beard, and leave the honours of the head untouched. Then, +again, the strange successive fashions in this same unnatural, unneedful +depilation; look at the vagaries of young France: not to descend also to +savage men, and their clumsy shell-scrapings; and to devote but little +time to the voluminous topic of wigs, male and female, cavalier and +caxon, Marlborough and monstrous maccaroni--from the plaited +Absalom-looking periwig of a Pharaoh in the British Museum, to +Truefitt's last patent self-adjuster. Of all these follies, and their +root a razor, might we show the manifest absurdity: we might argue upon +Eastern stupidity as caused by thickness of the skull, such thickness +being the substitute for thatchy hair suggested by kind ill-used Nature +as the hot brain's best protection: we might reason upon the average +sheepishness of this peaceful West, as due to having shorn the lion of +his mane, Phoebus of his glory, man of his majestic beard. Then the +martyrdom it is to many! who stoically, day after day, persist in +scratching to the quick their irritable chins, and after all to little +better end than the diligent earning of tooth-aches, ear-aches, colds, +sore throats, and unbecoming blank faces. Habit, it is true, makes us +deem that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have +so) think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have +held a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification: prisoned +paupers in the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded, +and King David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes _not_ to +have been shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also, +it is equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin; by +razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as +in the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the +wand of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal +prejudices: so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to +live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a +watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class +_Welleria coachmanensis_ are now some time become,) still we desire all +possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland, +we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable +indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache +and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's +manes, or the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow +unsophisticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but +diligently squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural +manly decorations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham, +and Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable +apostolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our +comfortless starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more +in lieu thereof open necks and vandyke borders. + +Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon +this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present +close-fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare +imitate--this cumbersome, unbecoming garb--might, should, ought to be, +and would be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether +garments: cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest +of all imaginable head-dresses; and in lieu of the smock-frock +Macintosh, or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from +the shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By +way of distinguishing the now confused classes of society, my radical +reform in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their +own heraldic colours and livery buttons; and humbler domesticated +creatures walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have +presumed to call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let +us sensibly retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess: I will not say, +copy a Sir Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man +at the mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloured silk, trimmed +with fur;" neither, under these dingy skies, would I care to walk abroad +with Sir Philip Sidney in satin boots, or with Oliver Goldsmith in a +peach-coloured doublet: but still, for very comfort's sake, let us break +our bonds of cloth and buckram, and, in so far as adornment is +concerned, let us exchange this staid funeral monotony for the gallant +garb of our ancestors, the brave costumes of our Edwards and the bluff +King Hal. + +Behold, too scornful friend, how my Tory rabies reaches to the wardrobe. +The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble opinion, gone +far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize Egypt, to +degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry +republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the +undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold +cosmopolites. But enough of this: pews and spires are to my Quixotism +not more unextinguishable foes, than coats, cravats, waistcoats, and +unnameables. + +And now an honest word at parting, about such trivialities of +authorship. Why should a poor shepherd of the Landes for ever wear his +stilts? Or a tragic actor, like some mortified La Trapist, never be +allowed to laugh? Or Mr. Green be denied any other carriage than the +wicker car of his balloon? Even so, dear reader, pr'ythee suffer a +serious sort of author sometimes to take off his wig and spectacles, and +condescend to think of such minor matters as the toilet and its +still-recurring duties. And, if you _should_ find out the veritable name +of your weak confessing scribe, think not the less kindly of his graver +volumes; this one is his pastime, his holiday laugh, his purposely +truant, lawless, desultory recreance: impute not folly to the face of +cheerfulness; be charitable to such mixtures of alternate gayety and +soberness as in thine own mind, if thou searchest, thou shall find; let +me laugh with those that laugh, as well as sympathize with weepers; and +cavil not at those inconsistencies, which of a verity are man's right +attributes. + + * * * * * + +Ideas lie round about us, thick as daisies in a summer meadow. For my +own part, I know not what a walk, or a talk, or a peep into a book may +lead me to. Brunel hit upon the notion of a tunnel-shield, from the +casual sight of a certain water-beetle, to whom the God of Nature had +given a protecting buckler for its head. Newton found out gravitation, +by reasoning on the fall of an apple from the tree. Almost every +invention has been the suggestion of an accident. Even so, to descend +from great things to small, did a solitary stroll in most-English +Devonshire hint to me the next fair topic. It was while wandering about +the Pyrenean neighbourhood of Linton and Ly'mouth not many months ago, +that my reveries became concentrated for divers hallucinating hours on a +very pretty book, with a very pretty title. And here let me remark +episodically, that I pride myself on titles; what compositors call +"monkeyfying the title-page" is known to be a talent of itself, and one +moreover to which in these days of advertisements and superficialities +many a meagre book has owed its popular acceptance. The titles of +generations back seemed not to have been regarded honest, if they did +not exhibit on their face a true and particular table of contents; +whereas in these sad times, (with many, not with me,) mystery is a good +rule, but falsehood is a better. Again, those honest-speaking authors of +the past scrupled not to designate their writings as '_A Most Erudite +Treatise_' on so-and-so, or a '_A Right Ingenious Handling of the +Mysteries_' of such-and-such, whereas modern hypocrisy aims at +under-rating its own pet work; and more than one book has been ruined in +the market, for having been carelessly titled by the definite THE; as +if, forsooth, it were the world's arbiter of that one topic, +self-constituted pundit of, e.g., title-pages. And this word brings me +back: consider the truly English music of this one: + + +THE SQUIRE, + +AND HIS BEAUTIFUL HOME, + +a fine old country gentleman, pleasantly located, affluent, +noble-minded, wise, and patriotic. This was to have been shown forth, in +wish at least, as somewhat akin to, or congenerous with '_The Doctor_, +&c.,'--that rambling wonder of strange and multifarious reading: or +'_The Rectory of Valehead_,' or '_Vicar of Wakefield_,' or '_The Family +Robinson Crusoe_,' still unwrecked; or many another hearty, cheerful or +pathetic tale of home, sweet home: and yet as to design and execution +strictly original and unplagiaristic. The first chapters (simple healthy +writing, redolent of green pastures, and linchened rocks, and dew-dropt +mountains,) might introduce localities; the beautiful home itself, an +Elizabethan mansion, with its park, lake, hill and valley scenery; a +peep at the blue mile-off sea, brawling brooks, oak-woods, +conservatories, rookery, and all such pleasant adjuncts of that most +fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a country squire, with a princely +rent-roll. Then should be detailed, circumstantially, the lord of the +beautiful home, a picture of the hospitable virtues; the wife of the +beautiful home, a portraiture of happy domesticity, admirable also as a +mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the poor's best friend: children must +abound, of course, or the home is a heaven uninhabited; and shrewd hints +might hereabouts be dropped as to the judicious or injudicious in +matters educational: servants, too, both old and young, with discussions +on their modern treatment, and on that better class of bygones, whom +kindness made not familiar, and the right assertion of authority +provoked not into insolence; whose interest for the dear old family was +never merged in their own, and whose honesty was as unsuspected as that +of young master himself, or sweet little mistress Alice. + +After all this, might we descant upon the squire's characteristics. Take +him as a politician: liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me at +a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly; but none of +your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at +home and cowardly abroad--mean agitating fellows, the scum of disgorging +society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom to the +surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an +honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory: with a +detail of his reasons, notions, and practices thereabouts, inclusive of +his conduct at elections, his wholesome influence over an otherwise +unguided or ill-guided tenantry, and as concerning other miscalled +corruptions: his open argumentation of the representative doctrine, that +it ought to stop short as soon as ever the religion, the learning, and +the wealth of a country are fairly represented; that in fact the poor +man thinks little of his vote, unless indeed in worse cases looking for +a bribe; and that the principle is pushed into ruinous absurdities when +the destitution, the crime, and the ignorance of a nation demand their +proper representatives; that, almost as a consequence of human average +depravity, the greater the franchise's extension, the worse in all ways +become those who impersonate the enfranchised; and so, after due +condemnation of Whiggery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing +lie, the ballot. Then as to the squire's religion; and certain +confabulations with his parson, his household, his harvest-home +tenantry, and local preachers of dissent and schism; his creed, +practice, and favourable samples of daily life. Moreover, our squire +should have somewhat to tell of personal history and adventures; a youth +of poor dependence on a miser uncle; a storm-tost early manhood, +consequent on his high uncompromising principles; then the miser's +death, without the base injustice of that cruel will, which an +eleventh-hour penitence destroyed: the squire comes to his property, +marries his one old flame, effects reformations, attains popularity, +happiness, and other due prosperities. Anecdotes of particular passages, +as in affliction or in joy; his son lamed for life, or his house half +burnt down, his attack by highwaymen, or election for parliament. The +squire's general confidence in man, sympathy with frailties, and success +in regenerating long-lost characters. His discourse on field sports, +displaying the amiable intellectuality of a Gilbert White as opposed to +the blood-thirsty Nimrodism and Ramrodism of a mad Mytton. A marriage; a +funeral; a disputed legacy of some eccentric relative; with its +agreeable concomitants of heartless selfish strife, rebuked by the +squire's noble example: the conventicle gently put down by dint of +gradual desertions, and church-going as tenderly extended; vestry +demagogues and parochial incendiaries chastised by our squire; and +divers other adventures, conversations, situations, and conditions, +illustrative of that grand character, a fine old English gentleman, all +of the olden time. + +Altogether, if well managed, a book like this would be calculated to do +substantial good in these days of no principle or bad principle. A +captivating example well applied--witness the uses of biography--is +infectious among the well-inclined and well-informed. But--but--but--I +fancy there may exist, and do exist already, admirable books of just +this character. I have heard of, but not seen, '_The Portrait of a +Christian Gentleman_,' and another '_of a Churchman_:' doubtless, these, +combined with a sort of Mr. Dovedale in that clever impossible +'_Floreston_,' or an equally unnatural and charming Sir Charles +Grandison, with a dash of scenery and a sprinkle of anecdote, would +make up, far better than I could fabricate, the fair fine character that +once I thought to sketch. Moreover, to a plain gentleman, living in the +country, of perfectly identical ideas with those of the squire on all +imaginable topics, gifted too (we will not say with quite his princely +rent-roll, but at any rate) with sundry like advantages in the way of +decent affluence, pleasant scenery, an old house, a good wife, and fair +children--with plenty of similar adventures and circumstantials--and the +necessary proportion of highwaymen, radicals, rascals, and schismatics +dotted all about his neighbourhood, the idea would seem, to say the +least, somewhat egotistic. But why may not humble individualities be +generalized in grander shapes? why not glorify the picture of a cottage +with colouring of Turner's most imaginative palette? An author, like an +artist, seldom does his work well unless he has nature before him: +exalted and idealized, the Roman beggar goes forth a Jupiter, and +country wenches help a Howard to his Naiads. Nevertheless, let the +Squire and his train pass us by, indefinite as Banquo's progeny: let his +beautiful home be sublimely indistinct; even such are Martin's ætherial +cities: the thought shall rest unfructified at present--a mummied, vital +seed. The review is over, and the Squire's troop of yeomanry not +required: so let them wait till next year's muster. + + * * * * * + +Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship, +this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some +five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary +tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm, +unhurried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal. Far, very far be +it from me to arraign modern reviewers either of partialities or +incapacity; indeed, it is probable that few men of high talent, +character, and station, have not, at some time or other, temporarily at +least contributed to swell their ranks: moreover, from one they have +treated so magnanimously, they shall not get the wages of ingratitude; +they have been kind to my dear book-children, and I--_don't be so +curious_--thank them for their courtesy with all a father's feeling +toward the liberal friends of his sons and daughters. Speaking +generally, (for, not to flatter any class of men, truly there are rogues +in all,) I am bold to call them candid, honest, clever men; quite +superior, as a body, to every thing like bribery and corruption, and, +with human limitations, little influenced by motives, either of +prejudice or favour. For indefatigable industry, unexampled patience, +and powers of mind very far above what are commonly attributed to them, +I, for my humble judgment, would give our periodical journalists their +honourable due: I am playing no Aberdeenshire game of mutual scratching; +I am too hardened now in the ways of print to be much more than +indifferent as to common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with +me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from +eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel +rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint +praise, impotent to d---, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty +return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while +ago but soft young coral, the surges may lash me, but leave no mark; the +sun may shine, but cannot melt me. Argal, as the clown says, is my +verdict honest: and further now to prove it so, shall come the +limitations. + +With all my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and +hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette +and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of +literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; +the main cause of this consisting in the essential rapidity of their +composition. There is not--from the multiplicity of business to be got +through, there cannot be--adequate time allowed for any thing like +justice to the claims of each author. Periodicals that appear at longer +intervals are in all reason more or less excepted from this objection; +but by the daily and weekly majority, the labours of a life-time are +cursorily glanced at, hastily judged from some isolated passage, +summarily found laudable or guilty; and this weak opinion, strongly +enough expressed as some compensation in solid superstructure for the +sandiness of its foundations, is circulated by thousands over all +corners of the habitable world. To say that the public (those so-called +reviewers of reviews, but wiser to be looked on only as perusers,) +balance all such false verdicts, might indeed be true in the long run, +but unfortunately it is not: for first, no run at all, far less a long +one, is permitted to the persecuted production; and next, it is +notorious, that people think very much as they are told to think. Now, I +have already stated at too much length that I have no personalities to +complain of, no self-interests to serve: for the past I have been well +entreated; and for the future, supposing such an unlikelihood as more +hypothetical books, I am hard, bold, sanguine, stoical; while, as for +the present, though I refuse not my gauntlet to any man, my visor shall +be raised by none. But I enter the list for others, my kinsmen in +composing. Authors, to speak it generally, are an ill-used race, because +judged hastily, often superciliously, for evil or for good. It is +impossible for the poor public, (who, besides having to earn daily +bread, have to wade through all the daily papers,) from mere lack of +hours in the day, to entertain any opinions of their own about a book or +books: the money to buy them is one objection, the time to read them +another; to say less of the capacity, the patience, and the will. +Without question, they are guided by their teachers; and the grand fault +of these is, their everlasting hurry. + +At another necessary failing of reviewers I would only delicately hint. +The royal We is very imposing; for example, the king of magazines, No. +134, (need I name it?) informs us, p. 373, "We happen to have now in +wear a good long coat of imperial gray," &c.; and some fifteen lines +lower down, "We are now mending our pen with a small knife," and so +forth: now all this grandiloquence serves to conceal the individual; and +to reduce my other great objection to a single letter, let us only +recollect that this powerful, this despotic We, is, being interpreted, +nothing but an I by itself, a simple scribe, a single and plebeian +number one. A mere unit, an anonymous, irresponsible unit, dissects in a +quarter of an hour the grand result of some ten years; and this +momentary influence on one man's mind, (perhaps wearied, or piqued, or +biased, or haply unskilled in the point at issue, but at all events +inevitably in a hurry to jump at a conclusion,) this light accidental +impression is sounded forth to the ends of the earth, and leads public +opinion in a verdict of thunder. And as for yon impertinent +parenthesis--or pertinent, as some will say--give me grace thus blandly +to suggest a possibility. The mighty editorial We, upon whose +authoritative tones the world's opinion will probably be pivoted--whose +pen by casual ridicule or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune +of some pains-taking literary labourer--whose dictum carelessly +dispenses local honour or disgrace, and has before now by sharp +sarcasms, speaking daggers though using none, even killed more than one +over-sensitive Keats--this monarchic We is but a frail mortal, liable at +least to "some of the imperfections of our common nature, gentlemen," +as, for example, to be morose, impatient, splenetic, and the more if +over-worked. Neither should I waive in this place, in this my rostrum of +blunt, plain speech, the many censurable cases, unhappily too well +authenticated, where personal enmity has envenomed the reviewing pen +against a writer, and stabs in the dark have wounded good men's fame. +Neither, again, those other instances where reviewers, not being +omniscient, (yet is their knowledge most various and brilliant,) having +been from want of specific information incompetent to judge of the +matters in question, have striven to shroud their ignorance of the +greater topic in clamorous attacks of its minor incidents; burrowing +into a mound if they cannot force a breach through the rampart; and +mystifying things so cleverly with doubts, that we cannot see the +blessed sun himself for very fog. + +Now really, good folk, all this should be amended: would that the +WE were actually plural; would that we had a well-selected +bench of literary judges; would that some higher sort of Stationers' +Hall or Athenæum were erected into an acknowledged tribunal of an +author's merits or demerits; would that, to wish the very least, the +wholesome practice of a well-considered imprimatur were revived! Let +famous men, whose reputation is firm-fixed--our Wordsworths, Hallams, +Campbells, Crolys, Wilsons, Bulwers, and the like--decide in the case of +at least all who desire such decision. I suppose, as no one in these +selfish times will take trouble without pay, that either the judges +should be numbered among state pensioners, or that each work so +calmly examined must produce its regular fee: but these are +after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for +calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let +all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an +assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that +word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not +separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets +sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the +novels, and theologists all the works upon religion; for humanity is at +the best infirm, and motives little searchable; but let all judge +equally in a sort of open court. The machinery might be difficult, and I +cannot show its workings in so slight an essay; but surely it is a +strange thing in civilization, and a stranger when we consider what +literature does for us, blessing our world or banning it--it is a wonder +and a shame that books of whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the +waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present +muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the +sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with +the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in +impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, that many +an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own sake +as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. Some +poor man the other day, and in a reputable journal too, had five +new-born tragedies strangled and mangled in as many lines: we need not +suppose him a Shakspeare, but he might have been one for aught of +evidence given to the contrary; at any rate, five at once, five mortal +tragedies, (so puppy-fashion born and drowned,) must, however carelessly +executed, have been the offspring of no common mind. Again, how often is +not a laborious historiographer, particularly if of contrary politics, +dismissed with immediate contempt, because, perchance, in his three full +volumes, he has admitted two false dates, or haply mistakes the +christened name of some Spanish admiral! Once more, how continually are +not critical judgments falsified by the very extracts on which they +rest! how often the pet passage of one review is the stock butt of +another! Here you will say is cure and malady together, like viper's fat +and fang: I trow not; mainly because not one man in a thousand takes the +trouble to judge for himself. But it is needless to enumerate such +instances; every man's conscience or his memory will supply examples +wholesale: therefore, maltreated authors, bear witness to your own +wrongs: jealously regarded by a struggling brotherhood, cruelly baited +by self-constituted critics, the rejected of publishers, the victimized +by booksellers, the garbled in statement, misinterpreted in meaning, +suspected of friends, persecuted by foes--"O that mine enemy would write +a book!" It is to put a neck into a noose, to lie quietly in the grove +of Dr. Guillot's humane prescription: or, if not quite so tragical as +this, it is at least to sit voluntarily in the stocks with Sir Hudibras, +and dare the world's contempt; while fashionable--or unfashionable +idiots, who are scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner +invitation, (those formidably confounded he's and him's!)--think +themselves privileged to join some inane laugh against a clever, but not +yet famous, author, because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be +an old acquaintance, or one epithet in a long poem may be weak, +indelicate, tasteless, or foolish, or one philosophical fact in an essay +is misstated, or one statistical conclusion seems to be exaggerated. It +is perfectly paltry to behold stupid fellows, whose intellects against +your most ordinary scribe vary from a rush-light to a "long four," as +compared with a roasting, roaring kitchen-fire, affecting contemptuously +to look down upon some unjustly neglected or mercilessly castigated +labourer in the brick-fields of literature, for not being--can he help +it?--a first-rate author, or because one reviewer in seven thinks he +might have done his subject better justice. Take my word for it--if +indeed I can be a fair witness--the man who has written a book, is above +the unwriting average, and, as such, should be ranked mentally above +them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand +labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in +print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors +undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average) +unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however +well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the +opportunity to fabricate a volume; nor, supposing these requisites, the +moral courage (for moral courage, if not physical, must form part of an +author's mind,) to publish the lucubration: but "I magnify mine office" +above the unnumbered host of unwriting, uninformed, loose, unlettered +gentry, who (as full of leisure as a cabbage, and as overflowing with +redundant impudence as any Radical mob,) mainly tend to form by their +masses the average penless animal-man, who could not hold a candle to +any the most mediocre of the Marsyas-used authors of haply this week's +journals. Spare them, victorious Apollos, spare! if libels that diminish +wealth be punishable, is there no moral guilt in those legalized libels +that do their utmost to destroy a character for wisdom, wit, learning, +industry, and invention?--Critical flayer, try thou to write a book; +learn experimentally how difficult, yet relieving; how nervous, yet +gladdening; how ungracious, yet very sweet; how worldly-foolish, yet +most wise; how conversant with scorn, yet how noble and ennobling an +attribute of man, is--authorship. + +All this rhetoric, impatient friend--and be a friend still, whether +writer, reviewer, or unauthorial--serves at my most expeditious pace, +opposing notions considered, to introduce what is (till to-morrow, or +perhaps the next coming minute, but at any rate for this flitting +instant of time,) my last notion of possible, but not probable, +authorship: a rhodomontade oration, rather than an essay, after my own +desultory and yet determinate fashion, to have been entituled--so is it +spelled by act of parliament, and therefore let us in charity hope +rightly--to have been entituled then, + + +THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL; + +A COURT OF APPEAL AGAINST AMATEUR AND CONNOISSEUR CRITICISMS: + +and (the present being the next minute whereof I spake above) there has +just hopped into my mind another taking title, which I generously +present to any smarting scribe who may meditate a prose version of +'_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_'--_videlicet_, + + +ZOILOMASTRIX. + + * * * * * + +At length then have I liberty to yawn--a freedom whereof doubtless my +readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand +dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go +no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I +assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart: +but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it, +and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a +trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably +fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all +the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the +winged aërial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary author, just +eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating notions, can +sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a chance so lucky +as the transfer of his pack to Hercules; and can comprehend the relief +it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, when assured that he +no longer was afflicted with the care of governing a galaxy of worlds. + +Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating +perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth; some to indite solid +continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand; but +I clearly was born a zoölogical anomaly, _with a pen in my mouth_, a +sort of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison! + +Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the +cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor +excuse this light affliction of chattering in print.--Who asks you to +read it?--Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your +intellect by too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must +I then regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom +piping cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften? + +And now, friend, I've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my +acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply +what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially, +think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for +practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I +feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man +offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of +Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I +need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any +Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer +me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord +Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let +me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you: +"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater +length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better +than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow." + + +APPENDIX. + +AN AFTER-THOUGHT. + +It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently +characteristic of his desultory indoles--(not indolence, pray you, good +Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,)--if after having thus formally taken +his _congé_ with the help of a Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield, +he just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now, +the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little +honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with +Romeo I cried, "Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell +till it be morrow;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a +new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and wild, +before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened-up my +brown hay-field: or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel of +precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the purlieus +of Shoe-lane; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the truth +shall be told plainly; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints our +publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, whether or +not in this booklet your readership has already found seed sufficient +for cyclopædias, I am free to admit that the expectant butter-man at +least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hundred +pages; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I can, is +my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best policy, +deny who dare? + +Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although, in +point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of +my '_Author's Mind_' shown in other specimens; for example, a +linsey-woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of +this arcade; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the +flowers of poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (O, dub it not +a goose!) would, like a _prima-donna_, go off this theatre of fancy, +singing. And again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still +willing to be pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with +me in peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical +and lawless; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall +not quarrel at the last. + +Empty, however--empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness--have +I boasted this my head but a page or two ago; and that boast, for all +the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from me +by renewal of determined meditations; now that my house is swept and +garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither let me +heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading +with the scanty harvest of a _soil effete_; this license of writing up +to measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation +shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve the +problem: not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy; not to +fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable +palate, therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render +up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not +metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally +and physically resort to yonder--desk; (drawer would have savoured of +the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie +_perdus_ divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at +"poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as +carp--so called from _carpere_, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp, +to cavil, because when caught they don't pay for mastication--even as +carp, a muddy fish, difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile +criticism, conceals its lack of savour in the flavour of port-wine--even +so shall strong prose-sauce be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets: +and ye who would uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of +Lethe's mud than of Helicon's sweet water, treat me to a better dish, or +carp not at my fishing. + +Imagination, as I need not tell psychologists by this time, is my +tyrant; I cannot sleep, nor sit out a sermon, nor remember yesterday, +nor read in peace, (how calm in blessed quiet people seem to read!) +without the distraction of a thousand fancies: I hold this an infirmity, +not an accomplishment; a thing to be conquered, not to be coveted: and +still I love it, suffering those chains of gossamer to wind about me, +that seductive honey-jar yet again to trap me, like some poor insect; +thus then my foolish idolatry heretofore hath hailed + + +IMAGINATION. + + My fond first love, sweet mistress of my mind, + Thy beautiful sublimity hath long + Charm'd mine affections, and entranced my song, + Thou spirit-queen, that sit'st enthroned, enshrined + Within this suppliant heart; by day and night + My brain is full of thee: ages of dreams, + Thoughts of a thousand worlds in visions bright, + Fear's dim terrific train, Guilt's midnight schemes, + Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces, + Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh, + Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races + Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf + Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky!-- + O, God of mind, I shudder at myself! + +Now, friend reader, you have accustomed yourself to think that every +thing in rhyme, _i. e._, poetry, as you somewhat scornfully call it, +must be false: and I am sorry to be obliged to grant you that a leaning +towards plain matter-of-fact, is no wise characteristic of metrical +enthusiasts. But believe me for a truth-teller; that sonnet (did you +read it?) hints at some fearful verities; and that you may further +apprehend this sweet ideal mistress of your author's mind, suffer me to +introduce to your acquaintance + + +IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED. + + Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me, + Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes, + Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me, + While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies: + Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies + Within thy silent lips! how rare a light + Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd + Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd! + In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright, + Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast! + And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings, + And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding + In thy crisp curls, like cherubs there abiding-- + Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs. + +Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But +verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if +crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the +Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, by way +of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty +soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold +legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and +would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political +philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged +up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than +surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is +not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season, +(parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair +service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious +pleasures: religion prësupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle +to rein-in the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to +prescribe for most men an occasional course of + + +SOLITUDE. + + Therefore delight thy soul in solitude, + Feeding on peace; if solitude it be + To feel that million creatures, fair and good, + With gracious influences circle thee; + To hear the mind's own music; and to see + God's glorious world with eyes of gratitude, + Unwatch'd by vain intruders. Let me shrink + From crowds, and prying faces, and the noise + Of men and merchandise; far nobler joys + Than chill Society's false hand hath given, + Attend me when I'm left alone to think. + To think--alone?--Ah, no, not quite alone; + Save me from that--cast out from earth and heaven, + A friendless, Godless, isolated ONE! + +But of these higher metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations, +perhaps somewhat too much: you will dub me dreamer, if not proser--or +rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way of +clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into +the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts on these +full-blown glories of + + +SUMMER. + + Warm summer! Yes, the very word is warm; + The hum of bees is in it, and the sight + Of sunny fountains glancing silver light, + And the rejoicing world, and every charm + Of happy nature in her hour of love, + Fruits, flowers, and flies, in rainbow-glory bright: + The smile of God glows graciously above, + And genial earth is grateful; day by day + Old faces come again with blossoms gay, + Gemming in gladness meadow, garden, grove: + Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart, + Awake thy better hopes of better days, + Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise, + And in creation's pæan take thy part. + +How different in sterner beauty was the landscape not long since! The +energies of universal life prisoned up in temporary obstruction; every +black hedge-row tufted with woolly snow, like some Egyptian mother +mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in glittering +chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the head of +Gorgon; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains of +iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable; therefore we need +scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days--I mean for this present +unseasonable introduction of dead + + +WINTER. + + As some fair statue, white and hard and cold, + Smiling in marble, rigid, yet at rest, + Or like some gentle child of beauteous mould, + Whose placid face and softly swelling breast + Are fixed in death, and on them bear imprest + His magic seal of peace--so, frozen, lies + The loveliness of nature: every tree + Stands hung with lace against the clear blue skies; + The hills are giant waves of glistering snow; + Rare and northern fowl, now strangely tame to see, + With ruffling plumage cluster on the bough, + And tempt the murderous gun; mouse-like, the wren + Hides in the new-cut hedge; and all things now + Fear starving Winter more than cruel men. + +Ay, "cruel men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent +from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who +does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not +rejoice to find even there somewhat of + + +CONSOLATION? + + Scholar of Reason, Grace, and Providence, + Restrain thy bursting and indignant tears; + With tenderest might unerring Wisdom steers + Through those mad seas the bark of Innocence. + Doth thy heart burn for vengeance on the deed-- + Some barbarous deed wrought out by cruelty + On woman, or on famish'd childhood's need, + Yea, on these fond dumb dogs--doth thy heart bleed + For pity, child of sensibility? + Those tears are gracious, and thy wrath most right + Yet patience, patience; there is comfort still; + The Judge is just; a world of love and light + Remains to counterpoise the load of ill, + And the poor victim's cup with angel's food to fill. + +For, as my Psycotherion has long ago informed you, I hope there is some +sort of heaven yet in reserve for the brute creation: if otherwise, in +respect of costermongers' donkeys, Kamskatdales' gaunt starved dogs, the +Guacho's horse, spurred deep with three-inch rowels, the angler's worm, +Strasburgh geese, and poor footsore curs harnessed to ill-balanced +trucks--for all these and many more I, for one, sadly stand in need of +consolation. Meanwhile, let us change the subject. After a dose of cruel +cogitations, and this corrupting converse with Phalaris and Domitian, +what better sweetener of thoughts than an "olive-branch" in the waters +of Marah? Spend a moment in the nursery; it is happily fashionable now, +as well as pleasurable, to sport awhile with Nature's prettiest +playthings; the praises of children are always at the tip of my--pen, +that is, tongue, you remember, and often have I told the world, in all +the pride of print, of my fond infantile predilections: then let this +little Chanson be added to the rest; we will call it + + +MARGARET. + + A song of gratitude and cheerful prayer + Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet, + As on life's firmament, serenely fair, + Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet + Of mild successive radiance: that small pair, + Ellen and Mary, having gone before + In this affection's welcome, the dear debt + Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret: + Be thou indeed a pearl--in pureness, more + Than beauty, praise, or price; full be thy cup, + Mantling with grace, and truth with mercy met, + With warm and generous charities flowing o'er; + And when the Great King makes his jewels up, + Shine forth, child-angel, in His coronet! + +And while hovering about this fairy-land of sweet-home scenery, and +confessing thankfully to these domestic affections, your author knows +one heart at least that will be gladdened, one face that will be +brightened by the following + + +BIRTH-DAY PRAYER. + + Mother, dear mother, no unmeaning rhyme, + No mere ingenious compliment of words, + My heart pours forth at this auspicious time: + I know a simple honest prayer affords + More music on affection's thrilling cords, + More joy, than can be measured or express'd + In song most sweet, or eloquence sublime. + Mother, I bless thee! God doth bless thee too! + In these thy children's children thou _art_ blest, + With dear old pleasures springing up anew: + And blessings wait upon thee still, my mother! + Blessings to come, this many a happy year; + For, losing thee, where could we find another + So kind, so true, so tender, and--so dear? + +Is it an impertinence--I speak etymologically--to have dropped that +sonnet here?--Be it as you will, my Zoilus; let me stand convicted of +honesty and love: I ask no higher praise in this than to have pleased my +mother. + + * * * * * + +Penman as I am, have been, and shall be, innumerable letters have grown +beneath my goose-quill. Who cannot say the same indeed? For in these +patriotic days, for mere country's love and post-office prosperity, +every body writes to every body about every thing, or, as oftener +happens, about nothing. Nevertheless, I wish some kind pundit would +invent a corrosive ink, warranted to consume a letter within a week +after it had been read and answered: then should we have fewer of those +ephemeral documents treasured up in pigeon-holes, and docketed +correspondence for possible publication. Not Byron, nor Lamb, nor West, +nor Gray, with all their epistolary charms, avail to persuade my +prejudice that it is honest to publish a private letter: if written with +that view, the author is a hypocrite in his friendships; if not so, the +decent veil of privacy is torn from social life, confidence is rebuked, +betrayed, destroyed; and the suspicion of eaves-droppings and casual +scribblings to be posthumously printed, makes silence truly wisdom, and +grim reserve a virtue. This public appetite for secret information, and, +if possible, for hinted scandal--this unhallowed spirit of outward +curiosity trespassing upon the sacred precincts of a man's own +circle--is to the real author's mind a thing to be feared, if he is +weak--to be circumspectly watched, if he is wise. Such is the present +hunger for this kind of reading, that it would be diffidence, not +presumption, in the merest school-boy to dread the future publication of +his holiday letters; who knows--I may jump scathless from the Monument, +or in these Popish times become excommunicated by special bull, or fly +round the world in a balloon, or attain to the authorship of forty +volumes, or be half-smothered by a valet-de-place, or get indicted for +inveterate Toryism, or any how, I may--notwithstanding all present +obscurities that intervene--wake one of these fine mornings, and find +myself famous: and what then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve +to one that sundry busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape +together with malice prepense, and keep _câchet_ for future print, a +multitude of careless scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour +of the reading. Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against? And, +utterly improbable on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should +judge their publication (but for certain stolidities of the same sort, +that often-times have wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's +mind here enter its eternal protest against any such treachery regarding +private + + +LETTERS. + + Tear, scatter, burn, destroy--but keep them not; + I hate, I dread those living witnesses + Of varying self, of good or ill forgot, + Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses. + Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead, + Those visions of the past, that idly blot + The present with regret for blessings fled: + This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head, + This flickering heart is full of chance and change; + I would not have you watch my weaknesses, + Nor how my foolish likings roam and range, + Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day + Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay, + Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange. + +So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypothetical +post-obits! + + * * * * * + +Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he sees his +manuscript in print: it is safe; no longer a treasure uninsurable, no +longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable of real +extermination; it has reached a changeless condition; the chrysalis of +illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the +world on the wings of those true Dædali, Faust, and Gutenberg: the +transition-state is passed: henceforth for his brain-child set free from +that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no +more than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain +hope of immortality. "'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is +the adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred; and, though zeal +might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no +better excuse for the fourteen lines that follow; they require but this +preface: a most venerable chapel of old time, picturesque and full of +interest, is dropping to decay, within a mile of me; where it is, and +whose the fault, are askings improper to be answered: nevertheless, I +cast upon the waters this meagre morsel of + + +APPEAL. + + Shame on thee, Christian, cold and covetous one! + The laws (I praise them not for this) declare + That ancient, loved, deserted house of prayer + As money's worth a layman landlord's own. + Then use it as thine own; thy mansion there + Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church + Stands new and decorate; thine every shed + And barn is neat and proper; I might search + Thy comfortable farms, and well despair + Of finding dangerous ruin overhead, + And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls: + Arouse thy better self: restore it; see, + Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls! + Fear, lest that crushing guilt should fall on thee. + +I fear much, poor book, this finale of jingling singing will jar upon +the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle +in its tail: and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may +chance to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in +this after-thought Appendix; yea, and I will keep that promise at all +mortal hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing +Fornarinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay +court-cards. After so much of villanous political ferment, society +returns at length to its every-day routine, heedful of other oratory +than harangues from the hustings, and glad of other reading than +figurative party-speeches. Yet am I bold to recur, just for a thought or +two, to my whilom patriotic hopes and fears: fears indeed came first +upon me, but hopes finally out-voted them: briefly, then, begin upon the +worst, and endure, with what patience you possess, this creaky stave of +bitter + + +POLITICS. + + Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer: + Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown, + Her sun of ancient glory going down, + Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair: + What wonder should the billows overwhelm + A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew, + "Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?" + Yet, no!--we will not fear; the loathing realm + At length has burst its chains; a motley few, + The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel, + The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand + No more besiege our Zion's citadel: + But high in hope comes on this nobler band + For God, the sovereign, and our father-land. + +That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and +therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes +to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in +regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a +subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found +lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to +whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in +old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to +blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast +myself free, a citizen of no mean city--my commission signed by duty--my +counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the +liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family +of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites +blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my +target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon +the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere +lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men, +were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of +their fraternity. + +But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to +intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the +occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken, +uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its +presumption + + Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek, + As duty prompts and loyalty commands, + To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak. + Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee + Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty, + Setting thee ruler over many lands; + Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek: + And many people, nations, languages, + Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands; + Them next to bless, to prosper and to please, + Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease: + Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state + The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great: + So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences! + +And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the +largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and +thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in +regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to +confess--(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale +Joe-Millerism?)--the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall +give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour +acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in +the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind +Mæonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the +majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's +own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance, +wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place +prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels; +in the '_Corsair_,' the '_Childe_,' and the '_Don_,' no one can mistake +the hero-author; Southey's works, Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full +of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least +equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with +instances illustrious as those, so with all humbler followers, the +skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships: +an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amusements, +business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and +qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing +individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with +choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate, +in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it +from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of +sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered +sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning +here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon; +for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time +antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my +muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly +avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this +avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may +ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic? + +List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for +authorship + + +THE CATHEDRAL MIND. + + Temple of truths most eloquently spoken, + Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power, + The '_Author's Mind_,' in all its hallowed riches, + Stands a cathedral: full of precious things; + Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken, + Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aëry tower: + Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches, + And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings, + Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower, + Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings, + Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken: + An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul; + Deep music all around enchantment flings; + And God's great Presence consecrates the whole. + +Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor +printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before +have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that +many beginnings--and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing--should, +for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many +endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle +reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical +than--censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy +is held to be good-breeding; _item_, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is +much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;" +_item_, (Sir Walter again, _ipsissima verba_, in a letter to Miss +Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear to be a +sort of tinkers, who, unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for +_menders_ of them, and often make two holes in patching one;" _item_, +that in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for +"repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent +scribe is always at the mercy of compositors; and lastly, that if it is, +by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at +least as much, worthier of a noble mind to give credit for good +intentions, rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even +where hyper-criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has +been a failure. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 19386-8.txt or 19386-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/3/8/19386/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/19386-8.zip b/19386-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1029d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/19386-8.zip diff --git a/19386-h.zip b/19386-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5e55e38 --- /dev/null +++ b/19386-h.zip diff --git a/19386-h/19386-h.htm b/19386-h/19386-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..325fbfd --- /dev/null +++ b/19386-h/19386-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5833 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Author's Mind;, edited by Martin Farquhar Tupper, A.M., F.R.S.. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + div.trans-note {border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; + margin: 3em 15%; padding: 1em; text-align: center;} + + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + visibility: hidden; + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .author {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Author's Mind + The Complete Prose Works of Tupper, Volume 5 (of 6) + +Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper + +Release Date: September 26, 2006 [EBook #19386] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>AN AUTHOR'S MIND;</h1> + +<h3>THE BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES:</h3> + + +<h4>"A BOOKFUL OF BOOKS," OR "THIRTY BOOKS IN ONE."</h4> + + +<h4>EDITED BY</h4> + +<h2>M. F. TUPPER, ESQ., M. A.</h2> + + +<blockquote><p class='center'>"En un mot, mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en +général; ainsi, une et autres en particulier; et par spécial, +moymême."—<span class="smcap">Pasquier.</span></p></blockquote> + + +<p class='center'> +HARTFORD:<br /> +PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON.<br /> +1851. +</p> + +<div class="trans-note"> + Transcriber's Note: Please note there is no Table of Contents for this book. + </div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>ANNOUNCEMENT.</h2> + +<h3>BY THE EDITOR.</h3> + + +<p>The writer of this strange book (a particular friend of mine) came to me +a few mornings ago with a very happy face and a very blotty manuscript. +"Congratulate me," he began, "on having dispersed an armada of +head-aches hitherto invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its +legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to +persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and +rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found +Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his +strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, +hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet +looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, an thou +lovest me, congratulate."</p> + +<p>Wider and wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober +friend so voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it +was a set speech, prepared for an impromptu occasion; nevertheless, as +he was clearly in an enviable state of disenthraldom from +thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. And then +this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache! here was an anodyne +infinitely precious to one so brain-feverish as I: had all this pleasure +and comfort arisen from such common-place remedials as a dear young +lover's courtesy or a deceased old miser's codicil, I should long ago +have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, my friend was never +known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in the +discovery; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was +naturally enough exhibiting itself in a "What on earth——?" he broke +out with the abruptness of an Abernethy, "Read my book."</p> + +<p>Well, I did read it; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound, +can readily believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very +small portion of older material, it had been at chance intervals rapidly +thrown off in a couple of months, (the old current-quill style,) chiefly +with the view of relieving a too prolific brain: it appeared to me a +mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind; an honest, indeed, but often +useless exposure of multifarious fancies—some good, some bad, and not a +few indifferent; an incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand +thoughts, little worth the printing, if the very writing were not indeed +superfluous. Nevertheless, with all its faults, I thought the book a +novelty, and liked it not the less for its off-hand fashion; it had +something of the free, fresh, frank air of an old-school squire at +Christmas-tide, suggestive as his misletoe, cheerful as his face, and +careless as his hospitality. Knowing then that my friend had been more +than once an author—indeed, he tells us so himself—and perceiving, +from innumerable symptoms, that he meditated putting also this before +the world, I thought kindly to anticipate his wishes by proposing its +publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose +these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to +be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white +bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, +the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of +immortality, printer's-ink? these——" I stopped him, for this other +mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite—"Yes, I did." An +involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause proceeded thus: +first, a promise not to burn the book; then a Bentley to the rescue, +with accessory considerations; and then, the due administration of a +little wholesome flattery: by this time we had obtained permission, +after modest reluctance pretty well enacted, to transform the deformity +of manuscript into the well-proportioned elegance of print. But, this +much gained, our author would not yield to any argument we could urge +upon the next point, viz: leave to produce the volume, duly fathered +with his name. "Not he indeed; he loved quiet too well; he might, it was +true, secretly like the bantling, but cared not to acknowledge it before +a populous reading-world, every individual whereof esteems himself and +herself competent to criticize!" Mr. Publisher, deeply disinterested, of +course, bristled up at the notion of any thing anonymous; and the only +alternative remaining was the stale expedient of an editor; that editor, +in brief, to be none other than myself, a very palpable-obscure: and let +this excuse my name upon the title-page.</p> + +<p>Now, as editor, I have had to do—what seems, by the way, to be regarded +by collective wisdom as the best thing possible—nothing: my author +would not suffer the change of a syllable, for all his seeming +carelessness about the <span class="smcap">THING</span>, as he called it; so, I had no +more for my part than humbly to act the Helot, and try to set decently +upon the public tables a genuine mess of Spartan porridge.</p> + +<p class='author'>M. F. T.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>Albury, Guildford.</i></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h2>AN AUTHOR'S MIND:</h2> + +<h4>THE</h4> + +<h3>BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES.</h3> +<p><br /><br /></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>A RAMBLE.</h3> + + +<p>In these days of universal knowledge, schoolmaster and scholars all +abroad together, quotation is voted pedantry, and to interpret is +accounted an impertinence; yet will I boldly proclaim, as a mere fact, +clear to the perceptions of all it may concern, "This book deserves +richly of the Sosii." And that for the best of reasons: it is not only a +book, but a book full of books; not merely a new book, but a +little-library of new books; thirty books in one, a very harvest of +epitomized authorship, the cream of a whole fairy dairy of quiescent +post-octavos. It is not—O, mark ye this, my Sosii, (and by the way, +gentle ladies, these were worshipful booksellers of old, the Murrays and +the Bentleys of imperial Rome,)—it is not the dull concreted elongation +of one isolated hackneyed idea—supposing in every work there <i>be one</i>, +a charitable hypothesis—wire-drawn, and coaxed, and hammered through +three regulation volumes; but the scarcely-more-than-hinted abstractions +of some forty thousand flitting notions—hasty, yet meditative Hamlets; +none of those lengthy, drawling emblems of Laertes—driven in flocks to +the net of the fowler, and penned with difficult compression within +these modest limits. So "goe forth, littel boke," and make thyself a +friend among those good husbandmen, who tend the trees of knowledge, and +bring their fruit to the world's market.</p> + +<p>Now, reader, one little preliminary parley with you about myself: here +beginneth the trouble of authorship, but it is a trouble causing ease; +ease from thoughts—thoughts—thoughts, which never cease to make one's +head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease from dreams by night and +reveries by day, (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> +children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army,) +harassing the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a +definite life; ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of +aërial forget-me-nots, clamouring to be recorded. O, happy unimaginable +vacancy of mind, to whistle as you walk for want of thought! O, mental +holiday, now as impossible to me, as to take a true school-boy's +interest in rounders and prisoner's base! An author's mind—and remember +always, friend, I write in character, so judge not as egotistic vanity +merely the well playing of my <i>rôle</i>—such a mind is not a sheet of +smooth wax, but a magic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions; no +empty tenement, but a barn stored to bursting: it is a painful pressure, +constraining to write for comfort's sake; an appetite craving to be +satisfied, as well as a power to be exerted; an impetus that longs to +get away, rather than a dormant dynamic: thrice have I (let me confess +it) poured forth the alleviating volume as an author, a real +author—real, because for very peace of mind, involuntarily; but still +the vessel fills; still the indigenous crop springs up, choking a better +harvest, seeds of foreign growth; still those Lernæan necks sprout +again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and +controvert—to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly, it were +enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive; to be fitted with a +colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaïdes might not +keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to +ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, +perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often +cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of +a man—fret, wear, worry him; to be irritable, is the conditional tax +laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery +makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of +coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a +texture; they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a +tougher scabbard; the river, not content with channel and restraining +banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate exacting armies of the +Ideal and the Causal persecute <span class="smcap">MY</span> spirit, and I would make a +patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace: I write +these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase; +I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the +priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental nurselings; a dire +resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruction of the literary +populace superfœtating in my brain—plays, novels,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> essays, tales, +homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and +rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of +maltreated Aristotle: I will exhibit them in their state chaotic; I will +addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and +secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten +on me.</p> + +<p>The world is too full of books, and I yearn not causelessly to add more +than this involuntary unit: bottles, bottles—invariable bottles—was +the one idea of a most clever Head at Nieder-Selters; books, +books—accumulating books—press upon my conscience in this literary +London: despairing auctioneers hate the sound, ruined publishers dread +it, surfeited readers grumble at it, and the very cheese-monger begins +to be an epicure as to which grand work is next to be demolished. +Friendships and loves tremble at the daily recurrence of "Have you read +this?" and "Mind you buy that;" wise men shun a blue-belle, sure that +she will recommend a book; and the yet wiser treat themselves to +solitary confinement, that they may not have to meet the last new batch +of authors, and be obliged to purchase, if not to peruse, their +never-ending books. I fear to increase the plague, to be convicted an +abettor of great evils, though by the measure of a little one. I am +infected, and I know it: but for science-sake I break the quarantine, +and in my magnanimity would be victimized unknown, consigning to a +speedy grave this useless offspring, together with its too productive +parent, and saving of a race so hopeless little else than their +prëdetermined names—in fact, their title-pages.</p> + +<p>But is that indeed little? Speak, authors with piles of ready-written +copy, is not the theme (so often carried out beyond, or beside, or even +against its original purpose) less perplexing than the after-thought +thesis? Bear witness, readers, bit by a mysterious advertisement in the +'<i>Morning Post</i>,' are names, indeed, not matters of much weight? Press +forward, Sosii aforesaid, and answer me truly, is not a title-page the +better part of many books? Cheap promises of stale pleasure, false hopes +of dull interest, imprimaturs of deceived fancy, lying visions of the +future unfulfilled, title-pages still do good service to the cause +of—bookselling.</p> + +<p>And, to commence, let me elucidate mine own—I mean the first, the head +and front of this offending phalanx—mine own, <i>par excellence</i>, '<i>An +Authors Mind</i>:' such in sooth it shall be found, for richer or poorer, +for better or for worse; not of selfish, but of common application; not +so much individually of mine own, as generically of authors; a medley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> +of crudities; an undigested mass, as any in the maw of Polypheme; a +fermenting hotchpotch of half-formed things, illustrative, among other +matters, of the Lucretian theory, those close-cohering atoms; a farrago +of thoughts, and systems of thoughts, in most admired disorder, which +would symbolize the Copernican astronomy, with its necessary clash of +whirling orbs, about as well as the intangible chaos of Berkeleyan +metaphysics.</p> + +<p>So much then on the moment for the monosyllable "Mind;"—whereof +followeth, indeed, all the more hereafter; but—"An author's?"—what +author's? You would see my patent of such rank, my commission to wear +such honourable uniform. Pr'ythee be content with simple assurance that +it is so; consider the charm of unsatisfied curiosity, and pry not; let +me sit unseen, a spectator; for this once I would go <i>in domino</i>. +Heretofore, "credit me, fair Discretion, your Affability" hath achieved +glory, and might Solomonize on its vanity at least as well as poor +discomfited, discovered Sir Piercie Shafton: heretofore, I have stood +forth in good causes, with helm unbarred, and due proclamation of name, +style, and title, an avowed author; and might sermonize thus upon +success, that a little censure loseth more friends than much praise +winneth enemies. So now, with visor down, and a white shield, as a young +knight-candidate unknown, it pleases my leisure to take my pastime in +the tourney: and so long as in truthful prowess I bear me gallantly and +gently, who is he that hath a right to unlatch my helmet, or where is +the herald that may challenge my rank? Nevertheless, inquisitive, +consider the mysteries that lie in the Turkish-looking <i>sobriquet</i> of +"Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I +never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in +"Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but +that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault +with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this +shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to +unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less said of +so diaphanous a mystery, the better.</p> + +<p>And let me remark this of the mode anonymous; a mode, indeed, to +purposes of shame, and slander, and falsity of all kinds too often +prostituted for the present, bear with it; sometimes it is well to go +disguised, and the voice of one unseen lacks not eager listeners; we +address your judgment, unbiased by the prejudice or sanction of a name: +we put forth, lightly and negligently, those lesser matters which +opportunity hath not yet matured; we escape the nervous pains, the +literary perils<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> of the hardier acknowledged. Only of this one thing be +sure; we—(no, I; why should unregal, unhierarchal I affect +pluralities?)—I hope to keep inviolate, as much when masked as when +avowed, the laws of truth, charity, sincerity, and honour; and, +although, among my many booklets, the grave and the gay will be found in +near approximation, I trust—will it offend any to tell them that I +pray?—to do no ill service at any time to the cause of that true +religion which resents not the neighbourhood of innocent cheerfulness. I +show you, friend, my honest mind.</p> + +<p>I by itself, I; odious mono-literal; thinnest, feeblest, most +insignificant of letters, I dread your egotistic influence as my bane; +they will not suffer you, nor bear with a book so speckled with your +presence. Still, world, hear me; mercifully spare a poor grammarian the +penance of perpetual third persons; let an individual tender conscience +escape censure for using the true singular in preference to that +imposing lie, the plural. Suffer a humble unit to speak of himself as I, +and, once for all, let me permissively disclaim intentional self-conceit +in the needful usage of isolated I-ship.</p> + +<p>These few preliminaries being settled, though I fear little to the +satisfaction of either party concerned, let us proceed—further to +preliminarize; for you will find, even to the end, as you may have found +out already from the beginning, that your white knight is mounted rather +on an ambling preambling palfrey, than on any determinate charger; +curveting and prancing, and rambling and scrambling at his own unmanaged +will: scorning the bit and bridle, too hot to bear the spur, careless of +listing laws, and wishing rather playfully to show his paces, than to +tilt against a foe.</p> + +<p>An author's mind, <i>quà</i> author, is essentially a gossip; an oral, +ocular, imaginative, common-place book: a <i>pot pourri</i> mixed from the +<i>hortus siccus</i> of education, and the greener garden of internal thought +that springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain; a compound +of many metals flowing from the mental crucible as one—perchance a base +alloy, perchance new, and precious, and beautiful as the fine brass of +Corinth; an accidental meeting in the same small chamber of many +spiritual essences that combine, as by magnetism into some strange and +novel substance; a mixture of appropriations, made lawfully a man's own +by labour spent upon the raw material; corn-clad Egypt rescued from a +burnt Africa by the richness of a swelling Nile—the black forest of +pines changed into a laughing vineyard by skill, enterprise, and +culture—the mechanism of Frankenstein's man of clay, energized at +length by the spark Promethean.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> + +<p>And now, reader, do you begin to comprehend me, and my title? '<i>An +Author's Mind</i>' is first in the field, and, as with root and fruit, must +take precedence of its booklets; bear then, if you will, with this +desultory anatomization of itself yet a little longer, and then in good +time and moderate space you will come to the rudiments—bones, so to +speak—of its many members, the frame-work on which its nerves and +muscles hang, the names of its unborn children, the title-pages of its +own unprinted books.</p> + +<p>Philosophers and fools, separately or together, as the case may be—for +folly and philosophy not seldom form one Janus-head, and Minerva's bird +seems sometimes not ill-fitted with the face of Momus—these and their +thousand intermediates have tried in all ages to define that quaint +enigma, Man: and I wot not that any pundit of literature hath better +succeeded than the nameless, fameless man—or woman, was it?—or haply +some innocent shrewd child—who whilom did enunciate that <span class="smcap">MAN IS A +WRITING ANIMAL</span>: true as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational +as Euclid, a discerning, just, exclusive definition. That he is "capable +of laughter," is well enough even for thy deathless fame, O Stagyrite! +but equally (so Buffon testifies) are apes and monkeys, horses and +hyenas; whether perforce of tickling or sympathy, or native notions of +the humorous, we will not stop to contend. That he actually is "an +animal whose best wisdom is laughter," hath but little reason in it, +Democrite, seeing there are such obvious anomalies among men as suicidal +jesters and cachinating idiots; nevertheless, my punster of Abdera, thy +whimsical fancy, surviving the wreck of dynasties, and too light to sink +in the billows of oblivion, is now become the popular thought, the +fashionable dress of heretofore moping wisdom: crow, an thou wilt, jolly +old chanticleer, but remember thee thou crowest on a dunghill; man is +not a mere merry-andrew. Neither is he exclusively "a weeping animal," +lugubrious Heraclite, no better definer than thy laughter-loving foe: +that man weeps, or ought to weep, the world within him and the world +without him indeed bear testimony: but is he the only mourner in this +valley of grief, this travailing creation? No, no; they walk lengthily +in black procession: yet is this present writing not the fit season for +enlarging upon sorrows; we must not now mourn and be desolate as a poor +bird grieving for its pilfered young—is Macduff's lamentable cry for +his lost little ones, "All—what, all?" more piteous?—we must now +indulge in despondent fears, like yonder hard-run stag, with terror in +his eye, and true tears coursing down his melancholy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> face: we must not +now mourn over cruelty and ingratitude, like that poor old worn-out +horse, crying—positively crying, and looking imploringly for merciful +rest into man's iron face; we must not scream like the wounded hare, nor +beat against our cage like the wild bird prisoned from its freedom. +Moreover, Heraclite, even in thine own day thou mightest well have heard +of the classic wailings of Philomel for Atys, or of consumptive Canens, +that shadow of a voice, for her metamorphosed Pie, and have known that +very crocodiles have tears: pass on, thy desolate definition hath not +served for man.</p> + +<p>With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and +learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a +calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but +he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his +nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons, +and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying +rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly +contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling +strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite—what a name of +hungry omen for the imperial devourer!—plausibly insinuates man to be +"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with +domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true, +the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa +glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a +gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care, +all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question, +the kitchen <i>is</i> a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme: +still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily +dinners—man—<span class="smcap">MAN</span>, I say, is not altogether a compact of edible +commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere +congeries of food and pickles; moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame +hath (or used to have, "in my warm youth, when George the Third was +king,") automatons, [pray, observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre +enough to indite <i>automata</i>; we conquering Britons stole that word among +many others from poor dead Greece, who couldn't want it; having made it +ours in the singular, why be bashful about the plural! So also of +memorandums, omnibuses, [you remember Farren's <i>omni</i><span class="smcap">BI</span>!] +necropolises, gymnasiums, eukeirogeneions, and other unlegacied +property of dear departed Rome and Greece. All this, as you see, +is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, Gingel has automatons, that will +serve you up all kinds of delicate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> viands, pleasant meats, and +choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing of Jones' patent +all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus: no mine +Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of +extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion; little, indeed, as you +may credit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for +feeding. Remember Æsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, above +them all, do not overlook the head.</p> + +<p>What think you then of "a featherless biped?" gravely suggests a rusty +Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you never had +the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas; the poor bare <i>bipes +implumis</i>, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay, +and <i>risibilis</i> to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old +festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we +to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the +notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, +thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the +poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite +of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as +useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and +coronation armour)—in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough +of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own +all-conquering quills—in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my +faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in +spite, I say, of copying presses, manifold inditers, and automaton +artists, <span class="smcap">MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL</span>.</p> + +<p>Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one definition: +but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of +Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of +Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself +by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my +casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in +leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at +this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual +misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your +feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery—go: my track lays away from +the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy +rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding +river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just +dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday +thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold +brook, drink to its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a +working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up of +holidays.</p> + +<p>A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a moment +link our reasonings, and solder one stray rivet; man being a writing +animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's +the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder +and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe—that +imagery of his Maker—that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual, +abstraction, manhood: but, what then is <span class="smcap">WRITING</span>? Ye tons of +invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences +of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of +unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical +experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations +of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in +all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of +you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor +deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only—it is +yet a good purpose—to dress the common soil of human kindness, without +attaining to the praise of wreaths and chaplets ever hanging in the +Muses' temple; flowers withered on the stalk, whose blooming beauty no +lover's hand has dropped upon the sacred waters of Siloa, like the +Hindoo's garland on her Ganges; prolix, vain, ephemeral letters +(especially enveloped penny-posters)—and sparing only some few redolent +of truth, wisdom, and affection—your bulky majority of flippant trash, +staid advices, dunnings, hoaxings, lyings, and slanderings, degrade you +to a lower rank than that we take on us to designate as "writing."</p> + +<p>And what, O what—"how poor is he that hath not patience!"—shall we +predicate of the average viscera of circulating libraries?—abominable +viscera!—isn't that the word, my young Hippocrates?—A parley—a +parley! and the terms of truce are these: If this present pastime of +mine (for pastime it is, so spurn not at its logic,) be mercifully +looked on by you, lady novelists and male dittoes—yet truly there are +giants in your ranks, as Scott, and Ward, and Hugo, and Le Sage, +towering above ten thousand pigmies—if I be spared your censures +well-deserved, interchangeably as toward your authorships will I +exercise the charitable wisdom of silence: a white flag or a white +feather is my best alternative in soothing or avoiding so terrible a +host; and verily, to speak kinder of those whose wit, and genius, and +graphic powers have so smoothed this old world's wrinkled face of care, +many brilliant, many clever,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> many well-intended caterers to public +amusement, throng your ill-ordered ranks: still, there are numbered to +your shame as followers of the fool's-cap standard, the huge corrupting +mass of depraved moralists, meagre trash-inditers, treacherous +scandal-mongers, men about town who immortalize their shame, and the +dull, pernicious school of feather-brained Romancists: and take this +sentence for a true one, a <i>verum-dictum</i>. But enough, there are others, +and those not few, even far less veniable; ye priers into family +secrets—fawning, false guests at the great man's open house, eagerly +jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded conversation of the +hospitable board—shame on your treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye +countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us +takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without +mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often +falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a +Harlequin whole the <i>disjecta membra</i> of some great hacked-up +reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write? Writing is +the concreted fruit of thinking, the original expression of new +combinations of idea, the fresh chemical product of educational +compounds long simmering in the mind, the possession of a sixth sense, +distinguishing intelligence, and proclaiming it to the four winds; +writing is not labour, but ease; not care, but happiness; not the petty +pilferings of poverty, but the large overflowings of mental affluence; +it begs not on the highway, but gives great largess, like a king; it +preys not on a neighbour's wealth, but enriches him; it may light, +indeed, a lamp, at another's candle, but pays him back with brilliancy; +it may borrow fire from the common stock, but uses it for genial warmth +and noble hospitality.</p> + +<p>Remember well, good critic, (for verily bad there be,) my purposes in +this odd volume—this queer, unsophisticate, uncultivated book: to empty +my mind, to clear my brain of cobwebs, to lift off my head a porters's +load of fancy articles; and as in a bottle of bad champaign, the first +glass, leaping out hurryskurry, at a railroad pace boiling a gallop, +carries off with it bits of cork and morsels of rosin, even such is the +first ebullition of my thoughts: take them for what they are worth, and +blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do you +suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their +shallowness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty +reasoning and pellucid vanity?—There I have saved you the labour of a +sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a +little, perhaps, your patience may find me otherwise; of clearer flow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> +but flatter flavour: these desultorinesses must first of all be +immolated, for in their Ariel state they vex me, but I bind them down +like slaving Calibans, by the magic of a pen; and glad shall I be to +victimize my monsters, eager to dissipate my musquito-like tormentors; +yea, I would "take up arms against a sea"—["Arms against a sea?" +dearest Shakspeare, would that Theobald, or Johnson's stock-butt, "the +Oxford Editor," had indeed interpolated that unconscionable image! It +has been sapiently remarked by some hornet of criticism, that +"Shakspeare was a clever man;" but cleverer far must that champion +stand forth who wars with any prospect of success upon seas; perhaps +Xerxes might have thought of it—or your Astley's brigand, who +rushes sword in hand on an ocean of green baize. Who shall cure me of +parentheses?]—well, "a sea of troubles, [thoughts trouble us more than +things—I sin again; close it;] and by opposing, end them;" that is, by +setting forth these troublous thoughts opposite, in stately black and +white, I clip their wings, and make them peck among my poultry, and not +swarm about my heaven. But soon must I be more continuous; turn over to +my future title-pages, and spare your objurgation; a little more of this +medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better +accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of +authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be +grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy +clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green +young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with systematic +skill.</p> + +<p>As an author, meanwhile, let man be most specifically characterized: a +real author, voluntary in his motives, but involuntary as regards his +acts authorial; full of matter, prolific of images and arguments, +teeming, bursting, with something, much, too much, to say, and well +witting how to say it: none of your poor devils compulsory from +poverty—Plutus help them!—whose penury of pocket is (pardon me) too +often equitably balanced by their emptiness of head; and far less one of +the lady's-maid school, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets +at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's +reticule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions +for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the +moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock: but a man who has it +weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist, +refute, enjoin: a man—frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen, +as the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> +sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance +upon carpet-work; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy +lessons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the +more cœrulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly +geranium, miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs—these +we masculine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have +accounted your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sévigné and +Somerville, Edgeworth and De Staël, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and +Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less +accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated +slander: riding with the self-conceited <i>cortège</i> of male critics, my +boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of <i>lèze majesté</i>: but I repudiate +the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship +no fear: how much has man to learn from woman! teach us still to look on +humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on +heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant +calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers—making +yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to +hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural +dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if +you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill +becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta, +another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing, +return we to our author; to wit, a man, <i>homo</i>—a human, as they say in +the west—with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen +competent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly.</p> + +<p>Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves +far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our +ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that +make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write a book: and of +this triad of needfuls, who perceives not the superior and innate +majesty of the last requisite?—"Build a house?" I humbly conceive, and +steal my notion from the same ancestral source, that, in nine cases out +of ten, fools build houses for wise men to live in; besides, if houses +be made a test of supreme manhood, your modern wholesale runner-up of +lath and plaster tenements, warranted to stand seven years—provided +quadrilles be excluded, and no larger flock of guests <i>than six</i> be +permitted to settle on one spot—such a jackal for surgeons, such a +reprobate provider for accident-wards as this, would be among our +heroes, a prize-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>man, the flower of the species. "Children" too?—very +happy, beautiful, heart-gladdening creations—God bless them all, and +scatter those who love them not!—but still for a proof of more than +average humanity, somewhat common, somewhat overwhelming: rabbits beat +us here, with all our fecundity, so offensive to Martineau and Malthus. +But as to "books"—common enough, too, smirks gentle reader: pardon, +courteous sir, most rare—at least in my sense; I speak not of flat +current shillings, but the bold medallions of ancient Syracuse; I heed +not the dull thousands of minted gold and silver, but the choice +coin-sculptures of Larissa and Tarentum. There do indeed flow hourly, +from an ever-welling press, rivers of words; there are indeed shoaling +us up on all sides a throng of well-bound volumes—novels, histories, +poems, plays, memoirs, and so forth—to all appearance, books: but if by +"books" be intended originality of matter, independent arguments, water +turned wine, by the miracle of right-thinking, and not a mere +re-decantering of dregs from other vessels—these many masqueraded +forms, these multiplied images of little-varied likenesses, these +Protean herds, will not stay to be counted, nor abide judgment, nor +brook scrutiny, but will merge and melt by thousands into the one, or +the two, real, original, sterling books. We live in a monopolylogue of +authorship: an idea goes forth to the world's market-place well dressed +from the wardrobe of some master-mind; it greets the public with a +captivating air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical; +it comes out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a +cookery-book, a tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an +abstract <i>ism</i>, or a concrete <i>ology</i>; till the poor worn-out, +dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably +affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father, +for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two +minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been +the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung +from the seed of some singular book, or of books counted in the dual.</p> + +<p>Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too much +whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I question not +that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of—I will say, +unintended, plagiarism; you are thieves—patience—I thieve from +thieves; Diogenes cannot see me any more than you; you copy phrases, I +am perpetually and unconsciously filching thoughts; my entomological +netted-scissors, wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> +always within reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted +pill-boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in +spinning thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the +like <i>métier</i> of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of +volumes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your +success depends upon rëusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone +and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies, +rëconsidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in +the warehouse of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly +digesting, as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated +ages ago.</p> + +<p>Is it necessary to remind you—dropping this lightsome vein for a +precious moment—that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at the +top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down +instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?—I stick to +my title, '<i>An Author's Mind</i>,' and that with a laudable scorn of +concealment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser +than it is; then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of +speech, or my sarcasms mingled with charity; for consistency with me +were inconsistent.</p> + +<p>Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a +palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth +time a <i>cacoethes</i>; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth. +Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the +Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of +transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with +leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is +poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it <i>is</i> +fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes +little thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation +over, the product will be clarified. Judge me too, am I not consecutive? +I've shown man to be a writing animal; and writing, what it is and is +not; and meanwhile have been routing recreatively at pen's point whims, +and fancies, and ideas, and images, pulled in manfully by head and +shoulders: and now—after an episode, quite relevant and quite +Herodotean, concerning the consequences of a bit of successful +authorship on a man's scheme of life, to illustrate yet more the +"author's mind"—I shall proceed to tell all men how many books I might, +could, should, or would have written, but for reiterated and legitimated +<i>buts</i>, and how near of kin I must esteem myself to the illustrious J. +of nursery rhymes, being, as he is or was, "Mister Joe Jenkins, who +played on the fiddle, and began twenty tunes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> but left off in the +middle." Moreover, no one can be ignorant of the close consanguinity +recognised in every age and every dictionary between I and J. But now +for the episode:</p> + +<p>If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the +showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with +here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, +in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of +vision; the trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns; +the slightest change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the +whole mixture a poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his +equanimity thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his +whole wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those +useful reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns—spurs of +diligence, incentives to better things—are exaggerated into sixfold +spears, and terribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achæans: a careless +fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, +stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with +folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord +paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its +warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for +that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated +morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure +rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last +an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and +haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day +by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is +somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my +way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a +fairer thesis; he that hates verse—and the Muses now-a-days are too +old-maidish to look many lovers—may skip it, and no harm done; but one +or two may like this stave on</p> + + +<h4>LIFE.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I saw a child with a kaleidoscope,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Turning at will the tesselated field;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And straight my mental eye became unseal'd,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I learnt of life, and read its horoscope:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Behold, how fitfully the patterns change!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The scene is azure now with hues of Hope;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;">Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Made glorious by Religion's purple light;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">So, good or evil coming, peace or strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yonder +prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with somewhat of +malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead?—Categorically, sir, +[there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables,] +categorically, sir, to this: of all life's turns and twists, few things +produce more change to the daring <i>debutant</i> than successful authorship; +it is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness +among those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field +of vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact, +it fixes on it a prëdestinated "author's mind."</p> + +<p>An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of +metaphysical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a whirling +scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! what +a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored depths of an +ever-undiscovered country! That strange world hath a structure and a +furniture all its own; its chalcedonic rocks are painted with rare +creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness; forms of other +spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs; seeds of unknown plants, relics +of unlimnèd reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a +fanciful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its +fertile soil: and then its lawless botany; flowers of glorious hue hung +upon the trees of its forests; luscious fruits flung liberally among the +mosses of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored +water-lilies dancing in its bright cascades; and this, too, a world, an +inner secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a +peculiar creation; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the +dragon and the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and +herds of uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Who can sound its seas, +deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height +beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its +caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen +fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions, +an over-mantling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a +full, independent, generous—a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly, +such—bear witness—is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos +of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or +imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; +"for the time present"—I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on +that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law—"hereof let this little +taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant, +a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and +philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole +consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for +getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the +tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is +complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss? +and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility +on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even +if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls +unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I +must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your +estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of +success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal +who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to +that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among +gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper, +a <i>chevalier d'industrie</i>? And then those hounds upon the bleeding +flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics, +(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how +suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in +no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my +betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in +general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he +their debtor. But who can be ignorant how frequently some hapless writer +is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, that a flagging magazine may +be served up with <i>sauce piquante</i>, and pander to the world for its +waning popularity by the malice of a pungent article? who, while as a +rule he may honour the bench of critics for patience, talent, and +impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, not seldom of +occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly condemnation; +where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax shield of anonymous +reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> foe fair-exposed +whom he dares not fight with?—But, as will be seen hereafter, I +trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than this: Is it not +a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no excuse for the +writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all he may be +innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good-natured world, +on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes either that the +author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary +bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art +not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as +sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for +corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor +maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and of them more anon.</p> + +<p>What moreover shall we say of chilling friendships, near estrangements, +heartless lovers loitering behind, shy acquaintance dropping off? +Verily, there is a mighty sifting: you have dared to stand alone, have +expounded your mind in imperishable print, have manifested wit enough to +outface folly, sufficient moral courage to condemn vice, and more than +is needful of good wisdom to shame the oracles of worldliness: and so +some dread you, some hate, and many shun: the little selfish asterisks +in that small sky fly from your constellatory glories: you are +independent, a satellite of none: you have dared to think, write, print, +in all ways contrary to many; and if wise men and good be loud in their +applause, you arrive at the dignity of manifold hatreds; but if those +and their inferiors condemn, you sink into the bathos of multiplied +contempts. Of other wrongs somewhen and where, hereafter; meanwhile, a +better prospect glows on the kaleidoscopic field—a flattering accession +of new and ardent friends: "Sir," said an old priest to a young author, +"you have made a soft pillow for your head when it comes to be as white +as mine is;" a pretty saying of sweet charity, and such sink deep: as +for the younger and the warmer, being mostly of the softer sex, some +will profess admiring sensations that border not a little on idolatries; +others, gayer, will appear in the dress of careless, unskillful +admiration; not a few, both men and women, go indeed weakly along with +the current stream of popularity, but, to say truth, look happiest when +they find some stinging notice that may mortify the new bold candidate +for glory; while, last and best, a fewer, a very much fewer, do +handsomely the liberal part of friends, commending where they can, +objecting where they must, sincere in sorrow for a fault, rejoicing +without envy for a virtue.</p> + +<p>Many like phenomena has authorship: a certain class of otherwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> +humanized and well-intentioned people begin to regard your scribe as a +monster—not a so-called "lion" to be sought, but some strange creature +to be dreaded: Perdition! what if he should be cogitating a novel or a +play, and means to make free with our characters? what if that libellous +cöpartnership of Saunders and Ottley is permitted to display our faults +and foibles, flimsily disguised, before a mocking world? Disappointed +maidens that hover on the verge of forty, and can sympathize with +Jephtha's daughter in her lonely mournings, causelessly begin to fear +that a mischievous author may appropriate their portraits; venerable +bachelors, who have striven to earn some little local notoriety by the +diligent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling +in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque; +table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff +intends cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence; the twinkling +stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose +very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before +some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided +themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as +the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings +in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so +looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how +dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets +instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most +uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and +wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to +drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical +precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid! +those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim +and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated +character of the general, and not experimentally; so, flinging self +aside, let me speak what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown +a man with bays, and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of +rejoicing; is the victor there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as +Nemean heroes should be or does he not rather droop instantly again into +the obscure unit among a level mass, only the less welcome for having +stood up, a Saul or a Musæus, with his head above his fellows? Verily, +no man is a proph—Enough, enough! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious +calling, and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah; +enough, enough! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of +fervent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the +eyes—there, well born in beauty—there perpetually (so your fondness +hopes) to live—slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest +daughter; the Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching +head, and stands in her immortal independence; an Eve, his own heart's +fruit, welcomes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work, +bodily; your communion has commenced with those of times to come; your +mind has produced a witness to its individuality; there is a tablet +sacred to its memory standing among men for ever.</p> + +<p>A thinker is seldom great in conversation, and the glib talkers who have +silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder in his +deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos—(let Caliban be +swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often unexplained, +because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and lightly +for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportunities +in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs; such +heart-emptyings yield heart-ease: an author, who has done his good work +well—for such a one alone we speak—while, privately, he scarce could +have refreshed mankind by petty driblets—in the perpetuity, publicity, +and universal acceptation of his high and honourable calling, does good +by wholesale, irrigates countries, and gladdens largely the large heart +of human society. And are not these unbounded pleasures, spreading over +life, and comforting the struggles of a death-bed? Yes: rising as +Ezekiel's river from ankle to knee, from knee to girdle, from girdle to +the overflowing flood—far beyond those lowest joys, which many wise +have trampled under foot, of praise, and triumph, and profit—the +authorship of good, that has made men better; that has consoled sorrow, +advanced knowledge, humbled arrogance, and blest humanity; that has sent +the guilty to his prayers, and has gladdened the Christian in his +praises—the authorship of good, that has shown God in his loveliness, +and man in his dependence; that has aided the cause of charity, and +shamed the face of sin—this high beneficence, this boundless +good-doing, hath indeed a rich recompense, a glorious reward!</p> + +<p>But we must speed on, and sear these hydra-necks, or we shall have as +many heads to our discourse, and as puzzling, as any treatise of the +Puritan divinity. Let us hasten to be practical; let us not so long +forget the promised title-pages; let it at length satisfy to show, more +than theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming +projects, and then casts out its half-made progeny; how scraps of paper +come to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts, +thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; +how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order, +each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal, +educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen +precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own true +crystal.</p> + +<p>Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as +heretofore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall +follow a full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now +in the book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last +times, that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be +pleased herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one +mind should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a +performance so various, inconsistent, and unusual; premising, also, that +wherein I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is +unwittingly and unwillingly; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a +man must read harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising +this much farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger, +neither using up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so; +and that, whether I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify +and perfect any of these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and +booksellers, <span class="smcap">steal not</span>; for so surely as I catch any one thus +behaving—and truly, my masters, the temptation is but small—I will +stick a "<i>Sic vos, non vobis,</i>" on his brazen forehead.</p> + +<p>Wait! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant of my +mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying utterances +before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; I would pray a +catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, and the +undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your pardons +universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, strangely and +Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caérphilli, out of the perpendicular +of truth; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, for good +or for evil; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhallowed +special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; I am +guilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on the +powerful gusts of feeling that burst upon my irritable breast; my heart +is no smooth Dead Sea, but the still vexed Bermoothes: therefore I would +print my penitence; I would publish my confessions; I would not hide my +humbleness; and it pleases me to pour out in sonnet-form my +unconventional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>APOLOGY TO ALL.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">—For I have sinn'd; oh! grievously and often;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Exaggerated ill, and good denied;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And Truth's own light unkindly misapplied:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">When some stern judgment, haply erring wide,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Other men's deeds all evil! Oh, my heart!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Renew once more thy generous youth, half perish'd;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Be wiser, kindlier, better than thou art!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And first, in fitting meekness, offer well</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">All earnest, candid prayers, to be forgiven</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For worldly, harsh, unjust, unlovable</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Thoughts and suspicions against man and Heaven!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Friends all, let this be my best amendment: bear with the candour, +homely though it may be, of your author's mind; and suffer its further +revelations of unborn manuscript with charitable listening; for they +would come forth in real order of time, the first having priority, and +not the best, ungarnished, unweeded, uncared-for, humbly, and without +any further flourish of trumpets.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Serjeant Ion—I beg his pardon, Talfourd—somewhere gives it as his +opinion, that most people, in any way troubled with a mind, have at some +time or other meditated a tragedy. Truly, too, it <i>is</i> a fine vehicle +for poetical solemnities, a stout-built vessel for an author's graver +thoughts; and the bare possibility of seeing one's own heart-stirring +creation visually set before a crowded theatre, the preclusive echoes +of anticipated thundering applause, the expected grilling silence +attendant on a pet scene or sentiment, all the tangible, accessories of +painting and music, clever acting and effective situation, and beyond +and beside these the certain glories of the property-wardrobe, make most +young minds press forward to the little-likely prize of successful +tragedy. That at one weak period I was bitten, my honesty would scorn to +deny; but fortunately for my peace of mind, "Melpomene looked upon me +with an aspect of little favour," and sturdy truth-telling Tacitus made +me at last but lightly regardful of my subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was +visited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my +fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon +other people's topics—for who can find any thing new under the +sun?—and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of +speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of +which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's +'<i>Lives of the Poets</i>' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of +some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment +my goodly aërial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an +after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed +me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to +tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four letters, then,</p> + +<h2>NERO;</h2> + +<h3>A CLASSICAL TRAGEDY:</h3> + +<h4>IN SEVEN SCENES.</h4> + +<p>And now, in pity to an afflicted parent, hear for a while his +offspring's Roscian capabilities. First of all, however, (and you know +how I rejoice in all things preliminary,) let me clear my road by +explanations: we must pioneer away a titular objection, "in seven +scenes," and an assumed merit, in the term "classical." I abhor +scene-shifters; at least, their province lies more among pantomimes, +farces, and comedies, than in the region of the solemn tragic muse; her +incidents should rather partake of the sculpture-like dignity of +<i>tableaux</i>. My unfashionable taste approves not of a serious story being +cut up into a vast number of separate and shuffled sections; and the +whistle and sliding panels detract still more from the completeness of +illusion: I incline as much as is possible to the Classic unities of +time, place, and circumstances, wishing, moreover, every act to be a +scene, and every scene an act; with a comfortable green curtain, that +cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop, +mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away +with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet; +bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty of head-aches.</p> + +<p>But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the +utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of +weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> one +scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons, +and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming +insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a +staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to +our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something +a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and +moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly +patriotic '<i>Henry the Fifth?</i>'—However, taking other grounds, the +epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern +method of its treatment: but of all this enough, for, on second +thoughts, perhaps we may do without the chorus.</p> + +<p>It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true +unity of time; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of +life, than the space of some three hours can allow for: we must +unavoidably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as +well have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet +is justified in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards +the goal of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates +arrests your critical ken, believe that it is not ignorantly careless, +but learnedly needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is +an utter inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light, +however hidden, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture, +it may charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his +most reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced +many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially +lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the +corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in +the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better +perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career. +Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to +gild the brass brow of vice; and verily, I have not spared my odious +hero; nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather +emperor,) I wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is +a soil for hope and charity; and that if despotism has high +prerogatives, its wealth and state are desperate temptations, whose +dangers mightily predominate, and whose necessary influences, if quite +unbiased, tend to utter misery.</p> + +<p>Now to introduce our <i>dramatis personæ</i>, with their "cast,"—for better +effect—rather unreasonably presumed. <i>Nero</i>—(Macready, who would +impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> not +by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every +Numismatist will vouch,)—a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality +and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion; +not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes, +and at times tempestuously cruel. <i>Nattalis</i>—(say Vandenhoff,)—his +favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing +the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to +all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise +mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and +glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and +licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own +country on the chief of her destroyers. <i>Marcus Manlius</i>—(who better +than Charles Kean?—supposing these artistic combinations not to be +quite impossible,)—a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine, +captain of Nero's body-guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and +faithful to his bad master amid conflicting trials. <i>Publius +Dentatus</i>—(any <i>bould</i> speaker; besides, it would be rather too much to +engage all the actors yet awhile;)—a worthy old Roman, father of the +heroine. <i>Galba</i>, the chief mover in the catastrophe, as also the opener +of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, but well-intentioned patriot, +who ultimately becomes the next emperor. With <i>Curtius</i> a tribune, +senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, &c. And so, after +the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as to a class inferior +to the very &c. of masculines—(of less intention withal than one of +those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasséed into +savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)—come we to the +women-kind. <i>Agrippina</i>, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother, +a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the +world who can awe her amiable son. <i>Lucia,</i> (<i>you</i> cannot be spared +here, clever Helen Faucit)—the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced +to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. <i>Rufa</i>, a +haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting +Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the +list.</p> + +<p>Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially, +so to speak, a <i>tableau</i> in the commencement, and a <i>tableau</i> of +situation in the end. Let us draw up upon scene <i>the first</i>. +Back-ground, Rome burning; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still +smoking; and a terminal altar in the garden. Plebs. running to and fro, +full of conventional little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and +other lumber, rescued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> from the flames; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,) +in a somewhat incendiary oration concerning poor men's calamities, and +against the powers that be, sends them to the capital with a procession +of flamines Diales and vestals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "<i>Ad +Capitolium, Ad Jovis solium</i>," and so forth] to good music. At the +end of the train come in Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite +hurriedly walks Galba, full of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism, +and old Rome's ruin. To these let there be added—to speak +mathematically—open-hearted Manlius; and let there follow certain +disceptatious converse about Nero, Manlius excusing him, extenuating his +vices by his temptations, giving military anecdotes of his earlier +virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle +monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows. After +disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a +moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl +hails him Cæsar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his +own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so +forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out +of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still +unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Cæsar; who, no +longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire +at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly +presides—<i>tableau</i>—and down drops the soft green baize. This first +act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many characters; and the +picture of the seven-hilled city, seen in a transparent blaze, might +give the followers of Stanfield a triumph.</p> + +<p><i>Second</i>: The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of Nero's, +also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered +enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and +holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a pancratist, the +world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost in flatteries, +after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris +in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero <i>had</i> gloriously fired Rome; +he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at +the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as +blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to +Phœnixes, and fire-kingships, and <i>coups-de-soliel</i> falling from the +same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero should be +worshipped, and calls on the priest of Jupiter to set a good example. +None dare refuse, and the senate bend before him; whereupon enter, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> +clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes, +and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice: all this pandering +to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of +these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the +haughty queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his +triumph, commands to bend too; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him +fiercely to task, objurgating likewise Rome's degenerate +gray-beards—great bustle—senate broken up hurriedly—and she, with a +"<i>feri ventrem</i>," dragged off to be killed by her son's order. Nero +alone with Nattalis by imperial command; his momentary compunction +nullified by the wily Iago, who turns off the subject smoothly to a new +object of desire: Publius was the only senator not in his place, and +Publius has a daughter, the fairest in Rome, Lucia—had not the emperor +noticed her among Agrippina's women? Nero, charmed with any scheme of +novelty that may change remorseful thoughts, is induced, nothing loth, +to attempt the subtle abduction of the heroine; a body-guard, headed as +always by Manlius, ready in the vestibule to escort him, and exit. +Nattalis, alone for a minute, betrays his own selfish schemes concerning +Lucia, who had refused him before, and alludes to his secret reasons for +urging on the maddened Nero to the worst excesses.</p> + +<p><i>Third scene</i> (or part, or <i>act</i>, if it must be so), expounds, in +fitting contrast to the foregoing, the tender loves of Lucia and +Manlius; a gentle home-scene, a villa and its terraced gardens: also, as +Lucia is a Christian, we have, poetically, and not puritanically, an +insight into her scruples of conscience as to the heathenism of her +lover: and also into <i>his</i> consistent nobility of character, not willing +to surrender the religion of his fathers unconvinced. To them rushes in +Publius, who has been warned by friend Galba of the near approach of +Nattalis and a guard, to seize Lucia for disreputable Nero: no possible +escape, and all urge Lucia to imitate Virginia, Lucretia, and others of +like Dian fame, by cowardly self-murder; she is high-principled, and +won't: then they—the father and lover—request leave to kill her; +conflicting passions and considerable stage effect; Lucia, who with calm +courage derides the dastard sacrifice, standing unharmed between those +loving thirsty swords: in a grand speech, she makes her quiet departure +a test of Manlius' love, and her ultimate deliverance to be a proof to +him that her God is the true God, the God who guards the innocent. +Manlius, struck with her martyr-like constancy, professes that if indeed +she is saved out of this great trouble, he will embrace her faith, +renounce his own, and so break down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> of wealth and rank, are alike +thrown away upon Publius; at last, the prince promises; and when +Publius, after a burst of earnest eloquence, proclaims the new pleasure +to consist in <i>showing mercy</i>, Nero's utter wrath, his hurricane of +hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying away old Publius to die +at the same stake with his daughter.</p> + +<p><i>Seventh</i>: the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre; (I +mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured +behind, and those "human torches" at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned in +side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some of +the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in +white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and +soldiers guarding them: he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test +miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the +chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at +the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech, +characteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding +the fagot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius <i>do +it</i>—a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl, +up to Nero; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the +hidden armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself +Cæsar still, the inviolable majesty;—suddenly stopped by a centripetal +rush of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted +in despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero, +unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech. +Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his +treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral +justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil; Manlius and +Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing +them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted +by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Cæsar by the assembled +Romans. So, upon a magnificent <i>tableau</i>, slowly falls the lawny +curtain.</p> + +<p>Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling +about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of +Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence +of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in the matter +of London's; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspicions about +Galba's too probable <i>alibi</i> in Spain. Tell me rather this: do I falsify +history in any thing more important than mere accidental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> anachronisms +and anatopisms? do I make an untrue delineation of character, blackening +the good, or white-washing the wicked? Do I not, by introducing Nero's +three greatest crimes so near upon his assassination, merely accelerate +the interval between causes and effect? And is not tragic dignity +justified in varnishing, with other compost than the dregs of Rome, the +exit of the last true Cæsar of the Augustan family? For all the rest, +good manager, provide me actors, and I am even now uncertain—such is my +weakness—whether this skeleton might not at some time be clad with +flesh and skin, and a decent Roman toga. I fear it will yet haunt me as +a '<i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i>,' destroying my quiet with involuntary +shreds and patches of long-metred blank; the notion is still vivacious, +albeit scotched: Alexandrine though the synopsis appear, it must not be +thrown on the highroad as a dead snake; nay, let me cherish it yet on my +hearth, and not hurl it away like a <i>bonum waviatum</i>; a little more +boiling up of Roman messes in my brain, and my tragedy might flow forth +spontaneously as lava. What if this book be, after all, a sort of +pilot-balloon, to show my huge Nassau the way the wind blows—a feeler +as to which and which may please? Whether or not this be so, I will +still confess on, emptying my brain of booklets, and, if by happy +possibility I can keep my secret, shall hear unsuspected, friend, <i>your</i> +verdict.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>I must rather hope, than expect, that my next bit of possible authorship +is not like the last, a subject forestalled. Scribbling as I find myself +for very listlessness in a dull country-house, there's not a publisher's +index within thirty miles; so, for lack of evidence to the contrary, I +may legitimately, for at least a brief period of self-delusion, imagine +the intoxicating field my own. And yet so fertile, important, +interesting a subject, cannot have been quite overlooked by the corps of +professed literary labourer's: the very title-page would insure five +thousand readers (especially with a Brunswicker death's-head and +marrow-bones added underneath).</p> + + +<h2>OPIUM;</h2> + +<h3>A HISTORY;</h3> + + +<p>standing alone in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, +warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of +information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of +every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of +poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of +increase, and the like; its human history, discovery as a drug; how, +when, where, and by whom cultivated; dissertations as to the possibility +of Chaldean, Pharaonic, Grecian, or Roman opium eating, with most +erudite extracts out of all sorts of scribes, from Sanchoniathon down to +Juvenal, on these topics; its medicinal uses, properties, accidents, and +abuses; as to whether it might not be used homœopathically or in +infinitesimal doses, to infuse a love of the pleasures of imagination +into clodpoles, lawyers' clerks, and country cousins; its intellectual +possibilities of usefulness, stimulating the brain; its moral ditto, +allaying irritability; together with a dreadful detail of its evils in +excess, idiotizing, immoralizing, ruining soul and body. Plenty of stout +unquestionable statistics, from all crannies of the globe, to +corroborate all the above to the extreme satisfaction of practical men, +with causes and consequences of its insane local popularity. All this, +moreover, at present, with especial reference to China and the East; +added to the moral bearings of the Opium-war, and our national +responsibilities relative to that unlucky traffic. The metaphysical +question stated and answered, whether or not prohibition of any thing +does not lead to its desire; showing the increasing appetency of those +sottish Serics for the forbidden vice, and illustrating Gay's fable of +the foolish young cock, who ne'er had been in that condition, but for +his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so captivating a +form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken journeymen? +queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the humbug of +teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit of +grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring +demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating, +drinking, or smoking, for the wholesomer toddies, among factory folk and +the finest pisantry. Millions of anecdotes regarding Eastern Rajahs, +Western Locofocos, Southern Moors, and North-country Muscovites, as to +the drug in its abuses: strange cures (if any) of strange ailments of +mind or body by its prudent use: how to wean men and nations from those +deleterious chewings and smokings; with true and particular accounts of +such splendid self-conquests as Coleridge and De Quincey, and—shall I +add another, a living name?—have attained to. Then, again, what a field +for poetical vagaries, and madnesses of imagination, would be afforded +by the subject of opium-dreams! Now, strictly speaking, in order to +hallucinate honestly, your opium-writer ought to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> have had some +practical knowledge of opium-eating: then could he descant with the +authority of experience—yea, though he write himself thereby down an +ass—on its effects upon mind and body; then could he tell of luxuries +and torments in true Frenchified detail; then could he expound its pains +and pleasures with all the eloquence of personal conviction. But, as to +such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a +mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably +demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my +apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum +negus, to imagine myself—a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the +paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn +such a petty realm as the Solar System, with Cassiopeia, Boötes, and his +dog, to boot; an intellect, so ravished, that it feels all flame, or a +mass of matter so inert, that it lies for ages in the silent depths of +ocean, a lump of primeval metal: Madness, with the red-hot iron hissing +in his brain: Murder, with the blood-hound ghost, over land, over sea, +through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, ever tracking silently +in horrid calmness; the oppression of indefinite Guilt, with that Holy +Eye still watching; the consciousness of instant danger, the sense of +excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague wild fear, without +will or power to escape: spurring for very life on a horse of marble: +flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies—O, that universal +crash!—greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations of the +assembled dead—that hollow, far-echoing, malicious laughter—that +hurricane-sound of clattering skulls; to be pent up, stifling like a +toad, in a limestone rock for centuries; to be haunted, hunted, hooted; +to eat off one's own head with its cruel madly crunching under-jaw; +to—but enough of horrors: and as to delights, all that Delacroix +suggests of perfume, and Mahomet of Houris, and Gunter of cookery, and +the German opera of music: all Camilla-like running unexertive, all that +sea unicorns can effect in swift swimming, or storm-caught condors in +things aërial; all the rapid travellings of Puck from star to star, +system to system, all things beauteous, exhilarating, ecstatic—ages of +all these things, warranted to last. Now, multiply all these several +alls by forty-nine, and the product will serve for as exaggerated a +statement as possible of opium pandering to pleasure; yes, by +forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of +extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive +one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens +being the algebraic <i>n</i>, and if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> so, into their huge undefined +aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed +flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making +much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, excitation. The brain waltzing +intoxicated, the heart panting as in youth's earliest affection, the +mind broad, and deep, and calm, a Pacific in the sunshine, the body +lapped in downy rest, with every nerve ministering to its comfort; what +more can one, merely and professedly of this world of sensualism—an +opium-eater for instance—conceive of bliss? Such imaginative flights as +these, with its pungent final interrogatory, suggestive to man's +selfishness of joys as yet untried, might tempt to tamper with the dear +delight; whereas the plain statement of the most that opium could +minister to happiness, as contrasted with those false vain views of it, +remind me of Tennyson's poetical '<i>Timbuctoo</i>,' gorgeous as a new +Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth-obstructed kraals +dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, his soaring +fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in '<i>Der Freischutz</i>.'</p> + +<p>Let this then serve as a meagre sketch of my defunct treatise on opium: +think not that I love the subject, curious and fertile though it be; +perhaps, philosophically regarded, it is not a better one than <i>gin</i>; +but ears polite endure not the plebeian monosyllable, unless indeed with +a rëduplicated <i>n</i>, as Mr. Lane <i>will</i> have it our whilom genie should +be spelt: accordingly, I magnanimously give up the whole idea, and am +liberal enough, in this my dying determination, to sign a codicil, +bequeathing opium to my executors.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<p>Novelism is a field so filled with copy-holders, so populously tenanted +in common, that it requires no light investigation to find a site +unoccupied, and a hero or heroine waiting to be hired. Nevertheless, I +seem to myself to have lighted on a rich and little-cultivated corner; +imagining that the subject is a good one, because still untouched, +founded on facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the +probable. He that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of +the Shakspearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of +hapless</p> + + +<h3>CHARLOTTE CLOPTON,</h3> + +<p>as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of +her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal +vault;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> he will hear something of her noble birth—her fine +character—her fascinating beauty—her short, innocent, eventful +life—her horrible death. Consider, too, the age and locality in which +she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters +that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim +dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of +her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest +by that of Charlotte herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted +parricide of years agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt +its curse upon the now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence, +still-not-acquitted family; a parricide consequent on passionate love, +differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating +feudal fathers—Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir +a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering +curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, +followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual +hatred, and the former found in his own park with the broken point of +his son's sword in him, the latter flying the realm: the curse has slept +for a generation; and now two fair daughters are all that remain to the +high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir +descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering +curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story, +whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, +to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young +Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage, +as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to +his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's +joy the greater, Saville has interest sufficient to meet the old +knight's humour of keeping up the ancient family name, by getting it +added to his own; so that the Beauvoir hatred and parricidal curse seem +likely to be frustrated. But—the first hindrance to their union is poor +sister Margaret's secret and infatuated love for that scheming villain +Rowland, her then too probable seduction, melancholic madness, and +suicide: successively upon this follow the last illnesses and deaths of +the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful ubiquity terrifies +in their very chamber of disease; and as the too likely consequence of +such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite sensibility, +Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage, +gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible +trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> the +secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who thereby +gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that silent +chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride: she, +all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-consciousness; +and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the curse +complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured mind +over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives an +involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the curse, +she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced than ever. +Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe: a +catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, <i>quite true</i>. +Fully aware of all that is going on—the preparations for burial, the +misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe—she is placed in +the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his +last long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault +under Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive! +And then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the +church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the +curse: how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault +opened; and the wretch Rowland—partly from curiosity, partly from +malice—determined to be there to see. As they and some church-followers +come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate +plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and +the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, in her +shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair shoulders, +rushes out the maniac Charlotte: in phrensied half-reason she has seized +Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has strangled him, +and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of Saville—who, as +having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and who leaves the +country for ever—little or nothing is more said: and Clopton Hall +remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats.</p> + +<blockquote><p>P.S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in +ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recorded her experiences in +the vault, by writing with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth: a +true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long +since extinct: the house, now rëbuilt and rëstyled—the vault—the +picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often +are the ways of Providence! how frequently the innocent suffer for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> +guilty!)—the gloomy well—and something extant of the story—remains +still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically, +one should go there, and gain materials on the spot: and nothing could +be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century +costumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions; accessories of the +humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's +own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the +assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned +recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though +justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full +reward.</p> + +<p>Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill! +Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the +kingdom!—As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and +unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the +<i>Buried-alive-one</i>!—is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that +would pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel, +criminal, and useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In +emptying my head of the notion, I have ministered too much already: but +the sample of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes, +and poisons no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor +beautiful Charlotte! shall not be disturbed by me; thy misfortunes sleep +with thee. Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than +Werter's, so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume +measure, is capable of being fabricated into something of deep, +romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in +such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic +school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned +sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual +passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the +waters, but Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth.</p> + +<p>Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a morsel; +be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and spare your +gasconade: the expediency of a sample has been cleverly suggested, and +<span class="smcap">WE</span> <i>ego et canis meus</i>, royal in munificence, do graciously +accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any +rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract +which explains itself—the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will +suppose preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That bitter speech shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain: +it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to +be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such +conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused +moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than +honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous +world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her—when the cold finger +of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her +altered form—now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting +more scorpion than ever—to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with +having rightfully inherited <i>a curse</i>—to be told, in a sort of fiendish +triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's +fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed, +had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin—to know, to hear, yea, from +his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous +youth—of her too free, unsuspicious affection—had calmly been +contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love—here +was misery, here was madness!</p> + +<p>"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind +the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret: +his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still +haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered +one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered.</p> + +<p>"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine; +her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized; +but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of +trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for +Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of +disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the +heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of +perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister, +suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled +asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay +fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never +was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on +her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started +at their strange wild glare: they glittered with a freezing brilliancy, +and stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad? +She bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation; +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse; her +hair, still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down +loose and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls +stood on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to +strike the brain; her eyes were set in a steady horror; slowly, with +dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than +herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering, +fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door: so, like a +ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and +away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for +her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it, +and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence +to him. But, see! she has silently passed by; her hand is on the lock of +the hall-door; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind her, +as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns +upon its hinge, and she, still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither, +oh God!—whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the +old knight's guests at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely +preferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the +dreary white apartment looking on the moat—nay, the haunted room of the +parricide himself—to encountering the dangers and darkness of a +night-return so desperate; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire, +near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the +splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her—but cannot rescue +from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful +creature, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which +way did the maniac turn?—whither in that desolate gloom shall Charlotte +fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's +study, she rushes back in terror to the hall; and then—Help, +help!—torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance +among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by +cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance +about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in +moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who +anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her +knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her +eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and so the live-long +night—that night of doubt, and dread, and dreariness—through bitter +hours of confusion and dismay, they sought poor Margaret—and found her +not!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of a +terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour, +and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten +fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with +Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With +the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied +fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds about her face, and +twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the shallow pool might +not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay scarcely half immersed +in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about, +appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and +the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the +hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the +overflowing margin of the pool."</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not +a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better +educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served +up with higher seasoning as a savoury <i>ragout</i>: but you get it in +simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to +sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may +be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding +to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal +curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce +as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as +no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known +fear, and no man also—from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan +Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified +Van-Diemanite—can honestly swear himself free from the influence of +some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet +with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected +with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of +in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self, +(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore +induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen +round their chief, throng about the topic of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>THE MARVELLOUS.</h3> + + +<p>A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of +admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy +publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts, +dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true +vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, +but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially +detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, +no stories from the '<i>Terrific Register</i>,' nor fancies of hysterical +females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins +should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should +propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's +'<i>Philosophy of Sleep</i>,' Scott's '<i>Demonology</i>,' treatises on +Apparitions, and many a rare black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might +lend us here their aid; the British Museum is full of well-attested +ghost-stories, and there are very few old ladies unable to add to the +supply: then, this ghost department might be climaxed by the author's +own experience; forasmuch as he is ready to avouch that a person's fetch +was heard by many, and seen by some, in an old country-house, a hundred +miles away from the place of death, at the instant of its happening.</p> + +<p>As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross +were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools +quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the +Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal +Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about +the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, to our church, +commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a tale of no less than +eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a poor friend, who died +on the next, which none could be expected to believe unless I delivered +it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the facts. Dreams +also—strange, vague, mysterious word; there is a gloomy look in it, a +dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep: the records of public +justice will show many a murder revealed by them, as instance the Red +Barn; more than one poor client, in the clutch of a "respectable" +attorney, has been helped to his rights by their influence; from +Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the oppressors of mankind have +in those had kindly warning. Dreams—how many millions false and +foolish, for the one proving to be true!—but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> that one, how clear, +determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other agency than +imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers! Who has not tales to +tell of dreams? A warning not to go on board such and such a ship—which +founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon the mind, concerning +friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in the manner and at the +time of its occurrence; the fore-shown coming of an unexpected guest; +the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: these, and others like these, +many can attest, and I not least. And of other marvels, though here left +unconsidered, yet might much be said: truths so strange, that the pages +of romance would not trench on such extravagance; combinations so +unlikely, that thrice twelve cast successively by proper dice, were but +probability to those. Thus, in authorial fashion, has the marvellous +dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I suggest a hand-book thereof to +catering booksellers and the insatiable public.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs in +a <i>vis-à-vis</i>, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and +propriety enters strong protest; an emancipated parrot attracts my +sympathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for +I dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought +into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders +dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint +song of liberty behind their prison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a +school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my +antipathies; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the +honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as +<i>compagnons de voyage</i>; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room. +Nevertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if +you will) for the animal creation: often have I walked on in weariness, +rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus; and +my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured scion +of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like—for we learn +from Æsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be +unpopular—is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is +my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. Bishop Butler, we +may all of us remember, in '<span class="smcap">THE</span> <i>Analogy</i>' argues that the +objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> +which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be +shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now, +for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be +extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with +equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, +and—dare we add?—of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young +lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground +without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's +young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be +mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and +the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this, +there <i>is</i> a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in +some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals +may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that St. Paul, +arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type +of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God +care for oxen?"—or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly, +though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable?—and the +implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are +left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to +think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his +creatures: in a certain sense</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"He sees with equal eye, as God of all,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent +creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some +laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple +consideration that μελει is not so strictly rendered "care for" +as κεδεται. Scripture, then, so far from militating against the +possible truth, that animals have souls, would seem, by a side-long +glance, to countenance the doctrine: and now let us for a passing moment +turn and see what aid is given to us by moral philosophy.</p> + +<p>No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a +sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no +conscience, necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty +and tyranny, without the chance of compensation for sufferings +undeserved. Neither can any good government be so partial, as (limiting +the whole existence of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one +of a litter to be pampered with continual luxuries, and another to be +tortured for all its little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> life by blows, famine, disease—and in its +lingering death by the scientific scalpels of a critical Majendie or a +cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, that in the so-called parallel case +of partialities among men—the this-world's choice of a Jacob, the +this-world's rejection of an Esau—the answer is obvious: there are two +scales to the balance, there is yet another world. Far be it from us to +think that all things are not then to be cleared up; that the innocent +little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be +heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an +overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and +example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside +as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain +every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless +extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, no +explanation; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they have +died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or +cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different +the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in +various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to +justify the ways of God to"—brutes: we need not then consider, with a +certain French abbé, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for +their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, +account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits +of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not +regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible +deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends +itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of +guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, +have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His +handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why—in that +Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth +shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were "caught up +into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand +saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy +season on this renovated globe—tell me why there should not be some +tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure, +as they once ministered in pain? And for the rest, the other nine, what +hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the +large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from +enjoying some emancipate existence—we need not perhaps accord them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> +more of immortality than justice, demands for compensation—for a +definite time, a millennium let us think, in scores of those million +orbs that twinkle in the galaxy?</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Space stretches wide enough for every grain</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As far as sun from sun.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Shall I then say what hinders?—the littleness of man's mind, refusing +possibility of room for those countless quadrillions; and the +selfishness of his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose +doctrine (certainly too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level +with mankind, and</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">His faithful dog shall bear him company."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his kingdom, +give hope of after-life to all creation: Saint Antony of Padua did waste +time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes; but may they not find +blessings, though ignorant of priests?—And now, suffer me, in my +current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this +topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess, +in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with +ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zoöphyte and a caterpillar have +brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know +whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked +with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang +outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses +instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is +moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary +disposal of what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to +ourselves for exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which +is called Soul. But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral +sense? Obviously, since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in +the scale of being, and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we +ought to be able to take the best instances of animal morals from those +creatures which have come most within the influence of human example; as +pets of every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a +sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is +a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and +who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection, +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an +educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though +limited in speech, said many a witty thing?—Again, read some common +collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there +between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of +sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, whose +solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? The +soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle-field; +and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shepherd's +requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high sense of duty +in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, and that in +the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor menaced blows +can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed to his care? Once +more: Who does not recognise individuality of character in animals? A +dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, any domesticated creature, +will act throughout life, in a certain course of disposition, at least +as consistently as most masters: it will also have its whims and ways, +likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows; and, verily, +in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its monarch to +the blush.</p> + +<p>But upon this theme—meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful, +illogical—my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended +barely to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for +name to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as</p> + + +<h2>PSYCHOTHERION,</h2> + +<h3>AN INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT ON THE SOULS OF BRUTES;</h3> + +<p>And my thoughts have run on thus far so little conclusively (I humbly +admit to you), that we will, to save trouble, leave the riddle as +unsolved as ever, and gain no better advantage than thus having loosely +adverted to another fancy of your author's mind.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Not yet is my mind a simple freeman, a private, unincumbered, individual +self-possessor: its slaves are not yet all manumitted; I lack not +subjects; I am no lord of depopulated regions; albeit my aim is indeed +akin to that of old Rufus, and Goldsmith's tyrannical Squire of Auburn;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> +I wish to clear my hunting-grounds, to make a solitude, and call it +peace. Slowly, but still surely, am I working out that will. Meanwhile, +however, there is no need to advertise for heroes; they are only too +rife, clinging like bats to the curtains of my chambers of imagery, or +with attendant satellites hanging in bunches, as swarming bees about +their monarch, to the rafters of my brain. Selection is the hardest +difficulty; here is the labour, here the toil; because for just +selection there should be good reasons. Now, amongst other my +multitudinous authorial projects, this perhaps is not the worst; namely, +by a series of dissimilar novels, psychological rather than religious, +and for interest's sake laid in diverse ages and countries, to +illustrate separately the most rampant errors of the Papacy. For +example, say that Lewis's '<i>Monk</i>' is a strong delineation of the evils +consequent on constrained and unchosen celibacy; though its colouring be +meretricious, though its details offend the moralities of nature, still +it is a book replete to thoughtful minds with terrible teaching—be not +high-minded, but fear. In like manner, guilty thoughts dropped upon +innocent young hearts in that foul corner,</p> + + +<h3>THE CONFESSIONAL,</h3> + +<p>might make a stirring tale, or haply a series of them: the cowled +hypocrite suggesting crime to those whose answer is all innocence; his +schemes of ambition, or avarice, or lust, slowly elaborated by the +fiend-like purposes to which he puts his ill-used knowledge of the human +heart; his sacrilegious violation of the holy grievings made by mistaken +penitence. History should bring its collateral assistance: the Medicean +Queens, Venice, bloody Spain, hard-visaged monks calmly directing the +engines of torture, the poison of anonymous calumny, and dread secrets +more dreadfully betrayed, could furnish much of truthful precedent. The +bad obstructions placed between the sinner and his God by selfish +priestcraft; the souls that would return again, like Noah's weary dove, +enticed by ravens to forsake the ark, mate with them, and feed on their +banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal +harms brought out in full detail; the progress of this world's misery in +the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the +absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the sunny plains they +topple over; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort; the +actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors; the prominent +characters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,) +whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple +about means, bloody, bad, vindictive, atheistic; and then his victims, a +youth that he trains from infancy to the sole end of poisoning, subtly +and slowly, all who stand in his path; a girl who loves this youth, and +who, flying from the foul friar in the day of temptation, betakes her to +the mountains, and ultimately saves her lover from his terrible +destination in guilt, by hiding him in her own haven of refuge, the +persecuted little church; and with these materials to work upon, I need +hardly detail to you an intricate plot and an obvious <i>dénouement</i>.</p> + +<p>This class of theme, it is probable, has exercised the talents of many; +but as the evils of confessing to deceitful man, and of blind trust in +his deleterious advice, have not specifically met my eye, the subject is +new to me, and may be so to others. Still, I stay not now further to +enlarge upon it; I must press on; and will not cruelly encourage the +birth of thoughts brought forth only to be destroyed, like father +Saturn's babes—the anthropophagite.</p> + +<p>A good reason for selection at last presents itself. Sundry collateral +ancestors of mine [every body from Cain downwards must have had +ancestors; so no quibbling, please, nor quarrelling about so exploded an +absurdity as family-pride,] were lucky enough in days lang syne to +appropriate to themselves, amongst other matters, a respectable +allowance of forfeited monastic territory; and I know it by this token: +that in yonder venerable chest of archives and muniments, rest in their +own dust of ages, duly and clearly assorted, all those abbey deeds from +the times of Henry Beauclerc. Here's a fine unlooked-for opportunity of +making dull ancestral spots classic ground, famous among men; here's a +chance of immortalizing the crumbling ruins of an obscure, but +interesting, abbey-church; here's a fair field for dragging in all that +one knows or does not know, all that parchments can prove, or fancy can +invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place +of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind of +the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and +why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak, +rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between +the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gentle blood, +familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and +Ratcliffe? Why not press into the service of instructive novelism truths +stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, and names of higher +note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p> + +<p>All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in</p> + + +<h3>THE PRIOR OF MARRICK.</h3> + +<p>And now for a story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it +is one—both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite +incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our +prior was once a good man—an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl +in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting +family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And +wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very +nursery, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who +had buckled on his harness, and fallen in the wars: they loved, of +course, and the deeper, because secretly and without permission: they +were too young to marry, and indeed had thought little of the matter; +still, substance and shadow, body and soul, were scarcely more needful +to each other, or more united. But—a hacking cough—a hectic cheek—a +wasting frame, were to blue-eyed Mary the remorseless harbingers of +death, and Eustace, standing on her early grave, was in heart a widower: +henceforth he had no aim in life; the cloister was—so thought he, as +many do—his best refuge, to dream upon the past, to soothe his present +sorrows, and earn for a future world the pleasures lost in this. Time, +the best anodyne short of what Eustace could not buy at +Rome—true-healing godliness—alleviates his grief, and makes him less +sad, but not wiser; years pass, the desire of prëeminence in his own +small world has hitherto furnished incentives to existence, and he find +himself a prior too soon; for he has nothing more to live for. Yes: +there is an object; the turmoil of small ambition with its petty cares +is past, and the now motiveless man lingers in yearning thought on the +only white spot in his gloomy journey, the green oasis of his desert +life, that dream of early love. He has long loved the fair, quiet image +of our Lady of Marrick, unwittingly, for another Mary's sake; +half-oblivious of the past in scheming for the present, he has knelt at +midnight before that figure of the Virgin-mother, and knew not why he +trembled; he thought it the ecstacy of devotion, the warm-gushing flood +of calmness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees +it, he knows it; there is, indeed, good cause: how miraculously the +white marble face grows into resemblance with <i>hers!</i> the same sainted +look of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and +unruffled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip, +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> same wild compassion in the eye! Great God—he loves again!—that +staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness; +the image is now dearer than the most sacred; there is a halo round it, +like light from heaven: he adores its placid, eternal, changeless +aspect; if it could move, the charm would half dissolve; he loves it—as +an image! And then how rapturously joins he with the wondering choir of +more stagnant worshippers, while they yield to this substantial form, +this stone-transmigration of his love, this tangible, unpassionate, +abiding, present deity, the holy hymns of praise, due only to the unseen +God! How gladly he sings her titles, ascribing all excellence to her! +How tenderly falls he at her feet, with eyes lighted as in youth! How +earnestly he prays to his fixed image—<i>to</i> it, not <i>through</i> it, for +his heart is <i>there</i>! How zealously he longs for her honour, her worship +among men—hers, the presiding idol of that Gothic pile, the hallowed +Lady, the goddess-queen of Marrick! Stop—can he do nothing for her, can +he venture nothing in her service? Other shrines are rich, other images +decked in gold and jewels; there is yet an object for his useless life, +there are yet ends to be attained, ends—that can justify the means. He +longs for wealth, he plots for it, he dares for it: he plans lying +miracles, and thousands flock to the shrine; he waylays dying men, and, +by threatened dread of torments of the damned, extortionizes conscience +into unjust riches for himself; he accuses the innocent, and reaps the +fine; he connives at the guilty, and fingers the bribe. So wealth flows +in, and the altar of his idol is hung with cloth of gold, her diadem is +alight with gems, costly offerings deck her temple, bending crowds kneel +to her divinity. Is he not happy? Is he not content? Oh, no: an +insatiate demon has possessed him; with more than Pygmalion's insanity, +he loves that image; he dreams, he thinks of that one unchanging form. +The marvelling brotherhood, credulous witnesses of such deep devotion, +hold him for a saint; and Rome, at the wish of the world, sends him, as +to a living St. Eustatius, the patent of canonization: they praise him, +honour him, pray to him; but he contemptuously (and they take it for +humility) spurns a gift which speaks of any other heaven than the +presence of that one fair, beautiful, beloved statue. A thought fills +him, and that with joy: he has heard of sacrifices in old time, +immolations, offerings up of self, as the highest act of a devout +worshipper; he cares not for earth nor for heaven; and one night, in his +enthusiastic vigils, the phrensy of idolatry arms that old man's own +weak hand against himself, and he falls at the statue's feet, +self-murdered, <i>its</i> martyr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> + +<p>Here were scope for psychology; here were subtle unwindings of motive, +trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. All ages, +before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even to +excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the ends +of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger into which +the wisest of old time were entrapped: we scarcely allow that the +Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man and a shrewd, when we see +him fall before his monster; we have not wits to understand how the +Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties could be so besotted. +For this superior illumination of mind, let us thank not ourselves, but +the Light of the world; and, warned by the history of ages, let us +beware how we place created things to mediate between us and the most +High; let us be shy of symbolic emblems—of pictures, images, +observances—lest they grow into forms that engross the mind, and fill +it with a swarm of substantial idols.</p> + +<p>Now, this tale of the '<i>Prior of Marrick</i>' would, but for the present +premature abortion, have seen daylight in the form of an +auto-biography—the catastrophe, of course, being added by some +brother-monk, who winds up all with his moral: and to get at this +auto-biographical sketch—a thing of fragments and wild soliloquies, +incidentally laying bare the heart's disease, and the poisonous +breathings of idolatrous influence—I could easily, and after the true +novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, somewhat as follows: Let me go +gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or cart, say for a sportsman's +pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon +the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former +beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an +antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general +huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the +sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively +at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in +the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as +thus. Our sexton has got a name among his neighbours for his capital +double-leather brogues, warranted to carry you dry-shod through a river; +and, warmed by my brandy-flask and <i>bonhomie</i>, considering me moreover +little likely to set up a rival shop, cunningly communicates his secret: +he puts parchment between the leathers—Parchment, my good man? where +can you get your parchment hereabouts? I spoke innocently, for I thought +only of ticketing some grouse for my friends southward: but the question +staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> uncharitable +conclusion—he had stolen it. And then follows confession: how, among +the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak chest—broke it +open—no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing,"—except parchment; a lot of +leaves tidily written, and—warranted to keep out the wet. A few +shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I promising as extra to +send a huge bundle of ancient indentures in place of the precious +manuscript. Thus, in the way of Mackenzie's '<i>Man of Feeling</i>,' we +become fragmentary where we fear to be tedious; and so, in a good +historic epoch, among the wars of the Roses, surrounded by friars and +nuns, outlaws and border-riders, chivalrous knights and sturdy bowyers, +consign I to the oblivescent firm of Capulet and Co. my happily +destroyed '<i>Prior of Marrick</i>.'</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition +towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady +it. Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer +in its season the addition of the serious. Amongst other wholesome +topics of of meditation—for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, +although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated—the +study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the +writing propensity of your author's mind. On most matters it has been my +fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of +opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with +very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are +concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality or novelty. To my own +conscience, however, these things are reversed; for contemplation has +produced that as new to my own mind, which may be old to others deeper +read, and has thought those ideas original, which are only so to its own +fancy. Very little, then, must such as I reasonably hope to add on +Prophetical Interpretation; the Universal Wisdom of two millenaries +cannot be expected to gain any thing from the passing thought of a +hodiernal unit: if any fancies in my brain are really new, and hitherto +unbroached upon the subject, it can scarcely be doubted but that they +are false; so very little reliance do principles of catholicity allow to +be placed upon "private interpretations."</p> + +<p>With thus much of apology to those alike who will find, and those who +will not find, any thing of novelty in my notions, I still do not +withhold them. By here a little and there a little, is the general mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> +instructed: it would be better for the world if every mighty tome really +contributed its grain.</p> + +<p>The prophecies of Holy Writ appear to me to have one great peculiarity, +distinguishing them from all other prophecies, if any, real or +pretended; and that peculiarity I deferentially conceive to be this: +that, whereas all human prophecies profess to have but one fulfilment, +the divine have avowedly many true fulfilments. The former may indeed +light upon some one coincidence, and may exult in the accident as a +proof of truth; the latter bounds as it were (like George Herbert's +sabbaths) from one to another, and another, through some forty +centuries, equally fulfilled in each case, but still looking forward +with hope to some grander catastrophe: it is not that they are loosely +suited, like the Delphic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that +they, by a felicitous adaptation, sit closely into each era which the +Architect of Ages has arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a +loose bag, which would hold and involve with equal ease almost any +circumstance; biblical prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone, +though not all similar in perfection, its own true casts will fit: or +again, in another view of the matter, accept this similitude: let the +All-seeing Eye be the centre of many concentric circles, beholding +equally in perspective the circumference of each, and for accordance +with human periods of time measuring off segments by converging radii: +separately marked on each segment of the wheel within wheel, in the way +of actual fulfilment, as well as type and antitype, will appear its +satisfied word of prophecy, shining onward yet as it becomes more and +more final, until time is melted in eternity. Thus, it is perhaps not +impossible that every interpretation of wise and pious men may alike be +right, and hold together; for different minds travel on the different +peripheries. So our Lord (to take a familiar instance) speaks of his +second advent in terms equally applicable to the destruction of one +city, of the accumulated hosts at Armageddon, and of this material +earth: Antiochus and Antichrist occur prospectively within the same pair +of radii at differing distances; and, in like manner and varying +degrees, may, for aught we can tell, such incarnations of the evil +principle as papal Rome, or revolutionary Europe, or infidel +Cosmopolitism; or, again, such heads of parties, such indexes of the +general mind, as a Cæsar, an Attila, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a—whoever +be the next. So also of hours, days, years, eras; all may and do cöexist +in harmonious and mutual relations. Good men, those who combine prayer +with study, need not fear neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>sary difference of result, from holding +different views; the grand error is too loosely generalizing; a little +circle suits our finite ken; we cannot, as yet, mentally span the +universe. These crude and cursory remarks may serve to introduce a +likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have given entertainment, and +which, with others of a similar sort, were once to have come forth in an +essay-form, headed</p> + +<h3>THE SEVEN CHURCHES;</h3> + +<p>moreover, for aught that has come across my reading, to be additionally +styled '<i>A New Interpretation, for these Latter Days</i>.' Without desiring +to do other than quite confirm the literal view, as having related +primarily to those local churches of old times, geographically in Asia +Minor; without attempting to dispute that they may have an individual +reference to varieties of personal character, and probably of different +Christian sects; I imagine that we may discover, in the Apocalyptic +prospect of these seven churches, an historical view of Christianity, +from the earliest ages to the last: beginning as it did, purely, warmly, +and laboriously, with the apostolic emblematic Ephesus, and to end with +the "shall He find faith on earth" of lukewarm Laodicea: thus Smyrna +would symbolize the state of the church under Diocletian, the +"tribulation ten days:" Pergamus, perhaps the Byzantine age, "where +Satan's seat is" the Balaam and Balak of empire and priesthood; +Thyatira, the avowed commencement of the Papacy, "Jezebel," &c.; Sardis, +the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the +rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, +(the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its +decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, +this were possible.</p> + +<p>The elucidation of these several hints might show some striking +confirmations of the notion; which, as every thing else in this book, +would humbly claim your indulgence, reader, for my sketches must be +rapid, and their descriptions brief. Concurrently, however, with this, +(which I know not whether any prophetic scholiasts have mentioned or +not,) there may be deduced a still further interpretation, equally, as +far as I am concerned, underived from the lucubrations of others. This +other interpretation involves a typical view of the general +characteristics of Christendom's seven true churches, as they are to be +found standing at the coming of their Lord; the Asiatic seven may be +assimilated, in their religious peculiarities, with the national +Protestant churches of modern Europe: what order should be preserved in +this assimilation, unless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> indeed it be that of eldership, it might be +difficult to decide; but, excluding those communities which idol-worship +has unchurched, and leaving out of view such anomalies as America +presents, having no national religion, we shall find seven true churches +now existing, between which and the Asiatics many curious parallels +might be run: the seven are, those of England, Scotland, Holland, +Prussia, perhaps Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. Without professing to +be quite confident as to the list, the idea remains the same: it is but +a light hint on a weighty subject, demanding more investigation than my +slender powers can at present compass. It is merely thrown out as +undigested matter; a crude notion let it rest: if ever I aspire to the +dignity and dogmatism of a theological teacher, it must be after more +and deeper inquiry of the Newtons, Faber, Frere, Croly, Keith, and other +learned interpreters, than it is possible or proper to make in a hurry: +volumes have been, and volumes might be again, written for and against +any prophecy unfulfilled; it is dangerous to teach speculations; for, if +found false, they tend to bring holy truths into disrepute. Let me then +put upon the shelf, as a humble layman should, my hitherto +unaccomplished prophetical treatise; and receive its mention for little +more than my true revelation of another phase of authorship.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>And many like attempts have been hazarded by me in the mode theological; +though, from some cause or other, they have mostly fallen abortive. Were +mention here made of the more completed efforts of your author's mind, +in this walk of literature, or of others, it might too evidently lay +bare the mystery of my mask; a piece of secret information intended not +as yet to be bestowed. But this book—purporting to be the medley of my +mind, the <i>bonâ fide</i> emptying of its multifarious fancies—must of +necessity, if honest, pourtray all the wanings and waxings of an +ever-changing lunar disposition: so, haply you shall turn from a play to +a sermon, from a novel to a moral treatise, from a satire or an epigram +to a religious essay. Such and so inconsistent is authorial man. Here +then, in somewhat of order, should have followed lengthily various other +writings of serious import, half-fashioned, and from conflicting reasons +left—perhaps for ever—half-finished. But considering the crude and +apparently careless nature of this present book, and taking into account +the solemn and responsible manner in which such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> high topics ought +invariably to be treated, I have struck out, without remorse or mercy, +all except a mere mention of the subjects alluded to. The contiguity of +lighter matter demands this sacrifice; not that I am one of those who +deem a cheerful face and a prayerful heart incongruous: there is danger +in a man, however religious, when his brow lowers, and his cheek is +stern; so did Cromwell murder Charles; so did Mary (though bigoted, +sincere,) consign Cranmer to the flames and Jane to the scaffold: +innocence and mirth are near of kin, and the tear of penitence is no +stranger to the laughter-loving eye. But I ramble as usual. Let it +suffice to say, that in accordance with common prejudices, I suffer my +mind to be shorn of its consecrated rays; for albeit my moral censor has +spared the prophetical ideas, and one or two other serious sobrieties, +on the ground that, although they are mere hints, they are at all events +hints of good, still more experimental and more hazardous pieces of +biblical criticism have been not unwisely immolated. The full cause of +this will appear in the mere title of the first of these half-attempted +essays, viz:</p> + +<h3>THE WISDOM OF REVISION;</h3> + +<p>whereof my predication shall be simply and strictly <i>nil</i>.</p> + +<p>The next piece of serious study, as yet little more than a root in my +mind, was to have fructified in the form of</p> + +<h3>HOMELY EXPOSITIONS,</h3> + +<p>or domestic readings in Scripture for daily use in family worship, with +an easy, sensible, useful sort of commentary; a book calculated +expressly for the understandings, wants, vices, temptations, and +peculiarities of household servants, and quite opposed to the usual +plans of injuriously raising doubts to lay them, of insisting upon +obsolete Judaisms, of strict theological controversy, of enlarging to +satiety on the meaning of passages too obvious to require explanation, +and ingeniously slurring over those which really need it; indeed, of +pursuing the courses generally adopted by the mass of commentators.</p> + +<p>A further notion extended to</p> + +<h3>LAY SERMONS,</h3> + +<p>whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being +each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and +their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> +images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service +of illustrating Gospel truths.</p> + +<p>Another religious essay has been relinquished, although to a great +degree effected, from the apprehension that it may suggest matter +fanciful or false: also, in part, from the material being perhaps of too +slender a character to insist upon. Its name stood thus,</p> + + +<h3>SCRIPTURAL PHYSICS;</h3> + +<p>being an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Holy Writ in matters of +natural science; for example, cosmogony, geology, the probable centre of +the earth, the vitality and circulation of the blood, hints of magnetism +and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's +shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other +spheres, the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics, +much of recondite natural history:—all these can be easily proved to be +alluded to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew +Scriptures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated +some of this, although I have never met with his writings; and a great +deal more of it is mentioned in notes and sermons which many have read +or heard. Until, therefore, I become surer of neither invading the +provinces of others, nor of detracting from their wisdom, let those +ill-written fancies still lie dormant in my desk.</p> + +<p>A fifth tractate on things theological, still in the egg state, was to +have been indued with the rather startling appellation of</p> + +<h3>AN APOLOGY FOR HEATHENISM;</h3> + +<p>especially as contrasted with practical atheism, which, truth to tell, +is the contradictory sort of religion most universally professed among +the moderns: working out the idea, that any-how it is better to have +many objects of veneration than none, and that, although idol-worship is +a dreadful sin, still it is not so utterly hopeless as actual +ungodliness. That, among the heathens, temporal judgment ever vindicated +the true Divinity; whereas the consummation of the more modern +unworshiping world will be an eternal one: so, by the difference in +punishments comparing that of their criminalities. Showing also that, +however corrupted afterwards by impure rites and fatuous iniquities, +heathenism was, in its most ancient form, little more than the +hieroglyphic dress of truth: this exemplified by Moses and the brazen +serpent, by interpreta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>tions of Grecian mythology, shown, after the +manner of perhaps too ingenious Lord Bacon, to be consistent with +philosophy and religion; by the way, in which Egyptian priests satisfied +so good and shrewd, though credulous, a mind as that of Herodotus; by +Hesiod's '<i>Theogony</i>;' by the practical testimony of the whole educated +world in earliest times to the deep meaning involved in idolatrous +rites; by the mysteries of Eleusis in particular; by the characters of +all most enlightened heathens—as Cicero, Socrates, and +Plato—(half-convinced of the Godhead's unity, and still afraid to +disavow His plurality,) contrasted with those of the school of Pyrrho, +and Lucretius, and the later Epicureans. The possibility of early +allusions to the Trinity, as "Let us make man," <i>etc.</i>, having led to +the idea of more than one God; and if so, in some sort, its veniality.</p> + +<p>All the above might be applied with some force, and, if so, with no +little value, to modern false semblances of religion, and non-religion; +to Roman Catholicism, with its images, its services in an unknown +tongue, its symbols, its adoption of heathen festivals, its actual +placing of many Gods in the throne of One; to Mammonism, as practically +a religion as if the golden calf of Babylon were standard at Cornhill; +to Voluptatism—if I may fabricate a name for pleasure-hunters, +following still, with Corybantic fury, the orgic revels of Osiris or +Astarte: in brief, to all the shades of human heresy, on this side or on +that of the golden mean, the worship of one true God, as revealed to us +in His three mysterious characters.</p> + +<p>But, query? Has not all this, and the very title, for any thing I know, +been done already by another, by a wiser? and, if so, by whom?—Speak, +some friend: it is the misfortune of mere thinkers (and this present +amygdaloid mass, this breccia book, exemplifies it well) to stumble +frequently upon fancies too good not to have been long ago appropriated +by others like-minded. A read, or heard, hint may be the unerring clue, +and we vainly imagine some old labyrinth to be our new discovery: +education renders up the master-key, and we come to regard ancient +treasuries as wealth of our own amassing, from which we deem it our +right to filch as recklessly as he from the mint of Crœsus, who so +filled his pockets—ay, his mouth—that we read he ἑβεβυστο. +Who, in this age of literature, can be fully condemned, or heartily +acquitted of plagiarism? An age—and none so little in advance or in +arrear of it as I—of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas +unpatented, and books that have outlived copy-right. But this has +detained us long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> enough: for the present, my brain is quit of its +heathenish exculpations: let us pass on; many regiments are yet to be +reviewed; their uniforms [<i>Hibernicè</i>] are various, but their flag is +one.</p> + +<p>A last serious subject—(they grow tedious)—is a fair field for +ingenious explanation and Oriental poetry,</p> + + +<h3>THE SIMILES OF SCRIPTURE:</h3> + +<p>(of course "similes" is an English word: the author of a recent '<i>Essay +on Magna Charta</i>' has been <i>learned</i> enough to write it "similæ," for +which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely +follow Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at "similia;" and, +though Shakspeare does write it "similies," it may stoutly be contended +that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior's "similes" is the +purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.)</p> + +<p>The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt and +happy: for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and propriety, +and strict resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the +whirlwind,"—"as when a standard-bearer fainteth"—"as the rushing of +mighty waters,"—"as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,"—"as a +dream,"—"as the morning dew,"—"as"—but the whole book is a garden of +similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude." +It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation +deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush, +and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle's example, it too frequently +converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry +of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment, +its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night, +falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive +only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of +a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an +episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of +Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and +Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the +'<i>Canticles</i>,' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an +apple-tree among the trees of the wood:" now, amongst us, an apple-tree +is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the +Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more +correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to a +Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> +the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or some +other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image, +until shown to be a wine-skin. "Who is this that cometh out of the +wilderness, like pillars of smoke?"—probably intending the +swiftly-rushing columns of <i>sand</i> flying on the wings of the whirlwind. +"Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened +into fountains—tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in +showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it +might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity +and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a +like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who +will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose, +with a tower, and admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair +which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this +vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar +and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be +more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an +English ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the +horse swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being +afraid as a grasshopper." A thousand like instances could be displayed +with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for +good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best +advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one +so slenderly hinted at, as '<i>The Wisdom of Revision</i>,' therefore has +been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf +till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the +object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to +other themes of a more sublunary aspect.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's +mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome, +unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour +humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I +was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital, +and noble-minded thesis, no other than</p> + +<h3>HOME.</h3> + +<p>Alas, for the epidemy to which, few can doubt, ideas are subject! Alas, +for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> +disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing +will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "Olla Podrida," a "Book +without a name," or some other such like <i>rechauffée</i> publication; +whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived +long before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite +advertisements—at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my +poor epic: scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings, +and divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative +lay;" scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of +metrical specimens; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to me in +black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's '<i>Home, an +Epic</i>.' So, as in the case of '<i>Nero</i>,' and haply of other subjects, had +it come to pass, that my high-mettled racer had made another false +start; that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been +self-appropriated, was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the +flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into +the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all +those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a +subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, +besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, <i>if</i> only one could manage it +well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and +Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I am full of moral +land-marks, and would not (poetically speaking) for the world move +rooted termini into other people's grounds. Whether the field has been +well or ill preoccupied I wot not, having neither seen the poem nor +heard its maker's name: therefore shall my charity hope well of it, and +mourn over the unmerited oblivion which generally greets modern +poetry—yea, upon its very natal-day. Nevertheless, as an upright man +will never wish barefacedly to steal from others, so does he determine +at all times to claim independently his own: to be robbed, and not +resent it (I speak foolishly), is the next mean thing after pilfering +itself; and rash will be thy daring, O literary larcener! (can such +things be?) if thou art found unpermissively appropriating even such +sorry spoil as these poor seedlings of still possible volumes.</p> + +<p>Prose and verse are allowed to have some disguising differences, at +least in termination; and as we must not—so hints the public +taste—spoil honest prose, bad as it may be, with too much intermixture +of worse verse, it will be prudent in me to be sparing of my specimens. +Yet, who will endure so <i>staccato</i> a page of jerking sentences as a +confirmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> synopsis?—"Well, any thing rather than poetry," says the +world; so, for better or worse, I will jot down prosaically a few of my +all but impromptu imaginings on Home.</p> + +<p>After some general propositions, it would be proper to indulge the +orthodoxy of invocation; not to Muses, however, but to the subject +itself; for now-a-days, in lieu of definite deities, our worship has +regard to theories, doctrines, and other abstract idolisms: and +thereafter should follow at length an historical retrospect of domestic +life, from the savage to the transition states of hunters and warriors; +Nimrods and New Zealanders; Actæons and Avanese, Attilas, Roderics, and +all the Ercles' vein or that of mad Cambyses, Hindoos and Fuegians, +Greece, Egypt, Etruria, and Troy, in those old days when funds and taxes +were not invented, but people had to fight for their dinner, and be +their own police: so in a due course of circumconsideration to more +modern conditions, from ourselves as central civilization, to Cochin +China, and extreme Mexico, to Archangel and Polynesia.</p> + +<p>Divers national peculiarities of the <i>physique</i> of homes; as, Tartars' +tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffre kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea +palm-thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth. Then, a +wide view of the homes of higher society, first Continental, afterwards +British through all the different phases of comfort to be found in +heath-hovels, cottages, ornées, villas, parsonage-houses, squirealities, +seats, town mansions, and royal palaces. Thus, with a contrastive peep +or two about the feverish neighbourhood of a factory, up this musty +alley, and down that winding lane, we should have considered briefly all +the external accidents of home. The miserable condition of the homeless, +whether rich or poor; an oak with its tap-root broken, a house on +wheels, a boat without a compass, and all that sort of thing: together +with due declamation about soldiers spending twenty years in India, +shipwrecked Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out +hopelessly forever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other +absentees, voluntary or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton +affluence, poor laws, mendicancy, and Ireland; not omitting some +thrilling cases of barbaric destitution.</p> + +<p>Now come we lawfully to descant upon matters more mental and +sentimental—the <i>metaphysique</i> of the subject—the pleasures and pains +of Home. As thus, most cursorily: the nursery, with its dear innocent +joys; the school-boy, holiday feelings and scholastic cruelties; the +desk-abhorring clerk; the over-worked milliner; the starving family of +fac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>tory children, and of agricultural labourers, and of workers in coal +mines and iron furnaces, with earnest exhortations to the rich to pour +their horns of plenty on the poor. England, once a safer and a happier +land, under the law of charity: now fast verging into a despotic +centralized system, kept together by bayonets and constables' staves. +Home a refuge for all; for queens and princes from their cumbrous state, +as well as for clowns from their hedging and ditching. The home of love, +and its thousand blessings, founded on mutual confidence, religion, +open-heartedness, communion of interest, absence of selfishness, and so +on: the honoured father, due subordination, and results; the loving +wife, obedient children, and cheerful servants. Absolute, though most +kind, monarchy the best government for a home; with digressions about +Austria and China, and such laudable paternal rule; and <i>contra</i>, bitter +castigation of republican misrule, its evils and their results, for +which see Old Athens and New York, and certain spots half-way between +them.</p> + +<p>The pains of home: most various indeed, caused by all sorts of opposite +harms—too much constraint or too little, open bad example or impossible +good example, omissions and commissions, duty relaxed by indulgence, and +duty tightened into tyranny; but mainly and generally attributable to +the non-assertion or other abuse of parental authority. The spoiled +child, and his progress of indulgence, unchecked passions, dissipation, +crime, and ruin. Interested interlopers, as former friends, relatives, +flatterers, and busy parasites, undermining that bond of confidence +without which home falls to pieces; the gloomy spirit of reserve, +discouraging every thing like generous open-heartedness; menial +influences lowering their subject to their own base level; discords, +religious, political, and social; the harmful consequence of +over-expenditure to ape the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier; +foolish education beyond one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking +lessons in Italian, and opera-stricken butcher's-boys strumming the +guitar; immoral tendencies, gambling, drinking, and other dissipations; +and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for +all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, +invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular +crash of a stout-expiring overture.</p> + +<p>It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done; +but the difficulty is—not so much to do it, answers writer, as to +escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and +how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these +ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand +good grist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters. +But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed +should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused, +uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the +very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be +for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could +brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an +embryo?—Let then a few shreds and patches suffice—a brick or two for +the house: and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty; for +what man of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the +Muses, the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be +pensioned on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great +heir-at-law, Prose Prose, Esq.?</p> + +<p>With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober +seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work +into a respectable commencement; I don't pretend it <i>is</i> one; but +<i>valeat quantum</i>, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for, +unaltered,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Haven of refuge found and peace possest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oasis in the desert, star of light</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Imperial realm amid the slavish world,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where Freedom's banner ever floats unfurl'd,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fair island of the blest, earth's richest wealth,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her plague-struck body's little all of health,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Home, gentle name, I woo thee to my song,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To thee my praise, to thee my prayers belong:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Inspire me with thy beauty, bid me teem</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With gracious musings worthy of my theme:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Spirit of Love, the soul of Home thou art,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fan with divinest thoughts my kindling heart;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Spirit of Power, in pray'rs thine aid I ask,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Uphold me, bless me to my holy task;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Spirit of Truth, guide thou my wayward wing;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Love, Power, and Truth, be with me while I sing.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>V'la</i>: my consolation is that somewhere may be read, in hot-pressed +print, too, many worse poeticals than these, which, however, nine +readers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> out of ten will have had the worldly wisdom to skip; and the +tenth is soon satiated: yet a tithe is something, at least so think the +modern Levites; so, then, on second thoughts, a victim who is so good a +listener must not be let off quite so cheaply. However, to vary a little +this melancholy musing, and to gild the compulsory pill, Reserve shall +be served up sonnet-wise. (P. S. I love the sonnet, maligned as it is +both by ill-attempting friend and semi-sneering foe: of course, in our +epic, Reserve ambles not about in this uncertain rhyme, but duly stalks +abroad in the uniform dress; iambically still, though extricated from +those involutions, time out of mind the requisite of sonnets.) Stand +forth to be chastised, unpopular</p> + + +<h4>RESERVE.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thou chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Lethargic poison of the moral sense,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Fly from the threshold, traitor—get thee hence!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mistrusting none but self, injurious self,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of and to others wishing only good;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Suggesting all the world a viperous brood</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Beneath thy dull domestic curse, Reserve.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Without professing much tendency to the uxorious, all may blamelessly +confess that they see exceeding beauty in a good wife; and we need never +apologize for the unexpected company of ladies: at off-hand then let +this one sit for her portrait. Enduring listener, will the following +serve our purpose in striving worthily to apostrophize</p> + + +<h4>THE WIFE.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Behold, how fair of eye, and mild of mien,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Walks forth of marriage yonder gentle queen:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What chaste sobriety whene'er she speaks,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What glad content sits smiling on her cheeks,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What plans of goodness in that bosom glow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What prudent care is throned upon her brow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What tender truth in all she does or says,</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 3em;">What pleasantness and peace in all her ways!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For ever blooming on that cheerful face</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Home's best affections grow divine in grace;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her eyes are ray'd with love, serene and bright;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Charity wreathes her lips with smiles of light;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her kindly voice hath music in its notes;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And heav'n's own atmosphere around her floats!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Thus, wife-like, for better or worse, is the above <i>portrait charmant</i> +consigned to the dingy digits of an unidistinguishing printer's-devil; +so doth Cæsar's dust come to stop a bung-hole. One morsel more, about +children, blessed children, and for this bout I shall have tilted +sufficiently in the Muses' court; or, if it must be so said, unhandsome +critic, stilted to satiety in false heroics: stay—not false; judge me, +my heart. Suppose then an imaginary parent thus to speak about his</p> + + +<h4>INFANT DAUGHTERS.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oh ye, my beauteous nest of snow-white doves,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What wealth could price for me your guileless loves?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My pretty flock of loving little girls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My stores of happiness with least alloy,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My treasuries of hope and trembling joy!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">On a young yearning mother's cradling arm;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The soft angelic smiles of natural grace</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tinting with love that other little face;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And the sweet budding of this sinless mind</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In winning ways, that round my heart-strings wind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dear winning ways—dear nameless winning ways,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That send me joyous to my God in praise.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Enough! not heartlessly, but to shame the heartlessness of <span class="smcap">your</span> +<i>ennui</i>, let me veil those holiest affections; yes, even at the risk of +leaving nominatives widowed of their faithful verbs, will I, until +required, epicise no more. Let these mauled bits be intimations of what +a little care might have made a little better. Gladly will I keep all +the remainder in a state quiescent, even to doubling Horace's wholesome +prescription of nine years: for it is impossible but that your fervent +poet, in the heat of inspiration, (credit me, lack-wits, there is such a +thing,) should blurt out many an unpalatable bit of advice, rebuke, or +virtuous indignation against homes in general, for the which sundry +conscience-stricken particulars might uncharitably arraign him. But +divers other notions are crowding into the retina of my mind's-eye: I +must leave my epic as you see it, and bid farewell, a long farewell, to +'<i>Home</i>.' Still shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> my egotism have to appear for many weary pages a +most impartial and universal friend to the world of bibliopolists; I +cater multifariously for all varieties of the literary profession: +booksellers at least must own me as their friend, though the lucky purse +of Fortunatus saves me from being impaled upon the point of poor +Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [——] the questionable praise of +being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and +Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, +and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my +versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, +shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious +monosyllable.—Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on +those who love you.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>To any one, much in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very +unsatisfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the +chaotic cobwebs of his mind; as he plods along penning it, a thousand +fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his +ever-teeming hot imagination cannot away with the slow process of +concreted composition. For me, I must write impromptu, or not at all; +none of your conventional impromptus, toils of half-a-day, as little +instantaneous as sundry patent lights; no working-up of laborious +epigrams, sedulously sharpened antitheses, or scintillative trifles, +diligently filed and polished; but the positive impromptu of longing to +be an adept at shorthand-writing, by way of catching as they fly those +swift-winged thoughts; not quick enough by half; most of those bright +colours unfixed; most of those fair semi-notions unrecorded. To say +nothing of reasons of time, there being other things to do, and reasons +of space, there being other things to write. And thus, good friend, +affectionately believe the best of these crude intimations of things +intellectual, which the husbandry of good diligence, and the golden +shower of Danæ's enamoured, and the smiles of the Sun of encouragement +might heretofore have ripened into authorship; nay, more, perhaps may +still: believe, generously, that if I could coil off quietly, like +unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics, +analytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and +better-defined proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I +would, and that I would, if the game were worth its candle.</p> + +<p>But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that +small-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself +within the narrowest limits; a <i>diable boiteux</i>, not the huge spirit of +the Hartz; concentrated meat-lozenges, not <i>soup maigre</i>; pocket-pistols +of literature, not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a +mightier mass of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from +very brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable +plains of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are +left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is +abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the +friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing +by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon +on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than +he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and +down those airy promontories.</p> + +<p>I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of +yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this +unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject, +another work in my unseen circulating library,</p> + + +<h2>THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM,</h2> + +<h3>ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES.</h3> + +<p>Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating +booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It +might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical +wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from +antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked +the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story. +There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each +other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all +the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of +the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and +ages of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to +<i>ennui</i>. As thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern +favourite raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver +all upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith +falls into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might +concern the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end—delirium +tremens, or spontaneous combustion: better, perhaps, as less vulgarian, +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The +"Watch your opportunity" of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes of +some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napoleon of +war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the world, might +seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as their fellows +have served them well or ill; but a brief history of some hypocrite's +life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylobatist's +resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like a stork, +might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for Periander's +aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyramid-building +old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish proverbial +perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber clearing, +will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising "moderation in +all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal application, as +to pleasures, riches, and rank; or especially perhaps as preferring true +temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some +Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent +honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old +English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to +Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain +has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too +precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a +cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too +deeply seated in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such +caustic surgery as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by +patent gold-salve.</p> + +<p>Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and +illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I +trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original—ay, and more +entertaining, too—than the common run of magazine adventures. It may +not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my +unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men +about town, and ladies of the <i>pavé</i>. I protest against gilding crimes, +and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good +Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those +bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite +acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and +graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if +the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty, +care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and +Co.—inimitable Pickwick—hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and +escapes of murderers, aroint ye!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p> + +<p>Why then should I throw this cargo overboard?—Friend, my ship is too +full; <i>if</i> I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it +within the limits of its originating fit, these things all might be less +abortive. But I doubt if my glorification of Greek aphorisms ever +reaches any higher apotheosis than the airy castles sketchily built +above.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Similar in idea with these last tales, but essentially more sacred as to +character, would be an illustrative elucidation of the seven last +sayings of our Blessed Lord, when dying in the crucifixion. The Romish +Church, in some of her imposing ceremonies, has caused the sayings to be +exhibited on seven banners, which are occasionally carried before the +holy cross: from this I probably derived the idea of detaching these +sentences from the frame-work of their contexts, and regarding them in +some sort as aphorisms. For a name, not to be tautologous, should be +proposed a Græco-Anglicism,</p> + + +<h2>THE HEPTALOGIA;</h2> + +<h3>OUR SAVIOUR'S SEVEN LAST SAYINGS.</h3> + +<p>The addition of "hagia" might be rather too Attic for English ears; and +I know not whether "the Sacred Heptalogia" would not also be too +mystical. This series of tales is capable of like illustration with the +last, except in the matter of portraits, unless indeed some eminent +fathers of the church, or some authenticated enamels, gems, or coins, +(if any,) displaying our Lord's likeness, served the purpose; and of +course the character of the stories should not be much in dissonance +with the sacredness of the text. The first might well enforce +forgiveness of enemies, especially if their hatred springs from +misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:" +many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial +torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere +conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid +among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might +enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the +efficacy of repentance: the certainty of hope and life being +co-extensive, so that it might still be said of the seeming worst, the +brigand and the blasphemer, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" +a story to check presumption, while it encourages the humility of +pentitent hope; the details of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> prodigal's career and his return, say +a falsely philosophizing German student, or the excesses of some not +ungenerous outburst of youthful wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate +Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy +son—behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in +Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabæan mother, and her noble +children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the +Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the +case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth, +necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My +God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"—the confidence of <i>my</i> God +still, even in His recognised judgments trusted in as merciful: the +history of many an unrecorded Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear +children; an aged merchant beggared by the roguery of others, and his +very name blamelessly dishonoured; the extremity of a martyr's +sufferings; or some hunted soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;" +which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a +thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge—or physically also, in +some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of +Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the +torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip +Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught +from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings +might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more +advisable to shape the publication into seven sermons: but this, it will +at once be perceived, is not the present object; the word "sermons" has +to most men a repulsive sound, and a tale, similar in disguised motive, +may win, where an orderly discourse might unhappily repel: a teacher's +best influences are the indirect: like the conquering troops at +Culloden, his charge will be oblique; his weapon will strike the +unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, "It is +finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary value +of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed; but, more +generally, to display the evils and dangers of leaving mental, +spiritual, or even worldly good designs unfinished: a tale of natural +procrastination conquered, difficulties overcome, prejudices broken +down, and gigantic good effected: a Russian Peter, a literary Johnson, a +missionary Neff, a Wesley, or a Henry Martyn. The seventh, descanting +upon noble patience, and agonies vanquished by faith, the death and +glorious expectance of a martyr, the end of one of Fox's heroes;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> +"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Of necessity in these +Christian tales there would be more of sameness than in those heathen; +because it would be improper and impolitic, with such theses, to enter +much into the lower human passions and the common events of life. But my +intentions of further proceeding in this matter have, as at present, +very sensibly subsided; for many wise and many good might reasonably +object to making those holy last dying words mere pegs to hang moral +tales upon. The idea might please one little sect, and anger half the +world; I care not to behold it accomplished, and question my own +capabilities; only, as it has been an authorial project heretofore +conceived by me, suffer it to boast this brief existence.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It is scandalously reported of some folks that they are not musical, a +calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my own +convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I partly +acquiesce; that is to say—for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to +explain a little—although I <i>am</i> charmed with all manner of music, +still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an +English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every +reason to despise my taste: especially if I add that Welsh songs, and +Scotch and Irish national melodies—[where are our English +gone?]—rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. And now this next +little notion is scarcely of substance sufficient to assume the garb of +authorship: it is little more than a passing whim, but I choose for the +very notion's sake to make it better known. Except in a very few +instances—as Haydn's '<i>Seasons</i>,' e.g.—Oratorios, from some +conventional idea of Lent, we may suppose, seem obligated to concern +matters sacred. Of course, every body is aware of the prayerful meaning +of the name; but we know also that a madrigal has long ago put off its +monkish robe of a hymn to the Virgin, and worn the more laic habit of a +love song. Now, it is a fact, that very many good men who delight in +Handel's melody, and of course cannot object to psalms and anthems, +entertain conscientious objections to hearing the Bible set to music in +a concert-room; and sure may we all be, that, unless the whole thing be +regarded as a religious service, (in a mixed gay company who think of +sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, +and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> +and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing +despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a +mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor +splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, +the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some +lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen, +delighted with its melody, without the needless offence of seeming to +countenance idolatry; why should they not have solemn music, new or +ancient as may be adapted, administering to their patriotism, or their +tragic interests, or historic recollections, without grating against +their feelings of religious veneration?—To be specific, let me suggest +a subject, and show, for the benefit of any Pindar of this day, its +musical capabilities: we are, or ought to be as Englishmen, all stirred +at the name of</p> + + +<h3>ALFRED;</h3> + +<p>and he would minister as well to the harmonies of an oratorio as Abel, +or Jephtha, Moses, or St. Paul—nay, as the Messiah, or the last dread +Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied the +Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here for +gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot band, +and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly +royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of +children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the +churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot +in their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old-country-staves: +a storm might occur, with elemental crash: the succeeding silence of +nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight; their +war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in their +camp and in their cups; the hurlyburly of the fight—a hail-stone chorus +of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and clattering +horse-hoofs; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat between +Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor and bass; the +routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the conquerors +pressing on in steady overwhelming concord; how are the mighty +fallen—and praise to the God of battles!</p> + +<p>Most briefly, then, thus: there is religion enough to keep it solemn, +without being so experimental as to intrude upon personal prejudice. The +notion is too slight, and too slenderly worked out, even for admis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>sion +here, if I were not still, my shrewd and mindful reader, sedulously +endeavouring to get rid of all my brain-oppressing fancies: and this, +happening to come uppermost as I write, finds itself caught, to my +comfort. It is commended, if worth any thing, to the musical proficient: +for I might as well think of adding a note to the gamut as of trying to +compose an oratorio.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The authorial mind is infinitely versatile: books and book-making are +indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but +still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of +idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous +departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical +discovery, music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture as below, +give it exercise continually. The authorial mind never is at rest, but +always to be seen mounted and careering on one hobby-horse or other out +of its untiring stud. If the coin of some rude Parthian, or the +fragments of some old Ephesian frieze, serve not as a scope for its +present ingenuities, it will break out in a new method of grafting +raspberries on a rosebush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or +the safest machinery for a steamer. <i>Ne sutor ultra crepidam</i> is a rule +of moderation it repudiates; incessant energy provokes unabated +meddling, and its intuitive qualities of penetration, adaptation, and +concentration, are only hindered by the accidents of life from carrying +any one thing out to the point at least of respectable attainment. Look +at Michael Angelo; poet, painter, sculptor, architect, and author: and +if indeed we are not told of Milton having modeled, or Horace having +built up other monuments than his own imperishable fame, still nothing +but manual habit and the world's encouragement were wanting to perfect, +in the concrete, the conceptions of those plastic minds. Who will deny +that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a +heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic +architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, +the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the +delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine +poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and +Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or +Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest in this argument, the +heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> an Omniscient Author, +fairly written in a universal tongue of grandeur and beauty, of skill, +poetry, philosophy, and love.</p> + +<p>But let me not seem to prove too much, and so leap over my horse instead +of vaulting into the saddle: though authorship may claim thus +extensively every master-mind, from the Adorable Former of all things +down to the humblest potter at his wheel fashioning the difficult +ellipse; still, in human parlance, must we limit it to common +acceptations, and think of little more than scribe, in the name of +author. Nevertheless, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly +flung out, nurtured in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced +into foolish accusations of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is +general, (as if forsooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity, +and not liberally broadcast that he may run that reads,)—let such crude +considerations excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the +provinces of other men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal +division of labour, may be proved good by working well; but its lowering +influences on the individual mind cannot be doubted: that an intelligent +man should for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist +pin-heads, or wind cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving; +and while I grant great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make +some use of that argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to +exercise the mind on all things. Thus, in my assumed métier of +authorship, let notions be extenuated that popularly concern it little, +and yield admittance to any thought that may lead to that Athenian +desideratum, "some new thing."</p> + +<p>While the echoes of the name of Alfred still linger on the mind, and our +patriotism looks back with gratitude on his thousand virtues unsullied +by a fault, (at least that History, seldom so indulgent, has +recorded,)—while we reflect that in him were combined the wise king, +the victorious general, the enlightened scholar, the humble Christian, +the learned author, the excellent father, the admirable <span class="smcap">MAN</span> in +all public and private relations, in domestic alike with social duties, +I cannot help wishing that forgetful England had raised some +architectural trophy, as a worthy testimonial of Alfred the noble and +the good. Whether Oxford, his pet child—or Westminster Hall, as mindful +of the code he gave us—or Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of +those sons of thunder whom the genius of Alfred first raised up to man +our wooden walls—should be the site of some great national memorial, +might admit of question; but there can be none that something of the +kind has been owing now near upon a thousand years, and that it will +well become us to claim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> boastingly for England so true, so glorious a +hero. With a view to expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the +topic in author-fashion, it has come into my thought how much we want a</p> + + +<h3>LIFE OF ALFRED:</h3> + +<p>my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered +from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old +time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written +originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a +popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a +translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified +dilution of '<i>Don Quixote</i>,') the primary source should be again +consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon +coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me +in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by +pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it +may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the +light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that +early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should +the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English +version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among +the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray +pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with +the world for writing so much before he reads.</p> + +<p>But this is an accessory—an episode; I plead for a statue to King +Alfred: and—(now for another episode; is there <i>no</i> cure for these +desperate parentheses?)—<i>apropos</i> of statues, let me, in the simple +untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some +recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more +presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a +scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin, +or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet +high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an +unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a +countenance so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I +presume that Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any +thing on its summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne +of higher and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,) +is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns: now, +Pompey, or, as some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus, +had that fine pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus; +at least, this is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie +three or four other columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and +believed to have been intended to support the triglyph of some new +temple. Pompey's idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either +entering the harbour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or +the like; but apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its +acknowledged ornament as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be +an architectural absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or +nothing to support: an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower +decorated with shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a +pyramid, or a Waltham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these +supporting nothing on their apices,) in fact, <i>any thing but</i> a +Corinthian or Tuscan, or other regular pillar, seems to be permissable; +but for base, shaft, and capital to have nothing to do but lift a +telescopic man from earth's maternal surface, does look not a little +unreasonable; and therefore as much out of taste, as for the marble arch +at Buckingham Palace to spend its energies in supporting a flag-staff.</p> + +<p>The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit of +criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,) +because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the +recognised orders of architecture; it partakes rather of the character +of a triumphal tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly +from the rest; the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his +positive exploits; he does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon, +but like a gallant climber treading on his conquests: and, as to +Phocas's column at Rome, I shall only say, that it illustrates my +meaning, except in so far as an immense base to the super-imposed +statuere deems it from the jockey imputation of carrying too light a +weight. Now, with respect to the Nelson memorial, your meddlesome scribe +had an unexhibited notion of his own. Mehemet Ali is understood to have +given certain two obelisks respectively to the French and English +nations: the Parisians appropriated theirs, and have set it up, +thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an emblem of what African +conquest has been in the heartside of France; but we English, less +imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have permitted our <i>petit +cadeau</i> to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, unclaimed and +unconsidered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p> + +<p>Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour: and +if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have +proposed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by +shallow Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the +principal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an +alto-relievo of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid: the +globe and wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame, +and his now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance; a +sphinx, or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt, +should sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three +remaining doorways would be represented closed, and carved externally +with some allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile, +Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my +métier, (a happy métier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my +limnèd outline for the Nelson testimonial: the real interesting antique +needle, rising from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and +pointing to the skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk +raised upon a heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an +interior alto-relievo.</p> + +<p>It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an <i>alibi</i> +prevented me from seeing, included several obelisks; but the +peculiarities I should have insisted on, would have been first to make +good use of the real thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and, +next, to have had our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the +eye.</p> + +<p>But to return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great +and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove +of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns +reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic +in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so +put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of +sticking heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the +summit of a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce +a most unlikely and chaotic treatise on</p> + +<h3>NATIONAL MEMORIALS.</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Politics are a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a +Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My +principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of +self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet +coin-climax<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice +principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend +reader, hear me profess myself honestly—if you approve, or +shamelessly—if you <i>will</i> so think it—"a rabid Tory!" At least, by +such a nomenclature sundry veracious journals, daily leaders of the +public opinion, would call me, were such a groundling as I prominent +enough to attract their indignation; and, from all that can be gathered +from their condemnatory clauses against others like minded, I have no +little reason to be proud of the title. For, on collation of such +clauses with their causes, I find, and therefore take (under correction +always) the rabid Tory to be—a temperate lover of order, whom his +mother has taught to "fear God," his father to "honour the king," and +his pastor to "meddle not with them who are given to change." A rabid +Tory, in matters of national expenditure, remembers to have heard an old +unexploded proverb, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and +there is that withholdeth what is due, but it tendeth to poverty;" and +he is by no means sure that a certain mismanaged nation is not +immolating her prosperity to what actuaries would call economical +principles. A rabid Tory is bigoted enough to entertain a ridiculous +fear of that generation abstraction, Catholic Rome, whom further he is +sufficiently vulgar-minded to consider as a lady of easy virtue arrayed +in the colours of a cardinal: he thinks one Luther to be somewhat more +than a renegade monk; and is childish enough to venerate, when a man, +the same Liturgy which his grandmother had taught him when a boy. For +other matters, the higher born, the better bred, the more classically +educated, and the more extensively possessed of moneys and lands our +honest-spoken Tory may be, ten to one the more is he afflicted with this +rabbies: and his mad propensities become positively criminal, when, as a +magistrate or a captain of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in +honourable duty to quell the enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots, +whose innocent wishes rise no higher than to subvert the existing order +of things, to secure for themselves a reasonable share of parks, +palaces, and pocket-money, and (as the very justifiable means for so +happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in the temple of Freedom the rogues +who would object to being robbed, and the tyrants who would be bloody +enough to fight for life and liberty.</p> + +<p>A rabid Tory—you see it is a pet name of mine—feels no little contempt +for a squeezable character; and he is well assured, from history as well +as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived and died +upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>ards, whom +the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle induced to run +away, <i>relictis non bene parmulis</i>—the clamorous cohort of bullies, +whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly induced to +eat their words—the volunteer company of light-heeled swindlers, whom +nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has neglected to +inform how—every one, in short, whose grand maxim (<i>quocunque modo +rem</i>) is temporizing expediency, and with whom the cogent argument "you +shall" has more force than the silly conscience-whisper of "you +ought,"—contributes to swell the band which the professor of Toryism, +the abstracted follower of principles and not of men, has the honour of +beholding in the angle of his diagram, inscribed "contradictory." Not +that your true Tory believes so ill of <i>all</i> his adversaries; there are +some few geese among the cranes; an Abdiel here and there, who has long +felt irksome in the host, but for false shame is there still; sundry +men, having ambitious or illuminated wives, and too amiable, or too +prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at home; some thronging the +opposite benches, because their fathers and grandfathers topographically +occupied those same seats—a decent reason, supposing similarity of +places and names, to insure similarity of principles and practice; and +some—I dislike them not for honesty—confessing and upholding the +republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an +unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment. Now, the rabid +Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your +midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to +any thing for an extra per centage—all these are his detestation: and +although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the +adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the +one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds—- with +neither money nor religion. Thus much of my reasonable rabies.</p> + +<p>One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we +have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong; if right, +do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do +a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is +false morality, and, therefore bad government. Why should not honesty +and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be guilty +of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? It +is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem +unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> the +noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him +abdicate rather than do wrong.</p> + +<p>But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading +deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to +set before the world of faction</p> + +<h3>A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS,</h3> + +<p>which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be +synonymous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over +many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me +freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory: +for I fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one +who is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as +is common among arguers, <i>my</i> doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to +reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay +them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned +Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little +tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of +absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the +dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency +for so great a task being conceded—no small supposition, by the way,) +much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fearful +example made of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for conduct very analogous +with numberless instances of modern Liberalism; the rights of rulers, as +well as of the governed; of kings, as well as people; the connexion +subsisting now, as through all former ages, between church and +state—well indeed and deeply argued out already by such great minds as +Coleridge and Gladstone, but perhaps, for general usefulness, requiring +a more brief and popular discourse; the question of passive obedience; +the true though unfashionable doctrine of man's general depravity +invalidating the consignment of power to the masses; and so forth. There +are, however, if Scripture is to be held a constitutional guide, some +examples to a certain extent contrary to the argument: as, elective +monarchy in the case of Saul; non-legitimate succession in families even +where election is omitted, as in the case of Solomon; and, honestly to +say it, many other difficulties of a like nature. In fact, upon the +whole, this distinction might be drawn; that although the Bible at large +favours what we may, for shortness' sake, term Conservative politics, +still it would not be easy to deduce from its page as code of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> rules, so +necessarily of a social, temporary, and accidental nature: The principle +is given, but little of the practice; the seed of true and undefiled +religion produces among other good fruit what we will call Conservatism, +but we must be very microscopic to detect that fruit in the seed: of +this admission let my <i>Liberal</i> adversary make—as indeed he will—the +most; but let him remember that truth has always been most economically +distributed. It is a material too costly to be broadcast before swine; +and in slender evidence lurks more of moral test, than in stout +arguments and open miracles. At any rate, as unfitted for the task, I +leave it. For any thing mine un-book-learned ignorance can tell, the +very title may be as old as Christianity itself; it is a good name, and +a fair field.</p> + +<p>This manual was commenced in the form of familiar letters to a radical +acquaintance, whom I had resolved to convert triumphantly; but John +Locke disarmed me, without, however, having gained a convert: he made me +drop my weapon as Prospero with Ferdinand; but the fault lay with +Ferdinand, for want of equal power in the magic art.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Measures, not men</span>" is, as we have hinted already, the +ground-work of a true Tory's political creed; and measures themselves +only in so far as they expound and are consistent with principles. A man +may fail; the stoutest partisan become a renegado; and the pet measure +of a doughtiest champion may after all prove traitorous, unwise, +unworthy: but principle is eternally an unerring guide, a master to +whose words it is safe to swear, a leader whose flag is never lowered in +compromise, nor sullied by defeat. Defalcations of the generally +upright, derelictions of duty by the usually noble-minded, shake not +that man's faith which is founded on principle: for the cowardice, or +rashness, or dishonesty of some individual captain, he may feel shame, +but never for the <i>cause</i> in which such hold commissions; he may often +find much fault with <i>soi-disant</i> Tories, but never with the 'ism they +profess. We over-step their follies; we disclaim their corruptions; we +date above their faults; we wash our hands of their abuses. An +abstracted student in his chamber, building up his faith from the +foundations, and trying every stone of the edifice, takes little heed of +who is for him, and who against him, so Conscience is the architect, and +the Master of the house looks on approving. A man's mind is but one +whole; be it palace or hovel,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> feudal stronghold or Italian villa, it is +all of a piece: a duly subordinated spirit bears no superstructure of +the Radical, and the friable soil of discontented Liberalism, is too +sandy a foundation for ponderous fanes of the religious.</p> + +<p>I rejoice in being accounted one of those unheroic, and therefore more +useful, members of society, who profess to be by no means ambitious of +reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) well at +ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in his +case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached the acme +of human felicity; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, to +exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, of +royalty, and fully crediting that <i>never-quoted</i> sentiment of +Shakspeare's "Uneasy," &c., my motto, within the legitimate limits of +right reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of +Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, "Whoever's king, I'll be +subject!"—ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While, +however, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing +circumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in +courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,) +still in mere speculation, and irrespectively of things as they are, our +abstract musings tended to approve the original word in its unextended +gender. Every one of Edmund Burke's school would honour the ensign of +Divine vice-regency wherever he found it; but, apart from this +uninquisitive respect, he will claim to be reasonably patriotic, +patriotically rational; habit encourages to practice one thing, but +theory may induce to think another. Now, little credence as so +unenlightened so illiberal an integer as I give to an equalization in +the rights of man, certainly on many accounts my blindness gives less to +the rights of women with man, and very far less to those rights over +man: it might be inconvenient to be specific as to reason; but the +working of an ultra-republican scheme, in which females should ballot as +well as males, would briefly illustrate my meaning. Barbarism makes +gentle woman our slave; right civilization raises her into a loving +helpmate; but what kind of wisdom exalts her into mastery?</p> + +<p>Readily, however, shall sleep in dull suppression sundry comments on a +certain Rhenish law, whereof my author's mind had at one time studiously +cogitated a grave and wholesome homily. For our censor of the press, one +strait-laced Mr. Better Judgment, has, "with his abhorred shears," +clipped off the more eloquent and spirited portion of a trenchant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> +argument concerning—the revealed doctrine of a superior sex, the social +evils of female domination, church-headships considered as to type and +antitype, improper influences, necessary hindrances, anomalous example, +feminine infirmities, and an infinitude more such various objections +springing out of this fertile subject. Thereafter might have come the +historical view, evils and perils, for the majority of instances, +following in the wake of such mastery. However, to leave these +questionable matters quiescent, the principles of passive obedience +mildly interpose, forbidding to stir the waters of commotion, although +with healing objects, for the sake of an abstract theory; there is +ill-meant change enough afloat, without any call for well-intentioned +meddlers to launch more. So, judicious after-thought resolves rather to +strengthen too-much-weakened authority, in these ungovernable times, +than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at +the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking +away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish +magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that +injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far +too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to +be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always +under shelter of a domino, and protesting against any who would move my +mask, I confess to</p> + +<h3>WOMAN, A SUBJECT:</h3> + +<p>it was a mere speculative argument; a flock of fancies now roaming +unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion—"black, +white, and gray, with all their trumpery."</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are to me +what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions +little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a +very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many +pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction +of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile +wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil +wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it; +and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been used +scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> as +my own, though fixed in full hostility—and so, courteously be entreated +for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to regard me as +sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. We have heard of +women marrying men they may detest, in order to get rid of them: even +with such an object is here indited the last I ever intend to say about +politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this page will cease to +haunt my brain; and let no one doubt but that after relief from these +pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, less unamiable, +less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, suffer with all +brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my patriotic +conscience; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's mind in +consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. Every +successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece of what my +view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has +pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day, +session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound +in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena: +eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation +and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries. +Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals, +and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal +centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism +ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full +patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged, +Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of <i>any</i> kind preferred to sober +Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect +wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the +constitution:—these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel +Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly +let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto, +surnamed</p> + +<h2>FALSE STEPS;</h2> + +<h3>BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN;</h3> + +<p>a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity, +destined at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found +all that sort of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in +numberless newspaper articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge +requisite, and my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> little practice in controversy, could have managed, +that I wisely drew in my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided +upon not proceeding political pamphleteer, till, on awaking some fine +morning, I find myself returned to parliament for an immaculate +constituency.</p> + +<p>Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor +despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not +trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend +"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his +after-dinner topic: but we will cut him short; for, in fact, nothing can +be more provoking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than +this perpetual intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me, +with matters they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>A poet is born a poet, as all the world is well aware; and your +thorough-paced lawyer is not less born a lawyer; while the junction of +these two most militant incompatibles clearly bears out the hackneyed +quotation as above, with the final misfit, that is, "<i>non fit</i>." Your +poetaster at the bar is that grotesque ideal, which Flaccus thought so +funny that his friends <i>must</i> laugh; (although really, Romans, it <i>is</i> +possible to contemplate a sort of sphinx figure, "a human head to a +horse's neck," and so on, varied plumes and all, without much chance of +a guffaw;) and yonder sickly-looking clerk, perched upon his high stool, +penning "stanzas while he should engross," is the lugubrious caricature +of Apollo on his Pegassus, with Helicon for inkstand.</p> + +<p>It may be nothing extraordinary that, jostled in so wide a theatre as +ours of the world, chance-comers should not, at once or at all, +comfortably find their proper places; but that wise-looking chaperons, +having with prospective caution duly taken a box, should by malice +prepense thrust all the big people in front, and all the little folks +behind, is rather hard upon the latter, and not a little foolish in +itself. Even so in life: who does not wish a thousand times he could +help some people to change places? Look at this long fellow, fit for +Frederick of Prussia's regiment of giants: his parents and guardians +have bent him double, broken his spirit, and spoiled his paces, by +cramming him, a giraffe in the stable, between that frigate's gun-decks +as a middy: while yonder martial little bantam, by dint of exaggerated +heels, and exalted bear-skin, peeps about among his grenadiers, much as +Brutus and Cassius did with their collossal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> Cæsar. So also of minds: +look at brilliant Burns, the exciseman; and quaintly versatile Lamb, the +common city clerk: Look at—had you only patience, you should have +examples by the gross; but, to make a shorter tale of it, (I presume +this shows the etymology of cur-tail,) just think over the pack of your +acquaintance, and see if you could not shuffle those kings, queens—yes, +and knaves too—more to your satisfaction, and their own advantage: at +least, so most folks imagine, silly meddlers as they are; for, after +all, what with human versatility, and the fact of a probationary state, +and the influence of habit, and the drudging example set by others, +things work so kindly as they are, that, notwithstanding misfits, the +wiser few must be of Pope's mind, "whatever is, is right;"—ay, that it +is.</p> + +<p>A year or two ago—if your author is little better than one of the +foolish now, what in charity must he have been then?—I took it upon me +to indite an innocent, stingless satire, whereof for samples take the +following. Skip them one and all; you will, if you are wise, for they +bear the ban of rhyme, are peevish, dull, ill-reasoned; but if you are +not wise, (and, strange to say, malicious people tell me there are many +such,) you may wish to see in print a metred inconclusive grumble. Take +it, then, if you will, as I do, merely for a change; at any rate, your +manciple has furnished this buttery of yours with ample choice of +viands; and omnivoracious as man may be—gormandizing, with gusto, fat +moths in Australia, cockchafers at Florence, frogs in France, and snails +in Switzerland, equally as all less objectionable meats, drinks, fruits, +roots, composites, and simples—still, in reason, no one can be expected +or expect himself to like every thing: have charity, for what suits not +one man's taste may please the palate of another; so hear me +complacently turn</p> + + +<h3>"KING'S EVIDENCE,"</h3> + +<p>and give heed to certain confessions, extorted under the <i>peine forte et +dure</i> of a whilom state legal. Yet, when I come to consider of this, +(<i>mihi cogitanti</i>, as school themes invariably commenced,) it strikes my +memory that all confessions, short of the last dying one, are weak and +foolish impertinence; whether Jean Jacques or Mr. Adams thought so, or +caused others to think so, are separate topics beside the question: for +myself, I will spare you a satire dotted with as many I's as an Argus +pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome +contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's +cast-off mistress, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine +amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be +tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still +unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning +innumerable black sheep that crowd about a woolsack; especially of +certain "highly respectables," whom the omnipotence of parliament (no +less power presumably being competent) commands to be accounted +"gentlemen." Should then my meagre sketches seem but little spiteful, +accord me credit for tolerance at the expense of wit, (yea, in mine own +garbled satire, hear it Juvenal!) and view them kindly in the same light +as you would sundry emasculated extracts from a discreet Family +Shakspeare. Indignation ever speaks in short sharp queries; and it is +well for the printer's pocket that the self-experience hereof was +considered inadmissible, for a new fount of notes of interrogation must +have been procured: as it is, we are sailing quietly on the Didactic +Ocean, and have, I fear, been engaged some time upon topics actionable +on a charge of <i>scandalum magnatum</i>. Hereof then just a little sample: +let us call it '<i>A Judgment in the Rolls Court</i>;' or in any other; I +care not.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Precedent's slave, this mountebank decides</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As great Authority, not Reason, guides.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Faults can be mended at this time of day,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For Coke himself declared—no matter what—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That <i>very</i> learned Lord could not be wrong.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Besides, in fact, it has been settled long,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For the great case of Hitchcock versus Bundy</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Decided—(Cro. Eliz. per Justice Grundy),</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That [black was white];—and so, what can I say?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Landmarks are things must not be moved away:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I cannot put the clock of Wisdom back,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And solemnly pronounce that black <i>is</i> black.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Though plaintiff has the right, I grant it clear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I must be ruled by Hoax and Hitchcock here:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Equity follows, does not mend the laws:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Therefore declare, defendant gains the cause."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Then, as virtuously bound, Indignation interrogates sundry +ejacula<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>tions; or, if you like it better, ejaculates sundry +interrogations: as thus, take a brace:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">If right and reason both combine in one,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Why, in God's name, should justice not be done?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">If law be not a lie, and judgments jokes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Why not <i>be just</i>, and cut adrift Lord Hoax?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>After a vast deal more in this vein of literature—for you perceive my +present purpose is dissection in part of this ancient rhyme—we arrive +at a magnanimous—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">No! Right shall have his own, put off no longer</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">By rule of Former, or by whim of Stronger;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nor, because Jack goes tumbling down the hill,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Shall precedent create a tumbling Jill.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Public opinion soon shall change the scene,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And wash the Law's Augæan stable clean;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sweep out the Temple, drive the sellers thence,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And lead, in novel triumph, Common Sense.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Verily, this is of the dullest, but it is brief: endure it, and pray you +consider the deadliness of the topic, and the barbarous cruelty +wherewith courtesy has clipped the wings of my poor spite. Let us turn +to other title-pages; assuring all the world that no specific mountebank +has been here intended, and that nothing more is meant than a nerveless +blow against legal cant, quainter than Quarles's, and against that +well-known species of Equity, which must have been so titled from like +antiquated reasons with those that induced Numa and his company to call +a dark grove, lucus.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>How many foes, in this utilitarian era, has that very unwarrantable +vice, called Poetry! All who despise love and love-making, all who +prefer billiards to meditation, all who value hard cash above mental +riches, feel privileged to hate it; while really, typographers, the +illegible diamond print in which you generally set it up, whether in +book, or newspaper, or handbill, or magazine, induces many an +indifferent peruser to skip the poem for the sake of his eye-sight. I +presume that the monosyllable, rhyme, comprehends pretty nearly all that +the world at large intends by poetry; and, in the same manner as certain +critics have sneered at Livy—no, it was Tacitus—for commencing his +work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> with a bad hexameter, so many a reader will now-a-days condemn a +whole book, because it is somewhere found guilty of harbouring a +distich. But poetry, friend World, means far other than rhyme; its +etymology would yield "creation," or "fabrication," of sense as well as +sound, and of melody for the eye as well as melody for the ear. So did +[<i>epoiese</i>] Milton; and so did not—— Well, I myself, if you will. Yet, +in fact, there are fifty other kinds of poetries, beside the poetry of +words: as the poetry of life—affection, honour, and hope, and +generosity; the poetry of beauty—never mind what features decorate the +Dulcinea, for this species of poetry is felt and seen almost only in +first love; the poetry of motion, as first-rates majestically sailing, +furiously scudding waves, bending corn-fields, and, briefly, all things +moveable but railway-trains; the poetry of rest, as pyramids, a tropical +calm, an arctic winter, and generally all things quiescent but a +slumbering alderman; the poetry of music, heard oftener in a country +milkmaid's evening song, than in many a concert-room; the poetry of +elegance, more natural to weeping willows, unbroken colts, flames, +swans, ivy-clad arches, greyhounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those +<i>pirouette</i>-ing and <i>very</i> active <i>danseuses</i> of the opera; the poetry +of nature, as mountains, waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all +manner of landscapes, except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art, +acqueducts, minarets, Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate +designs; the poetry of ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers; +and the poetry of awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr. +trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of +impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose, +(for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace: +for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of +doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to +its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will +save her from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your +innumerous dull lyrics—ay, and mine—your unnatural heroics—I too have +sinned thus—your up-hill sonnets—that labour of folly have I known as +well—in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the +cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it: as an +average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or +a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the +age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly +may we consider that the very abundance of good versifica<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>tion has +lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has +robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men +of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try +a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom +the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with +advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at '<i>Johnson's +Lives</i>.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without +rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?—With a +few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope—and +shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?—are there,) a more wretched +set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The +poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the +lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulsome flattery of +titles, and foolish adoration of painted shepherdesses: poor weak +hobbling lines, eked out by 'eds and expletives, often terminated by +false rhymes, and made lamer by triplets and dreary Alexandrines; +ill-selected subjects, laboured, indelicate, or impossible similes, +passions frigid as Diana, wit's weapons dull as lead. Yet these (many +exceptions doubtless there were, and many redeeming <i>morceaux</i> even in +the worst, charitable reader, but as of the rule we speak not falsely), +these are the poets of England, the men our great grandfathers delighted +to honour, the feared, the praised, the pensioned, and those whom we +their children still denominate—the poets! Praise, praise your stars, +ye lucky imps of Fame! who could tolerate you now-a-days?—You lived in +golden times, when Dorset, Harley, Bolingbroke, Halifax, and Company, +gave away places of a thousand a-year, as but justly due to any man who +could pen a roaring song, fabricate a fulsome sonnet, or bewail in +meagre elegiacs the still-resisting virtue of some persecuted Stella! +Happy fellows, easy conquisitors of wealth and fame, autocrats of +coffee-houses, feted and favoured by town-bred dames! In those good old +times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was sure to lead to a +Ministry-of-State, and even an epigram produced its pension: to be a +poet, or reputed so, was to be—eligible for all things; and the +fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe +with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the +past—and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long farewell, +children of oblivion! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King, +Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore: ye who, in that day of very small +things, just rose, as your Leviathan biographer so often testifies, "to +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> degree of merit above mediocrity:" ye who—but (Candor and good +Charity, I thank you for the hint,) limited indeed is my knowledge of +your writings, ye long-departed poets, whom I thus am base enough to +pilfer of your bays; and therefore, if any man among you penned aught of +equal praise with "<i>My Mind to me a Kingdom is</i>," or "<i>No Glory I covet, +no Riches I want</i>," humbly do I cry that good man's pardon. Believe that +I have only seen the château of your fame, but never the rock on which +it rested; and therefore candidly consider, if I might not with reason +have accounted it a castle in the air?</p> + +<p>Now, after this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of +old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny +would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring +exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with +those slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with +poetry; in public I abjure and do renounce the minx: and although +privately my author's mind is so silly as to doat right lovingly on such +an ancient mistress, and has wasted much time and paper in her praise or +service, still that mind is sufficiently self-possessed in worldly +prudence, as to set seemingly little store on the worth of an +acquaintance so little in the fashion. Therefore I disown and disclaim</p> + + +<h3>A VOLUME OF POETICS,</h3> + +<p>ill-fated offspring of a foolish father; miscellaneous collection of +occasionals and fugitives, longer or shorter, as the army of Bombastes. +Poetical as in verity I must confess to have been, (using the word +"poetical" as most men use it, and the words "have been" in the sense of +Troy's existence,) there must have lingered in me, even at that +hallucinating period, some little remnant of prosaic wisdom; for it is +now long since that I consigned to the most voracious of elements all +the more love-sick rhythmicals, and all the more hateful satiricals. +Now, I will maintain that act of incremation to be one of true heroism, +nearly equal to the judgment of Brutus; nor less is it matter of +righteous boasting to have immolated (warned by Charles Lamb's ghost) +divers albuminous preparations, which to have to do, were, Clio knows, +little pleasure, and to have done, we all know, as little praise. Such +light follies are like skeins of cotton, or adjectives, or babies, unfit +to stand alone; haply, well enough, times and things considered, but +totally unworthy to be dragged out of their contexts into the +imperishability of print; it is to take flies out of treacle, and embalm +them in clear amber.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> As to sonnets, what real author's mind will not, +if honest, confess to the almost daily recurrence of that symptom of his +disease? With mine, at least, they have increased, and are increasing; +yea, more—as a certain statesman suggested of Ireland's multitudinous +<i>pisantry</i>, or as tavern patriots declare of the power of the +crown—they ought to be diminished. Nevertheless, resolutely do I hope +that some of these at least are little worthy of the days of good Queen +Anne.</p> + +<p>In matters of the sacred muse, lengthily as others have I trespassed +heretofore; the most protracted <i>fytte</i>, however, made a respectable +inroad on a new metrical version of the '<i>Psalms</i>,' attempting at any +rate closer accuracy from the Hebrew than Brady's, and juster rhymes +than Sternhold's: but this has since been better done by another bard. +On the whole budget of exploded poeticals is now legibly inscribed "to +be kept till called for," a period rather more indefinite than the +promise of a spendthrift's payment. Let them rest in peace, those +unfortunate poetics!</p> + +<p>There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry +metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really +<i>waste-failures</i> as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westphalias. +For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be +more desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt +upon the tinder-box of social intercourse; and to detach such a sentence +from its producing circumstances, is about as efficacious a method of +producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet +grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than +abortive efforts at the humorous; the stream of conversation instantly +freezes up; the disconcerted punster wears the look of his well-known +kinsman, the detected pickpocket; and a scribe, so mercilessly suicidal +as regards his better fame, deserves, when a plain blunt jury comes to +sit upon the body, to be found in mystical Latin, <i>felo de se</i>, or in +plain English "a fellow deceased."</p> + +<p>"There shall come in the last days, scoffers;" those same last days in +which "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." It +is true that these phrases (quoted with the deepest reverence, though +found in lighter company) are forcibly taken from their context; but +still, the judgment of many wise among us will agree that they present a +remarkable coincidence: in this view of the case, and it is a most +serious one, the concurrent notoriety of humour having just arisen like +a phoenix from its ashes, of railroads and steamboats having partially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> +annihilated space, and of the strides which education, if not intellect, +has made upon the highroad of human improvement, assumes an importance +greater than the things themselves deserve. To a truly philosophic ken, +there is no such thing as a trifle; the ridiculous is but skin-deep, +papillæ on the surface of society; cut a little deeper, you will find +the veins and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride +the notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books +of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular +views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil +and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick +upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are +flying forward before a storm. As symptoms of changing nationality, and +of a disposition to make fun of all things ancient and honourable, and +wise, and mighty, and religious, they serve to evidence a state of the +universal mind degenerated and diseased. Still, let us not be too +severe; and, as to individual confessions, let not me play the +hypocrite. Like every thing else, good in its good use, and evil only in +abuse of its excesses, humour is capable of filling, and has filled, no +lightly-estimable part in the comedy of temporal happiness. What a good +thing it is to raise an innocent and cheerful laugh; to inoculate +moroseness with hearty merriment; to hunt away misbelieving care, if not +with better prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations; +to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour +has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after +office-drudgery—an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. +Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more +than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic +panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you +on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who +lanterns his path by the glaring eyes of his own truncated head); and +when it ceases to become merely the casual scintillation, the flitting +<i>ignus fatuus</i> of a summer evening—then only is wit to be condemned. +Often, for mine own poor part in this most mirthful age, have I had</p> + + +<h2>HEARTY LAUGHS,</h2> + +<h3>IN PROSE AND VERSE;</h3> + +<p>but take no thought of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in +the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> +hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing +inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who +dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, these +acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some fifty +more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby, +and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention—(but that +artists are authors)—laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and +inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently +ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age +more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would cease +to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in that wake, to be +reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do harm to his own +reputation? There are professors enough in this quadrangle of the +college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing obesity, without +so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours on the world: and +surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, thundering their +mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. Paul's, may well +frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as the frog with +the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like Bottom's +Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as your +sucking-dove.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great +distinguishing characteristic of an author's mind; pen and ink are to +it, what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we +do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the +other—their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest +that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged +Œdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more +provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe +unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to +prove some printed hand-book <i>quite wrong</i> in the number of steps up a +round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the +once fair fame of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how +pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story +of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of +friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and +to taste the dulcet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> joys of those first essays at authorship. A great +charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the +mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters +that have made it memorable: moreover, for fixing scenery on the mental +retina, as well as for comparison of notes as to an <i>alibi</i>, for duly +remembering things heard and seen, as well as for being humbled in +having (as a matter inevitable) left unseen just the best lion of the +whole tour, journals are a most praiseworthy pastime, and usually rank +among the earliest efforts of an embryo author's mind.</p> + +<p>It is a thing of commonest course, that, in this age of inveterate +locomotion, your present humble friend, now talking in this candid +fashion with your readership, has been every where, seen every thing, +and done his touristic devoirs like every body else about him: also, as +a like circumstance of etymological triviality, that he has severally, +and from time to time, recorded for self-amusement and the edification +of others all such matters as holiday-making school-boys and +boarding-misses, and government-clerks in their swift-speeding vacation, +and elderly gentlemen vainly striving to enjoy their first fretful +continental trip, usually think proper to descant upon. Of such +manuscripts the world is clearly full; no catacomb of mummies more +fertile of papyri; no traveller so poor but he has by him a packet of +precious notes, whereon he sets much store: every tourist thinks he can +reasonably emulate clever Basil Hall, in his eloquent fragments of +voyages and travels; and I, for my part, a truth-teller to my own +detriment, am ashamed to confess the existence of</p> + +<h3>A DECADE OF JOURNALS;</h3> + +<p>which of olden time my <i>cacoethes</i> produced as regularly as recurred the +summer solstice. Unlike that of Livy's, I am satisfied that this poor +Decade be irrevocably lost; but, for dear recollection's sake of days +gone by, intend it at least to be spared from malicious incremation. +Records of roamings in romantic youth, witnesses of wayward way-side +wanderings, gayly with alliterative titles might your contents, <i>à la +Roscoe</i>, be set forth. But—what conceivable news can be told at this +time of day about the trampled Continent, and the crowded British isles? +Had my luck led me to Lapland or Formosa, to Mexico or Timbuctoo, to the +top of Egyptian pyramids or the bottom of Polish salt-mines, my +authorship would long since have publicly declared, in common with many +a monkey, that it had "seen the world." As things are, to Bruce,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> +Buckingham, Belzoni, and that glorious anomaly, the blind brave Holman, +let us leave the harvest of praise, worthy to be reaped as their own by +modern travellers.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>More, yet more, most exemplary of listeners; and a web or webs of very +various texture. Let any man tell truths of himself, and seem to be +consistent, if he can. From grave to gay, from simple to severe, is the +line most expressive of such foolish versatility as mine; <i>varium et +mutabile semper</i>, to one thing constant never. I have heard, or read, +among the experiences of a popular preacher, that one of his most +vexatious petty temptations, was the rise of humorous notions in his +mind the moment he stepped into the pulpit; and it is well known that +many a comic actor has been afflicted with the blackest melancholy while +supporting right facetiously his best, because most ludicrous character. +Let such thoughts then as these, of the frailties incident to man, serve +to excuse the present juxtaposition of fancies in themselves +diametrically opposite.</p> + +<p>It is proper to preamble somewhat of apology before announcing the next +presumptuous tractate; presumptuous, because affecting to advise some +thousands of men whose office alike and average character are sacred, +and just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired counsel? Read +the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously inflamed for the +cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against sundry lukewarm +cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love with the +Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-extenuated evils of +omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and truly, not long +since, for few things in this book can boast of higher antiquity than a +most modern existence, some things being the birth of an hour, some of a +day, a week, or a month; and not more than one or two above a twelve +month's age.—Alas, for Horace's forgotten counsels!—alas, for Pope's +and Boileau's reiterated prescription of revisal for—<i>morbleu et +parbleu</i>—nine years!] I wrote then a good cantle of an essay addressed +to the clergy on some matters of judicious amelioration, which we will +call, if you please—and if the word hints be not objectionable—</p> + +<h3>LAY HINTS.</h3> + +<p>Now, as to the unclerical authorship of this, it is wise that it be done +out of métier. Laymen are more likely to gain attention in these +mat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>ters, from the very fact of their influence being an indirect one, +speaking as they do rather from the social arm-chair, the high-stool of +the counting-house, or the benches of whilom St. Stephen's, than <i>ex +cathedrâ</i> as of office and of duty.</p> + +<p>It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote +tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have +commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic +let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of +taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a +Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so +commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. +Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, +appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture—Gothic, +Norman, and Saxon: the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted +up with galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a +steeple. But all this is useless gossip.</p> + +<p>Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet +strongholds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as +perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same +communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like +parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one +will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain +conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and +repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of +a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population. +Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of +congregational accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary +lecture-rooms present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient. +But all this again is vain talking—a very empty expenditure of words; +we must be satisfied with churches as they are; and, after all, let me +readily admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as +belfries; (probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of +Ireland;) and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds +perfect what theory condemns as wrong, so—let these things pass.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate and +abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ringers, +and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost every +hallowed precinct: pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad +companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> +ever-grumbling menials. Next, give more sublunary heed, we beseech you, +to the comforts or discomforts incidental to doors, windows, stoves, +paint, dust, dirt, and general ventilation; consider the cold, fevers, +lumbagos, rheums, life-long aches, and fatal pains too often caught +helplessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country +church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of +time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly +that insubordinate phalanx of <i>soi-disant</i> musicians, a rustic +orchestra; and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the +huntsman's horn, the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the +wry-necked pipe. Much is being now done for congregational psalmody; but +when will country folks give up their murderous execution of the +fugue-full anthem, and when will London congregations understand that +the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? +When shall Bishop Kenn's '<i>Awake my soul</i>,' cease to be our noonday +exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our +eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon +discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if +possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk; +insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise +in the scale of society one of the leaders of its worship: as, at +present, these stagnant, recreant, ignorant clerks are sad +stumbling-blocks; no help to the congregation, and a nuisance to its +minister. In reading—suffer this foolishness, my masters—fight against +the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull formality; we take you +for earnest living guides to our devotion, not mere dead organs of an +oft-repeated service; quicken us by your manner; a psalm so spoken is +better than the sermon. In more fitting places has your author long ago +delivered his mind concerning matters of a character more directly +sacred than shall here find room; as, the sacrament with its holy +mysteries, and the many things amendable in ordinary preachments; but +for these my unseasonable Wisdom shrouds itself in Silence: therefore, +to do away with details, and apply a general rule, above all things, and +in all things, strive by judicious acquiescence with human wants, and +likings, and failings too, if conscientiously you can, as well as by +spirited and true devotion, to break down the sluggish mounds of needful +uniformity, and to build up round the church a rampart of good sense: +and so, Heaven bless your labours! A word more: if it be possible, take +no fees at a baptism, and let it not be thought, by either rich or poor, +that an entrance into Christ's fold must be paid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> for; no, nor at a +burial; but let the service for the Christian dead be accorded freely, +without money and without price. To a wedding, the same ideas are not +perhaps so closely applicable; therefore we will generously suffer that +you keep your customs there; but on the introduction of a little one to +the bosom of the church, or restoring the body of a saint to Him who +made it of the dust, nothing can be more repulsive to right religious +feelings than to be bothered by a fee-seeking clerk, thrusting in your +face an itching palm: to the poor, these things are more than a mere +annoyance; they amount to a hardship and a hindrance; for such demands +at such seasons are often nothing less than a bitter extortion upon the +self-denial of conscientious duty.</p> + +<p>More might be added; but enough, too much has been alluded to. Nothing +would strengthen the bulwarks of our Zion more than such easy reforms as +these: recent happy revivals in our church would thus be more +solidified; and where, as now, many have been lulled to slumber, many +grieved, many become disgusted or Dissenters, our sons and our daughters +would grow up as the polished corners of the temple, and crowds would +throng the courts of our holy and beautiful House.</p> + +<p>Suffer thus far, clerical and lay, these crude hints: in all things have +I studied brevity, throughout this little bookful; therefore are you +spared a perusal of my reasons, and so be indulgent for their absence. I +"touch your ears" but lightly; be you for charity, as in old Rome, my +favourable witnesses.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>My before-mentioned Censor of the press had a very considerable mind to +dock all mention of the following intended <i>brochure</i>. But I answered, +Really, Mr. Judgment, (better or worse, as occasion may register your +Agnomen,) you must not weigh trifles in gold-assaying scales; be not so +particular as to the polish of a thumb-nail; endure a little incoherent +pastime; count not the several stems of hay, straw, stubble—but suffer +them to be pitch-forked <i>en masse</i>, and unconsidered: it is their +privilege, in common with that of certain others—lightnesses that froth +upon the surface of society. Moreover, let me remind your worship's +classicality that no one of mortals is sapient at all times. Item, that +if friend Flaccus be not a calumniator, even the rigid virtue of the +antiquer Cato delighted in so stimulant a vanity as wine hot. So give +the colt his head, and let it go: remembering always that this same +colt, as straying without a responsible rider, is indeed liable to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> +impounded by any who can catch him; but still, if he be found to have +done great damage to his master's character, or to a neighbour's fences, +the estray shall rather be abandoned than acknowledged. Let then this +unequal work, this ill-assorted bundle of dry book-plants, this +undirected parcel of literary stuff, be accounted much in the same +situation as that of the wanton caitiff-colt, so likely to bait a-pound, +and afterwards to be sold for payment of expenses, in true bailiff-sense +of justice. And let thus much serve as discursive prolegomena to a +notion, scarcely worth recording, but for the wonder, that no professed +writer (at least to my small knowledge) has entered on so common-sense a +field. Paris, I remember, some years ago was inundated with copies of a +treatise on the important art of tying the cravat; every shop-window +displayed the mystic diagrams, and every stiff neck proclaimed its +popularity. This was my yesterday's-conceived precedent for entertaining +the bright hope of illuminating London on the subject of shaving:</p> + +<h2>ANTI-XURION;</h2> + +<h3>A CRUSADE AGAINST RAZORS,</h3> + +<p>should have been my taking title; and perchance the learned treatise +might have been characteristically illustrated with steel cuts. Shaving +is a wider topic than most people think for; it is a species of insanity +that has afflicted man in all ages, deprived him of nature's best +adornment in every country under heaven. So contradictorily too; as +thus: the Spanish friar shaves all but a rim round his head, which rim +alone sundry North American aborigines determine to extirpate; John +Chinaman nourishes exclusively a long cue, just on that same inch of +crown-land which the P.P. sedulously keeps as bare as his palm: all the +Orientals shave the head, and cherish the beard; all the Occidentals +immolate the beard, and leave the honours of the head untouched. Then, +again, the strange successive fashions in this same unnatural, unneedful +depilation; look at the vagaries of young France: not to descend also to +savage men, and their clumsy shell-scrapings; and to devote but little +time to the voluminous topic of wigs, male and female, cavalier and +caxon, Marlborough and monstrous maccaroni—from the plaited +Absalom-looking periwig of a Pharaoh in the British Museum, to +Truefitt's last patent self-adjuster. Of all these follies, and their +root a razor, might we show the manifest absurdity: we might argue upon +Eastern stupidity as caused by thickness of the skull, such thickness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> +being the substitute for thatchy hair suggested by kind ill-used Nature +as the hot brain's best protection: we might reason upon the average +sheepishness of this peaceful West, as due to having shorn the lion of +his mane, Phœbus of his glory, man of his majestic beard. Then the +martyrdom it is to many! who stoically, day after day, persist in +scratching to the quick their irritable chins, and after all to little +better end than the diligent earning of tooth-aches, ear-aches, colds, +sore throats, and unbecoming blank faces. Habit, it is true, makes us +deem that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have +so) think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have +held a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification: prisoned +paupers in the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded, +and King David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes <i>not</i> to +have been shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also, +it is equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin; by +razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as +in the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the +wand of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal +prejudices: so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to +live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a +watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class +<i>Welleria coachmanensis</i> are now some time become,) still we desire all +possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland, +we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable +indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache +and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's +manes, or the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow +unsophisticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but +diligently squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural +manly decorations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham, +and Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable +apostolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our +comfortless starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more +in lieu thereof open necks and vandyke borders.</p> + +<p>Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon +this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present +close-fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare +imitate—this cumbersome, unbecoming garb—might, should, ought to be, +and would be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether +garments:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest +of all imaginable head-dresses; and in lieu of the smock-frock +Macintosh, or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from +the shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By +way of distinguishing the now confused classes of society, my radical +reform in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their +own heraldic colours and livery buttons; and humbler domesticated +creatures walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have +presumed to call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let +us sensibly retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess: I will not say, +copy a Sir Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man +at the mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloured silk, trimmed +with fur;" neither, under these dingy skies, would I care to walk abroad +with Sir Philip Sidney in satin boots, or with Oliver Goldsmith in a +peach-coloured doublet: but still, for very comfort's sake, let us break +our bonds of cloth and buckram, and, in so far as adornment is +concerned, let us exchange this staid funeral monotony for the gallant +garb of our ancestors, the brave costumes of our Edwards and the bluff +King Hal.</p> + +<p>Behold, too scornful friend, how my Tory rabies reaches to the wardrobe. +The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble opinion, gone +far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize Egypt, to +degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry +republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the +undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold +cosmopolites. But enough of this: pews and spires are to my Quixotism +not more unextinguishable foes, than coats, cravats, waistcoats, and +unnameables.</p> + +<p>And now an honest word at parting, about such trivialities of +authorship. Why should a poor shepherd of the Landes for ever wear his +stilts? Or a tragic actor, like some mortified La Trapist, never be +allowed to laugh? Or Mr. Green be denied any other carriage than the +wicker car of his balloon? Even so, dear reader, pr'ythee suffer a +serious sort of author sometimes to take off his wig and spectacles, and +condescend to think of such minor matters as the toilet and its +still-recurring duties. And, if you <i>should</i> find out the veritable name +of your weak confessing scribe, think not the less kindly of his graver +volumes; this one is his pastime, his holiday laugh, his purposely +truant, lawless, desultory recreance: impute not folly to the face of +cheerfulness; be charitable to such mixtures of alternate gayety and +soberness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> as in thine own mind, if thou searchest, thou shall find; let +me laugh with those that laugh, as well as sympathize with weepers; and +cavil not at those inconsistencies, which of a verity are man's right +attributes.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Ideas lie round about us, thick as daisies in a summer meadow. For my +own part, I know not what a walk, or a talk, or a peep into a book may +lead me to. Brunel hit upon the notion of a tunnel-shield, from the +casual sight of a certain water-beetle, to whom the God of Nature had +given a protecting buckler for its head. Newton found out gravitation, +by reasoning on the fall of an apple from the tree. Almost every +invention has been the suggestion of an accident. Even so, to descend +from great things to small, did a solitary stroll in most-English +Devonshire hint to me the next fair topic. It was while wandering about +the Pyrenean neighbourhood of Linton and Ly'mouth not many months ago, +that my reveries became concentrated for divers hallucinating hours on a +very pretty book, with a very pretty title. And here let me remark +episodically, that I pride myself on titles; what compositors call +"monkeyfying the title-page" is known to be a talent of itself, and one +moreover to which in these days of advertisements and superficialities +many a meagre book has owed its popular acceptance. The titles of +generations back seemed not to have been regarded honest, if they did +not exhibit on their face a true and particular table of contents; +whereas in these sad times, (with many, not with me,) mystery is a good +rule, but falsehood is a better. Again, those honest-speaking authors of +the past scrupled not to designate their writings as '<i>A Most Erudite +Treatise</i>' on so-and-so, or a '<i>A Right Ingenious Handling of the +Mysteries</i>' of such-and-such, whereas modern hypocrisy aims at +under-rating its own pet work; and more than one book has been ruined in +the market, for having been carelessly titled by the definite THE; as +if, forsooth, it were the world's arbiter of that one topic, +self-constituted pundit of, e.g., title-pages. And this word brings me +back: consider the truly English music of this one:</p> + + +<h2>THE SQUIRE,</h2> + +<h3>AND HIS BEAUTIFUL HOME,</h3> + +<p>a fine old country gentleman, pleasantly located, affluent, +noble-minded, wise, and patriotic. This was to have been shown forth, in +wish at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> least, as somewhat akin to, or congenerous with '<i>The Doctor</i>, +&c.,'—that rambling wonder of strange and multifarious reading: or +'<i>The Rectory of Valehead</i>,' or '<i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>,' or '<i>The Family +Robinson Crusoe</i>,' still unwrecked; or many another hearty, cheerful or +pathetic tale of home, sweet home: and yet as to design and execution +strictly original and unplagiaristic. The first chapters (simple healthy +writing, redolent of green pastures, and linchened rocks, and dew-dropt +mountains,) might introduce localities; the beautiful home itself, an +Elizabethan mansion, with its park, lake, hill and valley scenery; a +peep at the blue mile-off sea, brawling brooks, oak-woods, +conservatories, rookery, and all such pleasant adjuncts of that most +fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a country squire, with a princely +rent-roll. Then should be detailed, circumstantially, the lord of the +beautiful home, a picture of the hospitable virtues; the wife of the +beautiful home, a portraiture of happy domesticity, admirable also as a +mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the poor's best friend: children must +abound, of course, or the home is a heaven uninhabited; and shrewd hints +might hereabouts be dropped as to the judicious or injudicious in +matters educational: servants, too, both old and young, with discussions +on their modern treatment, and on that better class of bygones, whom +kindness made not familiar, and the right assertion of authority +provoked not into insolence; whose interest for the dear old family was +never merged in their own, and whose honesty was as unsuspected as that +of young master himself, or sweet little mistress Alice.</p> + +<p>After all this, might we descant upon the squire's characteristics. Take +him as a politician: liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me at +a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly; but none of +your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at +home and cowardly abroad—mean agitating fellows, the scum of disgorging +society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom to the +surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an +honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory: with a +detail of his reasons, notions, and practices thereabouts, inclusive of +his conduct at elections, his wholesome influence over an otherwise +unguided or ill-guided tenantry, and as concerning other miscalled +corruptions: his open argumentation of the representative doctrine, that +it ought to stop short as soon as ever the religion, the learning, and +the wealth of a country are fairly represented; that in fact the poor +man thinks little of his vote, unless indeed in worse cases looking for +a bribe; and that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> principle is pushed into ruinous absurdities when +the destitution, the crime, and the ignorance of a nation demand their +proper representatives; that, almost as a consequence of human average +depravity, the greater the franchise's extension, the worse in all ways +become those who impersonate the enfranchised; and so, after due +condemnation of Whiggery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing +lie, the ballot. Then as to the squire's religion; and certain +confabulations with his parson, his household, his harvest-home +tenantry, and local preachers of dissent and schism; his creed, +practice, and favourable samples of daily life. Moreover, our squire +should have somewhat to tell of personal history and adventures; a youth +of poor dependence on a miser uncle; a storm-tost early manhood, +consequent on his high uncompromising principles; then the miser's +death, without the base injustice of that cruel will, which an +eleventh-hour penitence destroyed: the squire comes to his property, +marries his one old flame, effects reformations, attains popularity, +happiness, and other due prosperities. Anecdotes of particular passages, +as in affliction or in joy; his son lamed for life, or his house half +burnt down, his attack by highwaymen, or election for parliament. The +squire's general confidence in man, sympathy with frailties, and success +in regenerating long-lost characters. His discourse on field sports, +displaying the amiable intellectuality of a Gilbert White as opposed to +the blood-thirsty Nimrodism and Ramrodism of a mad Mytton. A marriage; a +funeral; a disputed legacy of some eccentric relative; with its +agreeable concomitants of heartless selfish strife, rebuked by the +squire's noble example: the conventicle gently put down by dint of +gradual desertions, and church-going as tenderly extended; vestry +demagogues and parochial incendiaries chastised by our squire; and +divers other adventures, conversations, situations, and conditions, +illustrative of that grand character, a fine old English gentleman, all +of the olden time.</p> + +<p>Altogether, if well managed, a book like this would be calculated to do +substantial good in these days of no principle or bad principle. A +captivating example well applied—witness the uses of biography—is +infectious among the well-inclined and well-informed. But—but—but—I +fancy there may exist, and do exist already, admirable books of just +this character. I have heard of, but not seen, '<i>The Portrait of a +Christian Gentleman</i>,' and another '<i>of a Churchman</i>:' doubtless, these, +combined with a sort of Mr. Dovedale in that clever impossible +'<i>Floreston</i>,' or an equally unnatural and charming Sir Charles +Grandison, with a dash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> of scenery and a sprinkle of anecdote, would +make up, far better than I could fabricate, the fair fine character that +once I thought to sketch. Moreover, to a plain gentleman, living in the +country, of perfectly identical ideas with those of the squire on all +imaginable topics, gifted too (we will not say with quite his princely +rent-roll, but at any rate) with sundry like advantages in the way of +decent affluence, pleasant scenery, an old house, a good wife, and fair +children—with plenty of similar adventures and circumstantials—and the +necessary proportion of highwaymen, radicals, rascals, and schismatics +dotted all about his neighbourhood, the idea would seem, to say the +least, somewhat egotistic. But why may not humble individualities be +generalized in grander shapes? why not glorify the picture of a cottage +with colouring of Turner's most imaginative palette? An author, like an +artist, seldom does his work well unless he has nature before him: +exalted and idealized, the Roman beggar goes forth a Jupiter, and +country wenches help a Howard to his Naiads. Nevertheless, let the +Squire and his train pass us by, indefinite as Banquo's progeny: let his +beautiful home be sublimely indistinct; even such are Martin's ætherial +cities: the thought shall rest unfructified at present—a mummied, vital +seed. The review is over, and the Squire's troop of yeomanry not +required: so let them wait till next year's muster.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship, +this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some +five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary +tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm, +unhurried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal. Far, very far be +it from me to arraign modern reviewers either of partialities or +incapacity; indeed, it is probable that few men of high talent, +character, and station, have not, at some time or other, temporarily at +least contributed to swell their ranks: moreover, from one they have +treated so magnanimously, they shall not get the wages of ingratitude; +they have been kind to my dear book-children, and I—<i>don't be so +curious</i>—thank them for their courtesy with all a father's feeling +toward the liberal friends of his sons and daughters. Speaking +generally, (for, not to flatter any class of men, truly there are rogues +in all,) I am bold to call them candid, honest, clever men; quite +superior, as a body, to every thing like bribery and corruption, and, +with human limitations, little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> influenced by motives, either of +prejudice or favour. For indefatigable industry, unexampled patience, +and powers of mind very far above what are commonly attributed to them, +I, for my humble judgment, would give our periodical journalists their +honourable due: I am playing no Aberdeenshire game of mutual scratching; +I am too hardened now in the ways of print to be much more than +indifferent as to common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with +me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from +eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel +rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint +praise, impotent to d—-, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty +return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while +ago but soft young coral, the surges may lash me, but leave no mark; the +sun may shine, but cannot melt me. Argal, as the clown says, is my +verdict honest: and further now to prove it so, shall come the +limitations.</p> + +<p>With all my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and +hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette +and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of +literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; +the main cause of this consisting in the essential rapidity of their +composition. There is not—from the multiplicity of business to be got +through, there cannot be—adequate time allowed for any thing like +justice to the claims of each author. Periodicals that appear at longer +intervals are in all reason more or less excepted from this objection; +but by the daily and weekly majority, the labours of a life-time are +cursorily glanced at, hastily judged from some isolated passage, +summarily found laudable or guilty; and this weak opinion, strongly +enough expressed as some compensation in solid superstructure for the +sandiness of its foundations, is circulated by thousands over all +corners of the habitable world. To say that the public (those so-called +reviewers of reviews, but wiser to be looked on only as perusers,) +balance all such false verdicts, might indeed be true in the long run, +but unfortunately it is not: for first, no run at all, far less a long +one, is permitted to the persecuted production; and next, it is +notorious, that people think very much as they are told to think. Now, I +have already stated at too much length that I have no personalities to +complain of, no self-interests to serve: for the past I have been well +entreated; and for the future, supposing such an unlikelihood as more +hypothetical books, I am hard, bold, sanguine, stoical; while, as for +the present, though I refuse not my gauntlet to any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> man, my visor shall +be raised by none. But I enter the list for others, my kinsmen in +composing. Authors, to speak it generally, are an ill-used race, because +judged hastily, often superciliously, for evil or for good. It is +impossible for the poor public, (who, besides having to earn daily +bread, have to wade through all the daily papers,) from mere lack of +hours in the day, to entertain any opinions of their own about a book or +books: the money to buy them is one objection, the time to read them +another; to say less of the capacity, the patience, and the will. +Without question, they are guided by their teachers; and the grand fault +of these is, their everlasting hurry.</p> + +<p>At another necessary failing of reviewers I would only delicately hint. +The royal We is very imposing; for example, the king of magazines, No. +134, (need I name it?) informs us, p. 373, "We happen to have now in +wear a good long coat of imperial gray," &c.; and some fifteen lines +lower down, "We are now mending our pen with a small knife," and so +forth: now all this grandiloquence serves to conceal the individual; and +to reduce my other great objection to a single letter, let us only +recollect that this powerful, this despotic We, is, being interpreted, +nothing but an I by itself, a simple scribe, a single and plebeian +number one. A mere unit, an anonymous, irresponsible unit, dissects in a +quarter of an hour the grand result of some ten years; and this +momentary influence on one man's mind, (perhaps wearied, or piqued, or +biased, or haply unskilled in the point at issue, but at all events +inevitably in a hurry to jump at a conclusion,) this light accidental +impression is sounded forth to the ends of the earth, and leads public +opinion in a verdict of thunder. And as for yon impertinent +parenthesis—or pertinent, as some will say—give me grace thus blandly +to suggest a possibility. The mighty editorial We, upon whose +authoritative tones the world's opinion will probably be pivoted—whose +pen by casual ridicule or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune +of some pains-taking literary labourer—whose dictum carelessly +dispenses local honour or disgrace, and has before now by sharp +sarcasms, speaking daggers though using none, even killed more than one +over-sensitive Keats—this monarchic We is but a frail mortal, liable at +least to "some of the imperfections of our common nature, gentlemen," +as, for example, to be morose, impatient, splenetic, and the more if +over-worked. Neither should I waive in this place, in this my rostrum of +blunt, plain speech, the many censurable cases, unhappily too well +authenticated, where personal enmity has envenomed the reviewing pen +against a writer, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> stabs in the dark have wounded good men's fame. +Neither, again, those other instances where reviewers, not being +omniscient, (yet is their knowledge most various and brilliant,) having +been from want of specific information incompetent to judge of the +matters in question, have striven to shroud their ignorance of the +greater topic in clamorous attacks of its minor incidents; burrowing +into a mound if they cannot force a breach through the rampart; and +mystifying things so cleverly with doubts, that we cannot see the +blessed sun himself for very fog.</p> + +<p>Now really, good folk, all this should be amended: would that the +<span class="smcap">we</span> were actually plural; would that we had a well-selected +bench of literary judges; would that some higher sort of Stationers' +Hall or Athenæum were erected into an acknowledged tribunal of an +author's merits or demerits; would that, to wish the very least, the +wholesome practice of a well-considered imprimatur were revived! Let +famous men, whose reputation is firm-fixed—our Wordsworths, Hallams, +Campbells, Crolys, Wilsons, Bulwers, and the like—decide in the case of +at least all who desire such decision. I suppose, as no one in these +selfish times will take trouble without pay, that either the judges +should be numbered among state pensioners, or that each work so +calmly examined must produce its regular fee: but these are +after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for +calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let +all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an +assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that +word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not +separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets +sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the +novels, and theologists all the works upon religion; for humanity is at +the best infirm, and motives little searchable; but let all judge +equally in a sort of open court. The machinery might be difficult, and I +cannot show its workings in so slight an essay; but surely it is a +strange thing in civilization, and a stranger when we consider what +literature does for us, blessing our world or banning it—it is a wonder +and a shame that books of whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the +waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present +muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the +sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with +the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in +impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, that many +an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> sake +as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. Some +poor man the other day, and in a reputable journal too, had five +new-born tragedies strangled and mangled in as many lines: we need not +suppose him a Shakspeare, but he might have been one for aught of +evidence given to the contrary; at any rate, five at once, five mortal +tragedies, (so puppy-fashion born and drowned,) must, however carelessly +executed, have been the offspring of no common mind. Again, how often is +not a laborious historiographer, particularly if of contrary politics, +dismissed with immediate contempt, because, perchance, in his three full +volumes, he has admitted two false dates, or haply mistakes the +christened name of some Spanish admiral! Once more, how continually are +not critical judgments falsified by the very extracts on which they +rest! how often the pet passage of one review is the stock butt of +another! Here you will say is cure and malady together, like viper's fat +and fang: I trow not; mainly because not one man in a thousand takes the +trouble to judge for himself. But it is needless to enumerate such +instances; every man's conscience or his memory will supply examples +wholesale: therefore, maltreated authors, bear witness to your own +wrongs: jealously regarded by a struggling brotherhood, cruelly baited +by self-constituted critics, the rejected of publishers, the victimized +by booksellers, the garbled in statement, misinterpreted in meaning, +suspected of friends, persecuted by foes—"O that mine enemy would write +a book!" It is to put a neck into a noose, to lie quietly in the grove +of Dr. Guillot's humane prescription: or, if not quite so tragical as +this, it is at least to sit voluntarily in the stocks with Sir Hudibras, +and dare the world's contempt; while fashionable—or unfashionable +idiots, who are scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner +invitation, (those formidably confounded he's and him's!)—think +themselves privileged to join some inane laugh against a clever, but not +yet famous, author, because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be +an old acquaintance, or one epithet in a long poem may be weak, +indelicate, tasteless, or foolish, or one philosophical fact in an essay +is misstated, or one statistical conclusion seems to be exaggerated. It +is perfectly paltry to behold stupid fellows, whose intellects against +your most ordinary scribe vary from a rush-light to a "long four," as +compared with a roasting, roaring kitchen-fire, affecting contemptuously +to look down upon some unjustly neglected or mercilessly castigated +labourer in the brick-fields of literature, for not being—can he help +it?—a first-rate author, or because one reviewer in seven thinks he +might have done his subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> better justice. Take my word for it—if +indeed I can be a fair witness—the man who has written a book, is above +the unwriting average, and, as such, should be ranked mentally above +them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand +labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in +print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors +undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average) +unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however +well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the +opportunity to fabricate a volume; nor, supposing these requisites, the +moral courage (for moral courage, if not physical, must form part of an +author's mind,) to publish the lucubration: but "I magnify mine office" +above the unnumbered host of unwriting, uninformed, loose, unlettered +gentry, who (as full of leisure as a cabbage, and as overflowing with +redundant impudence as any Radical mob,) mainly tend to form by their +masses the average penless animal-man, who could not hold a candle to +any the most mediocre of the Marsyas-used authors of haply this week's +journals. Spare them, victorious Apollos, spare! if libels that diminish +wealth be punishable, is there no moral guilt in those legalized libels +that do their utmost to destroy a character for wisdom, wit, learning, +industry, and invention?—Critical flayer, try thou to write a book; +learn experimentally how difficult, yet relieving; how nervous, yet +gladdening; how ungracious, yet very sweet; how worldly-foolish, yet +most wise; how conversant with scorn, yet how noble and ennobling an +attribute of man, is—authorship.</p> + +<p>All this rhetoric, impatient friend—and be a friend still, whether +writer, reviewer, or unauthorial—serves at my most expeditious pace, +opposing notions considered, to introduce what is (till to-morrow, or +perhaps the next coming minute, but at any rate for this flitting +instant of time,) my last notion of possible, but not probable, +authorship: a rhodomontade oration, rather than an essay, after my own +desultory and yet determinate fashion, to have been entituled—so is it +spelled by act of parliament, and therefore let us in charity hope +rightly—to have been entituled then,</p> + + +<h2>THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL;</h2> + +<h3>A COURT OF APPEAL AGAINST AMATEUR AND CONNOISSEUR CRITICISMS:</h3> + +<p>and (the present being the next minute whereof I spake above) there has +just hopped into my mind another taking title, which I generously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> +present to any smarting scribe who may meditate a prose version of +'<i>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i>'—<i>videlicet</i>,</p> + + +<h2>ZOILOMASTRIX.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>At length then have I liberty to yawn—a freedom whereof doubtless my +readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand +dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go +no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I +assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart: +but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it, +and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a +trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably +fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all +the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the +winged aërial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary author, just +eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating notions, can +sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a chance so lucky +as the transfer of his pack to Hercules; and can comprehend the relief +it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, when assured that he +no longer was afflicted with the care of governing a galaxy of worlds.</p> + +<p>Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating +perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth; some to indite solid +continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand; but +I clearly was born a zoölogical anomaly, <i>with a pen in my mouth</i>, a +sort of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison!</p> + +<p>Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the +cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor +excuse this light affliction of chattering in print.—Who asks you to +read it?—Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your +intellect by too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must +I then regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom +piping cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften?</p> + +<p>And now, friend, I've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my +acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply +what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> +think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for +practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I +feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man +offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of +Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I +need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any +Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer +me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord +Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let +me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you: +"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater +length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better +than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>APPENDIX.</h2> + +<h3>AN AFTER-THOUGHT.</h3> + + +<p>It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently +characteristic of his desultory indoles—(not indolence, pray you, good +Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,)—if after having thus formally taken +his <i>congé</i> with the help of a Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield, +he just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now, +the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little +honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with +Romeo I cried, "Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell +till it be morrow;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a +new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and wild, +before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened-up my +brown hay-field: or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel of +precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the purlieus +of Shoe-lane; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the truth +shall be told plainly; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints our +publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, whether or +not in this booklet your readership has already found seed sufficient +for cyclopædias, I am free to admit that the expectant butter-man at +least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hundred +pages; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I can, is +my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best policy, +deny who dare?</p> + +<p>Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although, in +point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of +my '<i>Author's Mind</i>' shown in other specimens; for example, a +linsey-woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of +this arcade; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the +flowers of poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (O, dub it not +a goose!)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> would, like a <i>prima-donna</i>, go off this theatre of fancy, +singing. And again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still +willing to be pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with +me in peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical +and lawless; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall +not quarrel at the last.</p> + +<p>Empty, however—empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness—have +I boasted this my head but a page or two ago; and that boast, for all +the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from me +by renewal of determined meditations; now that my house is swept and +garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither let me +heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading +with the scanty harvest of a <i>soil effete</i>; this license of writing up +to measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation +shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve the +problem: not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy; not to +fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable +palate, therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render +up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not +metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally +and physically resort to yonder—desk; (drawer would have savoured of +the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie +<i>perdus</i> divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at +"poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as +carp—so called from <i>carpere</i>, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp, +to cavil, because when caught they don't pay for mastication—even as +carp, a muddy fish, difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile +criticism, conceals its lack of savour in the flavour of port-wine—even +so shall strong prose-sauce be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets: +and ye who would uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of +Lethe's mud than of Helicon's sweet water, treat me to a better dish, or +carp not at my fishing.</p> + +<p>Imagination, as I need not tell psychologists by this time, is my +tyrant; I cannot sleep, nor sit out a sermon, nor remember yesterday, +nor read in peace, (how calm in blessed quiet people seem to read!) +without the distraction of a thousand fancies: I hold this an infirmity, +not an accomplishment; a thing to be conquered, not to be coveted: and +still I love it, suffering those chains of gossamer to wind about me, +that seductive honey-jar yet again to trap me, like some poor insect; +thus then my foolish idolatry heretofore hath hailed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>IMAGINATION.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My fond first love, sweet mistress of my mind,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Thy beautiful sublimity hath long</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Charm'd mine affections, and entranced my song,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thou spirit-queen, that sit'st enthroned, enshrined</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Within this suppliant heart; by day and night</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">My brain is full of thee: ages of dreams,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thoughts of a thousand worlds in visions bright,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Fear's dim terrific train, Guilt's midnight schemes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky!—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">O, God of mind, I shudder at myself!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Now, friend reader, you have accustomed yourself to think that every +thing in rhyme, <i>i. e.</i>, poetry, as you somewhat scornfully call it, +must be false: and I am sorry to be obliged to grant you that a leaning +towards plain matter-of-fact, is no wise characteristic of metrical +enthusiasts. But believe me for a truth-teller; that sonnet (did you +read it?) hints at some fearful verities; and that you may further +apprehend this sweet ideal mistress of your author's mind, suffer me to +introduce to your acquaintance</p> + + +<h4>IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Within thy silent lips! how rare a light</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In thy crisp curls, like cherubs there abiding—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But +verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if +crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the +Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> by way +of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty +soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold +legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and +would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political +philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged +up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than +surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is +not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season, +(parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair +service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious +pleasures: religion prësupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle +to rein-in the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to +prescribe for most men an occasional course of</p> + + +<h4>SOLITUDE.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Therefore delight thy soul in solitude,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Feeding on peace; if solitude it be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To feel that million creatures, fair and good,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With gracious influences circle thee;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To hear the mind's own music; and to see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">God's glorious world with eyes of gratitude,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Unwatch'd by vain intruders. Let me shrink</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">From crowds, and prying faces, and the noise</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of men and merchandise; far nobler joys</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Than chill Society's false hand hath given,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Attend me when I'm left alone to think.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To think—alone?—Ah, no, not quite alone;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Save me from that—cast out from earth and heaven,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">A friendless, Godless, isolated <span class="smcap">ONE</span>!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But of these higher metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations, +perhaps somewhat too much: you will dub me dreamer, if not proser—or +rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way of +clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into +the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts on these +full-blown glories of</p> + + +<h4>SUMMER.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Warm summer! Yes, the very word is warm;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The hum of bees is in it, and the sight</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of sunny fountains glancing silver light,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And the rejoicing world, and every charm</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of happy nature in her hour of love,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Fruits, flowers, and flies, in rainbow-glory bright:</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The smile of God glows graciously above,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And genial earth is grateful; day by day</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Old faces come again with blossoms gay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Gemming in gladness meadow, garden, grove:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Awake thy better hopes of better days,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And in creation's pæan take thy part.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>How different in sterner beauty was the landscape not long since! The +energies of universal life prisoned up in temporary obstruction; every +black hedge-row tufted with woolly snow, like some Egyptian mother +mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in glittering +chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the head of +Gorgon; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains of +iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable; therefore we need +scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days—I mean for this present +unseasonable introduction of dead</p> + + +<h4>WINTER.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As some fair statue, white and hard and cold,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Smiling in marble, rigid, yet at rest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Or like some gentle child of beauteous mould,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Whose placid face and softly swelling breast</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Are fixed in death, and on them bear imprest</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">His magic seal of peace—so, frozen, lies</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The loveliness of nature: every tree</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Stands hung with lace against the clear blue skies;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The hills are giant waves of glistering snow;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Rare and northern fowl, now strangely tame to see,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With ruffling plumage cluster on the bough,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And tempt the murderous gun; mouse-like, the wren</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Hides in the new-cut hedge; and all things now</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fear starving Winter more than cruel men.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Ay, "cruel men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent +from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who +does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not +rejoice to find even there somewhat of</p> + + +<h4>CONSOLATION?</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Scholar of Reason, Grace, and Providence,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Restrain thy bursting and indignant tears;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With tenderest might unerring Wisdom steers</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Through those mad seas the bark of Innocence.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Doth thy heart burn for vengeance on the deed—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Some barbarous deed wrought out by cruelty</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">On woman, or on famish'd childhood's need,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Yea, on these fond dumb dogs—doth thy heart bleed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">For pity, child of sensibility?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Those tears are gracious, and thy wrath most right</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Yet patience, patience; there is comfort still;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The Judge is just; a world of love and light</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Remains to counterpoise the load of ill,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And the poor victim's cup with angel's food to fill.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>For, as my Psycotherion has long ago informed you, I hope there is some +sort of heaven yet in reserve for the brute creation: if otherwise, in +respect of costermongers' donkeys, Kamskatdales' gaunt starved dogs, the +Guacho's horse, spurred deep with three-inch rowels, the angler's worm, +Strasburgh geese, and poor footsore curs harnessed to ill-balanced +trucks—for all these and many more I, for one, sadly stand in need of +consolation. Meanwhile, let us change the subject. After a dose of cruel +cogitations, and this corrupting converse with Phalaris and Domitian, +what better sweetener of thoughts than an "olive-branch" in the waters +of Marah? Spend a moment in the nursery; it is happily fashionable now, +as well as pleasurable, to sport awhile with Nature's prettiest +playthings; the praises of children are always at the tip of my—pen, +that is, tongue, you remember, and often have I told the world, in all +the pride of print, of my fond infantile predilections: then let this +little Chanson be added to the rest; we will call it</p> + + +<h4>MARGARET.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A song of gratitude and cheerful prayer</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As on life's firmament, serenely fair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of mild successive radiance: that small pair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Ellen and Mary, having gone before</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In this affection's welcome, the dear debt</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Be thou indeed a pearl—in pureness, more</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Than beauty, praise, or price; full be thy cup,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Mantling with grace, and truth with mercy met,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With warm and generous charities flowing o'er;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And when the Great King makes his jewels up,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Shine forth, child-angel, in His coronet!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And while hovering about this fairy-land of sweet-home scenery, and +confessing thankfully to these domestic affections, your author knows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> +one heart at least that will be gladdened, one face that will be +brightened by the following</p> + + +<h4>BIRTH-DAY PRAYER.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mother, dear mother, no unmeaning rhyme,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">No mere ingenious compliment of words,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My heart pours forth at this auspicious time:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">I know a simple honest prayer affords</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">More music on affection's thrilling cords,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">More joy, than can be measured or express'd</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In song most sweet, or eloquence sublime.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mother, I bless thee! God doth bless thee too!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In these thy children's children thou <i>art</i> blest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">With dear old pleasures springing up anew:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And blessings wait upon thee still, my mother!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Blessings to come, this many a happy year;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For, losing thee, where could we find another</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">So kind, so true, so tender, and—so dear?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Is it an impertinence—I speak etymologically—to have dropped that +sonnet here?—Be it as you will, my Zoilus; let me stand convicted of +honesty and love: I ask no higher praise in this than to have pleased my +mother.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Penman as I am, have been, and shall be, innumerable letters have grown +beneath my goose-quill. Who cannot say the same indeed? For in these +patriotic days, for mere country's love and post-office prosperity, +every body writes to every body about every thing, or, as oftener +happens, about nothing. Nevertheless, I wish some kind pundit would +invent a corrosive ink, warranted to consume a letter within a week +after it had been read and answered: then should we have fewer of those +ephemeral documents treasured up in pigeon-holes, and docketed +correspondence for possible publication. Not Byron, nor Lamb, nor West, +nor Gray, with all their epistolary charms, avail to persuade my +prejudice that it is honest to publish a private letter: if written with +that view, the author is a hypocrite in his friendships; if not so, the +decent veil of privacy is torn from social life, confidence is rebuked, +betrayed, destroyed; and the suspicion of eaves-droppings and casual +scribblings to be posthumously printed, makes silence truly wisdom, and +grim reserve a virtue. This public appetite for secret information, and, +if possible, for hinted scandal—this unhallowed spirit of outward +curiosity trespassing upon the sacred precincts of a man's own +circle—is to the real author's mind a thing to be feared, if he is +weak—to be circum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>spectly watched, if he is wise. Such is the present +hunger for this kind of reading, that it would be diffidence, not +presumption, in the merest school-boy to dread the future publication of +his holiday letters; who knows—I may jump scathless from the Monument, +or in these Popish times become excommunicated by special bull, or fly +round the world in a balloon, or attain to the authorship of forty +volumes, or be half-smothered by a valet-de-place, or get indicted for +inveterate Toryism, or any how, I may—notwithstanding all present +obscurities that intervene—wake one of these fine mornings, and find +myself famous: and what then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve +to one that sundry busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape +together with malice prepense, and keep <i>câchet</i> for future print, a +multitude of careless scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour +of the reading. Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against? And, +utterly improbable on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should +judge their publication (but for certain stolidities of the same sort, +that often-times have wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's +mind here enter its eternal protest against any such treachery regarding +private</p> + + +<h4>LETTERS.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tear, scatter, burn, destroy—but keep them not;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">I hate, I dread those living witnesses</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of varying self, of good or ill forgot,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Those visions of the past, that idly blot</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The present with regret for blessings fled:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">This flickering heart is full of chance and change;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">I would not have you watch my weaknesses,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nor how my foolish likings roam and range,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypothetical +post-obits!</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he sees his +manuscript in print: it is safe; no longer a treasure uninsurable, no +longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable of real +extermination; it has reached a changeless condition; the chrysalis of +illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> +world on the wings of those true Dædali, Faust, and Gutenberg: the +transition-state is passed: henceforth for his brain-child set free from +that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no +more than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain +hope of immortality. "'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is +the adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred; and, though zeal +might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no +better excuse for the fourteen lines that follow; they require but this +preface: a most venerable chapel of old time, picturesque and full of +interest, is dropping to decay, within a mile of me; where it is, and +whose the fault, are askings improper to be answered: nevertheless, I +cast upon the waters this meagre morsel of</p> + +<h4>APPEAL.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Shame on thee, Christian, cold and covetous one!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The laws (I praise them not for this) declare</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">That ancient, loved, deserted house of prayer</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As money's worth a layman landlord's own.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Then use it as thine own; thy mansion there</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Stands new and decorate; thine every shed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And barn is neat and proper; I might search</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Thy comfortable farms, and well despair</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of finding dangerous ruin overhead,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Arouse thy better self: restore it; see,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Fear, lest that crushing guilt should fall on thee.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I fear much, poor book, this finale of jingling singing will jar upon +the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle +in its tail: and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may +chance to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in +this after-thought Appendix; yea, and I will keep that promise at all +mortal hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing +Fornarinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay +court-cards. After so much of villanous political ferment, society +returns at length to its every-day routine, heedful of other oratory +than harangues from the hustings, and glad of other reading than +figurative party-speeches. Yet am I bold to recur, just for a thought or +two, to my whilom patriotic hopes and fears: fears indeed came first +upon me, but hopes finally out-voted them: briefly, then, begin upon the +worst, and endure, with what patience you possess, this creaky stave of +bitter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>POLITICS.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Her sun of ancient glory going down,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What wonder should the billows overwhelm</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Yet, no!—we will not fear; the loathing realm</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">At length has burst its chains; a motley few,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">No more besiege our Zion's citadel:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But high in hope comes on this nobler band</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For God, the sovereign, and our father-land.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and +therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes +to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in +regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a +subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found +lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to +whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in +old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to +blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast +myself free, a citizen of no mean city—my commission signed by duty—my +counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the +liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family +of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites +blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my +target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon +the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere +lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men, +were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of +their fraternity.</p> + +<p>But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to +intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the +occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken, +uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its +presumption</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">As duty prompts and loyalty commands,</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 3em;">To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Setting thee ruler over many lands;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And many people, nations, languages,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Them next to bless, to prosper and to please,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences!</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the +largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and +thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in +regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to +confess—(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale +Joe-Millerism?)—the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall +give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour +acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in +the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind +Mæonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the +majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's +own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance, +wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place +prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels; +in the '<i>Corsair</i>,' the '<i>Childe</i>,' and the '<i>Don</i>,' no one can mistake +the hero-author; Southey's works, Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full +of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least +equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with +instances illustrious as those, so with all humbler followers, the +skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships: +an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amusements, +business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and +qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing +individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with +choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate, +in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it +from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of +sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered +sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning +here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon; +for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time +antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> my +muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly +avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this +avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may +ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic?</p> + +<p>List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for +authorship</p> + +<h4>THE CATHEDRAL MIND.</h4> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Temple of truths most eloquently spoken,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The '<i>Author's Mind</i>,' in all its hallowed riches,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Stands a cathedral: full of precious things;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aëry tower:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Deep music all around enchantment flings;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">And God's great Presence consecrates the whole.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor +printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before +have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that +many beginnings—and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing—should, +for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many +endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle +reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical +than—censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy +is held to be good-breeding; <i>item</i>, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is +much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;" +<i>item</i>, (Sir Walter again, <i>ipsissima verba</i>, in a letter to Miss +Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear to be a +sort of tinkers, who, unable to <i>make</i> pots and pans, set up for +<i>menders</i> of them, and often make two holes in patching one;" <i>item</i>, +that in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for +"repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent +scribe is always at the mercy of compositors; and lastly, that if it is, +by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at +least as much, worthier of a noble mind to give credit for good +intentions, rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even +where hyper-criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has +been a failure.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 19386-h.htm or 19386-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/3/8/19386/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/19386.txt b/19386.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..164b6c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/19386.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5706 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Author's Mind + The Complete Prose Works of Tupper, Volume 5 (of 6) + +Author: Martin Farquhar Tupper + +Release Date: September 26, 2006 [EBook #19386] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +AN AUTHOR'S MIND; + +THE BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES: + + +"A BOOKFUL OF BOOKS," OR "THIRTY BOOKS IN ONE." + + +EDITED BY + +M.F. TUPPER, ESQ., M. A. + + +"En un mot, mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en +general; ainsi, une et autres en particulier; et par special, +moymeme."--PASQUIER. + + + HARTFORD: + PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. + 1851. + + + + +ANNOUNCEMENT. + +BY THE EDITOR. + + +The writer of this strange book (a particular friend of mine) came to me +a few mornings ago with a very happy face and a very blotty manuscript. +"Congratulate me," he began, "on having dispersed an armada of +head-aches hitherto invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its +legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to +persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and +rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found +Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his +strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, +hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet +looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, an thou +lovest me, congratulate." + +Wider and wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober +friend so voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it +was a set speech, prepared for an impromptu occasion; nevertheless, as +he was clearly in an enviable state of disenthraldom from +thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. And then +this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache! here was an anodyne +infinitely precious to one so brain-feverish as I: had all this pleasure +and comfort arisen from such common-place remedials as a dear young +lover's courtesy or a deceased old miser's codicil, I should long ago +have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, my friend was never +known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in the +discovery; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was +naturally enough exhibiting itself in a "What on earth----?" he broke +out with the abruptness of an Abernethy, "Read my book." + +Well, I did read it; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound, +can readily believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very +small portion of older material, it had been at chance intervals rapidly +thrown off in a couple of months, (the old current-quill style,) chiefly +with the view of relieving a too prolific brain: it appeared to me a +mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind; an honest, indeed, but often +useless exposure of multifarious fancies--some good, some bad, and not a +few indifferent; an incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand +thoughts, little worth the printing, if the very writing were not indeed +superfluous. Nevertheless, with all its faults, I thought the book a +novelty, and liked it not the less for its off-hand fashion; it had +something of the free, fresh, frank air of an old-school squire at +Christmas-tide, suggestive as his misletoe, cheerful as his face, and +careless as his hospitality. Knowing then that my friend had been more +than once an author--indeed, he tells us so himself--and perceiving, +from innumerable symptoms, that he meditated putting also this before +the world, I thought kindly to anticipate his wishes by proposing its +publication: but I was rather curtly answered with a "Did I suppose +these gnats were intended to be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to +be treated with the high consideration due only to potted char and white +bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before that Gorgon-head, +the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of +immortality, printer's-ink? these----" I stopped him, for this other +mighty mouthful of images betrayed the hypocrite--"Yes, I did." An +involuntary smile assured me he did too, and the cause proceeded thus: +first, a promise not to burn the book; then a Bentley to the rescue, +with accessory considerations; and then, the due administration of a +little wholesome flattery: by this time we had obtained permission, +after modest reluctance pretty well enacted, to transform the deformity +of manuscript into the well-proportioned elegance of print. But, this +much gained, our author would not yield to any argument we could urge +upon the next point, viz: leave to produce the volume, duly fathered +with his name. "Not he indeed; he loved quiet too well; he might, it was +true, secretly like the bantling, but cared not to acknowledge it before +a populous reading-world, every individual whereof esteems himself and +herself competent to criticize!" Mr. Publisher, deeply disinterested, of +course, bristled up at the notion of any thing anonymous; and the only +alternative remaining was the stale expedient of an editor; that editor, +in brief, to be none other than myself, a very palpable-obscure: and let +this excuse my name upon the title-page. + +Now, as editor, I have had to do--what seems, by the way, to be regarded +by collective wisdom as the best thing possible--nothing: my author +would not suffer the change of a syllable, for all his seeming +carelessness about the THING, as he called it; so, I had no +more for my part than humbly to act the Helot, and try to set decently +upon the public tables a genuine mess of Spartan porridge. + +M. F. T. + +_Albury, Guildford._ + + + + +AN AUTHOR'S MIND: + +THE + +BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES. + + + + +A RAMBLE. + +In these days of universal knowledge, schoolmaster and scholars all +abroad together, quotation is voted pedantry, and to interpret is +accounted an impertinence; yet will I boldly proclaim, as a mere fact, +clear to the perceptions of all it may concern, "This book deserves +richly of the Sosii." And that for the best of reasons: it is not only a +book, but a book full of books; not merely a new book, but a +little-library of new books; thirty books in one, a very harvest of +epitomized authorship, the cream of a whole fairy dairy of quiescent +post-octavos. It is not--O, mark ye this, my Sosii, (and by the way, +gentle ladies, these were worshipful booksellers of old, the Murrays and +the Bentleys of imperial Rome,)--it is not the dull concreted elongation +of one isolated hackneyed idea--supposing in every work there _be one_, +a charitable hypothesis--wire-drawn, and coaxed, and hammered through +three regulation volumes; but the scarcely-more-than-hinted abstractions +of some forty thousand flitting notions--hasty, yet meditative Hamlets; +none of those lengthy, drawling emblems of Laertes--driven in flocks to +the net of the fowler, and penned with difficult compression within +these modest limits. So "goe forth, littel boke," and make thyself a +friend among those good husbandmen, who tend the trees of knowledge, and +bring their fruit to the world's market. + +Now, reader, one little preliminary parley with you about myself: here +beginneth the trouble of authorship, but it is a trouble causing ease; +ease from thoughts--thoughts--thoughts, which never cease to make one's +head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease from dreams by night and +reveries by day, (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's +children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army,) +harassing the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a +definite life; ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of +aerial forget-me-nots, clamouring to be recorded. O, happy unimaginable +vacancy of mind, to whistle as you walk for want of thought! O, mental +holiday, now as impossible to me, as to take a true school-boy's +interest in rounders and prisoner's base! An author's mind--and remember +always, friend, I write in character, so judge not as egotistic vanity +merely the well playing of my _role_--such a mind is not a sheet of +smooth wax, but a magic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions; no +empty tenement, but a barn stored to bursting: it is a painful pressure, +constraining to write for comfort's sake; an appetite craving to be +satisfied, as well as a power to be exerted; an impetus that longs to +get away, rather than a dormant dynamic: thrice have I (let me confess +it) poured forth the alleviating volume as an author, a real +author--real, because for very peace of mind, involuntarily; but still +the vessel fills; still the indigenous crop springs up, choking a better +harvest, seeds of foreign growth; still those Lernaean necks sprout +again, claiming with many mouths to explain, amuse, suggest, and +controvert--to publish invention, and proscribe error. Truly, it were +enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive; to be fitted with a +colander-mind, like that penal cask which forty-nine Danaides might not +keep from leaking; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to +ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, +perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often +cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of +a man--fret, wear, worry him; to be irritable, is the conditional tax +laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery +makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of +coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a +texture; they cannot estimate the wish that a duller sword were in a +tougher scabbard; the river, not content with channel and restraining +banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate exacting armies of the +Ideal and the Causal persecute MY spirit, and I would make a +patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace: I write +these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase; +I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the +priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian among my mental nurselings; a dire +resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruction of the literary +populace superfoetating in my brain--plays, novels, essays, tales, +homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and +rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of +maltreated Aristotle: I will exhibit them in their state chaotic; I will +addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and +secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten +on me. + +The world is too full of books, and I yearn not causelessly to add more +than this involuntary unit: bottles, bottles--invariable bottles--was +the one idea of a most clever Head at Nieder-Selters; books, +books--accumulating books--press upon my conscience in this literary +London: despairing auctioneers hate the sound, ruined publishers dread +it, surfeited readers grumble at it, and the very cheese-monger begins +to be an epicure as to which grand work is next to be demolished. +Friendships and loves tremble at the daily recurrence of "Have you read +this?" and "Mind you buy that;" wise men shun a blue-belle, sure that +she will recommend a book; and the yet wiser treat themselves to +solitary confinement, that they may not have to meet the last new batch +of authors, and be obliged to purchase, if not to peruse, their +never-ending books. I fear to increase the plague, to be convicted an +abettor of great evils, though by the measure of a little one. I am +infected, and I know it: but for science-sake I break the quarantine, +and in my magnanimity would be victimized unknown, consigning to a +speedy grave this useless offspring, together with its too productive +parent, and saving of a race so hopeless little else than their +predetermined names--in fact, their title-pages. + +But is that indeed little? Speak, authors with piles of ready-written +copy, is not the theme (so often carried out beyond, or beside, or even +against its original purpose) less perplexing than the after-thought +thesis? Bear witness, readers, bit by a mysterious advertisement in the +'_Morning Post_,' are names, indeed, not matters of much weight? Press +forward, Sosii aforesaid, and answer me truly, is not a title-page the +better part of many books? Cheap promises of stale pleasure, false hopes +of dull interest, imprimaturs of deceived fancy, lying visions of the +future unfulfilled, title-pages still do good service to the cause +of--bookselling. + +And, to commence, let me elucidate mine own--I mean the first, the head +and front of this offending phalanx--mine own, _par excellence_, '_An +Authors Mind_:' such in sooth it shall be found, for richer or poorer, +for better or for worse; not of selfish, but of common application; not +so much individually of mine own, as generically of authors; a medley +of crudities; an undigested mass, as any in the maw of Polypheme; a +fermenting hotchpotch of half-formed things, illustrative, among other +matters, of the Lucretian theory, those close-cohering atoms; a farrago +of thoughts, and systems of thoughts, in most admired disorder, which +would symbolize the Copernican astronomy, with its necessary clash of +whirling orbs, about as well as the intangible chaos of Berkeleyan +metaphysics. + +So much then on the moment for the monosyllable "Mind;"--whereof +followeth, indeed, all the more hereafter; but--"An author's?"--what +author's? You would see my patent of such rank, my commission to wear +such honourable uniform. Pr'ythee be content with simple assurance that +it is so; consider the charm of unsatisfied curiosity, and pry not; let +me sit unseen, a spectator; for this once I would go _in domino_. +Heretofore, "credit me, fair Discretion, your Affability" hath achieved +glory, and might Solomonize on its vanity at least as well as poor +discomfited, discovered Sir Piercie Shafton: heretofore, I have stood +forth in good causes, with helm unbarred, and due proclamation of name, +style, and title, an avowed author; and might sermonize thus upon +success, that a little censure loseth more friends than much praise +winneth enemies. So now, with visor down, and a white shield, as a young +knight-candidate unknown, it pleases my leisure to take my pastime in +the tourney: and so long as in truthful prowess I bear me gallantly and +gently, who is he that hath a right to unlatch my helmet, or where is +the herald that may challenge my rank? Nevertheless, inquisitive, +consider the mysteries that lie in the Turkish-looking _sobriquet_ of +"Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I +never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in +"Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but +that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault +with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this +shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to +unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less said of +so diaphanous a mystery, the better. + +And let me remark this of the mode anonymous; a mode, indeed, to +purposes of shame, and slander, and falsity of all kinds too often +prostituted for the present, bear with it; sometimes it is well to go +disguised, and the voice of one unseen lacks not eager listeners; we +address your judgment, unbiased by the prejudice or sanction of a name: +we put forth, lightly and negligently, those lesser matters which +opportunity hath not yet matured; we escape the nervous pains, the +literary perils of the hardier acknowledged. Only of this one thing be +sure; we--(no, I; why should unregal, unhierarchal I affect +pluralities?)--I hope to keep inviolate, as much when masked as when +avowed, the laws of truth, charity, sincerity, and honour; and, +although, among my many booklets, the grave and the gay will be found in +near approximation, I trust--will it offend any to tell them that I +pray?--to do no ill service at any time to the cause of that true +religion which resents not the neighbourhood of innocent cheerfulness. I +show you, friend, my honest mind. + +I by itself, I; odious mono-literal; thinnest, feeblest, most +insignificant of letters, I dread your egotistic influence as my bane; +they will not suffer you, nor bear with a book so speckled with your +presence. Still, world, hear me; mercifully spare a poor grammarian the +penance of perpetual third persons; let an individual tender conscience +escape censure for using the true singular in preference to that +imposing lie, the plural. Suffer a humble unit to speak of himself as I, +and, once for all, let me permissively disclaim intentional self-conceit +in the needful usage of isolated I-ship. + +These few preliminaries being settled, though I fear little to the +satisfaction of either party concerned, let us proceed--further to +preliminarize; for you will find, even to the end, as you may have found +out already from the beginning, that your white knight is mounted rather +on an ambling preambling palfrey, than on any determinate charger; +curveting and prancing, and rambling and scrambling at his own unmanaged +will: scorning the bit and bridle, too hot to bear the spur, careless of +listing laws, and wishing rather playfully to show his paces, than to +tilt against a foe. + +An author's mind, _qua_ author, is essentially a gossip; an oral, +ocular, imaginative, common-place book: a _pot pourri_ mixed from the +_hortus siccus_ of education, and the greener garden of internal thought +that springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain; a compound +of many metals flowing from the mental crucible as one--perchance a base +alloy, perchance new, and precious, and beautiful as the fine brass of +Corinth; an accidental meeting in the same small chamber of many +spiritual essences that combine, as by magnetism into some strange and +novel substance; a mixture of appropriations, made lawfully a man's own +by labour spent upon the raw material; corn-clad Egypt rescued from a +burnt Africa by the richness of a swelling Nile--the black forest of +pines changed into a laughing vineyard by skill, enterprise, and +culture--the mechanism of Frankenstein's man of clay, energized at +length by the spark Promethean. + +And now, reader, do you begin to comprehend me, and my title? '_An +Author's Mind_' is first in the field, and, as with root and fruit, must +take precedence of its booklets; bear then, if you will, with this +desultory anatomization of itself yet a little longer, and then in good +time and moderate space you will come to the rudiments--bones, so to +speak--of its many members, the frame-work on which its nerves and +muscles hang, the names of its unborn children, the title-pages of its +own unprinted books. + +Philosophers and fools, separately or together, as the case may be--for +folly and philosophy not seldom form one Janus-head, and Minerva's bird +seems sometimes not ill-fitted with the face of Momus--these and their +thousand intermediates have tried in all ages to define that quaint +enigma, Man: and I wot not that any pundit of literature hath better +succeeded than the nameless, fameless man--or woman, was it?--or haply +some innocent shrewd child--who whilom did enunciate that MAN IS A +WRITING ANIMAL: true as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational +as Euclid, a discerning, just, exclusive definition. That he is "capable +of laughter," is well enough even for thy deathless fame, O Stagyrite! +but equally (so Buffon testifies) are apes and monkeys, horses and +hyenas; whether perforce of tickling or sympathy, or native notions of +the humorous, we will not stop to contend. That he actually is "an +animal whose best wisdom is laughter," hath but little reason in it, +Democrite, seeing there are such obvious anomalies among men as suicidal +jesters and cachinating idiots; nevertheless, my punster of Abdera, thy +whimsical fancy, surviving the wreck of dynasties, and too light to sink +in the billows of oblivion, is now become the popular thought, the +fashionable dress of heretofore moping wisdom: crow, an thou wilt, jolly +old chanticleer, but remember thee thou crowest on a dunghill; man is +not a mere merry-andrew. Neither is he exclusively "a weeping animal," +lugubrious Heraclite, no better definer than thy laughter-loving foe: +that man weeps, or ought to weep, the world within him and the world +without him indeed bear testimony: but is he the only mourner in this +valley of grief, this travailing creation? No, no; they walk lengthily +in black procession: yet is this present writing not the fit season for +enlarging upon sorrows; we must not now mourn and be desolate as a poor +bird grieving for its pilfered young--is Macduff's lamentable cry for +his lost little ones, "All--what, all?" more piteous?--we must now +indulge in despondent fears, like yonder hard-run stag, with terror in +his eye, and true tears coursing down his melancholy face: we must not +now mourn over cruelty and ingratitude, like that poor old worn-out +horse, crying--positively crying, and looking imploringly for merciful +rest into man's iron face; we must not scream like the wounded hare, nor +beat against our cage like the wild bird prisoned from its freedom. +Moreover, Heraclite, even in thine own day thou mightest well have heard +of the classic wailings of Philomel for Atys, or of consumptive Canens, +that shadow of a voice, for her metamorphosed Pie, and have known that +very crocodiles have tears: pass on, thy desolate definition hath not +served for man. + +With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and +learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a +calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but +he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his +nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons, +and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying +rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly +contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling +strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite--what a name of +hungry omen for the imperial devourer!--plausibly insinuates man to be +"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with +domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true, +the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa +glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a +gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care, +all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question, +the kitchen _is_ a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme: +still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily +dinners--man--MAN, I say, is not altogether a compact of edible +commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere +congeries of food and pickles; moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame +hath (or used to have, "in my warm youth, when George the Third was +king,") automatons, [pray, observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre +enough to indite _automata_; we conquering Britons stole that word among +many others from poor dead Greece, who couldn't want it; having made it +ours in the singular, why be bashful about the plural! So also of +memorandums, omnibuses, [you remember Farren's _omni_BI!] +necropolises, gymnasiums, eukeirogeneions, and other unlegacied +property of dear departed Rome and Greece. All this, as you see, +is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, Gingel has automatons, that will +serve you up all kinds of delicate viands, pleasant meats, and +choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing of Jones' patent +all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus: no mine +Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of +extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion; little, indeed, as you +may credit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for +feeding. Remember AEsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, above +them all, do not overlook the head. + +What think you then of "a featherless biped?" gravely suggests a rusty +Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you never had +the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas; the poor bare _bipes +implumis_, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay, +and _risibilis_ to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old +festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we +to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the +notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, +thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the +poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite +of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as +useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and +coronation armour)--in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough +of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own +all-conquering quills--in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my +faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in +spite, I say, of copying presses, manifold inditers, and automaton +artists, MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL. + +Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one definition: +but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of +Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of +Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself +by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my +casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in +leisure, courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at +this station let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual +misliking; to your books, to your business, to your fowling, to your +feasting, to your mummery, to your nunnery--go: my track lays away from +the highroad, in and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy +rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding +river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just +dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday +thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold +brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a +working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up of +holidays. + +A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a moment +link our reasonings, and solder one stray rivet; man being a writing +animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, there's +the rub: a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen-holder +and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe--that +imagery of his Maker--that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intellectual, +abstraction, manhood: but, what then is WRITING? Ye tons of +invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences +of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of +unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical +experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations +of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in +all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of +you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor +deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only--it is +yet a good purpose--to dress the common soil of human kindness, without +attaining to the praise of wreaths and chaplets ever hanging in the +Muses' temple; flowers withered on the stalk, whose blooming beauty no +lover's hand has dropped upon the sacred waters of Siloa, like the +Hindoo's garland on her Ganges; prolix, vain, ephemeral letters +(especially enveloped penny-posters)--and sparing only some few redolent +of truth, wisdom, and affection--your bulky majority of flippant trash, +staid advices, dunnings, hoaxings, lyings, and slanderings, degrade you +to a lower rank than that we take on us to designate as "writing." + +And what, O what--"how poor is he that hath not patience!"--shall we +predicate of the average viscera of circulating libraries?--abominable +viscera!--isn't that the word, my young Hippocrates?--A parley--a +parley! and the terms of truce are these: If this present pastime of +mine (for pastime it is, so spurn not at its logic,) be mercifully +looked on by you, lady novelists and male dittoes--yet truly there are +giants in your ranks, as Scott, and Ward, and Hugo, and Le Sage, +towering above ten thousand pigmies--if I be spared your censures +well-deserved, interchangeably as toward your authorships will I +exercise the charitable wisdom of silence: a white flag or a white +feather is my best alternative in soothing or avoiding so terrible a +host; and verily, to speak kinder of those whose wit, and genius, and +graphic powers have so smoothed this old world's wrinkled face of care, +many brilliant, many clever, many well-intended caterers to public +amusement, throng your ill-ordered ranks: still, there are numbered to +your shame as followers of the fool's-cap standard, the huge corrupting +mass of depraved moralists, meagre trash-inditers, treacherous +scandal-mongers, men about town who immortalize their shame, and the +dull, pernicious school of feather-brained Romancists: and take this +sentence for a true one, a _verum-dictum_. But enough, there are others, +and those not few, even far less veniable; ye priers into family +secrets--fawning, false guests at the great man's open house, eagerly +jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded conversation of the +hospitable board--shame on your treason, on its wages, and its fame! ye +countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; chiels amang us +takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, without +mitigation or remorse; ye men of paste and scissors, who so often +falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a +Harlequin whole the _disjecta membra_ of some great hacked-up +reputation; can such as ye are tell me what it is to write? Writing is +the concreted fruit of thinking, the original expression of new +combinations of idea, the fresh chemical product of educational +compounds long simmering in the mind, the possession of a sixth sense, +distinguishing intelligence, and proclaiming it to the four winds; +writing is not labour, but ease; not care, but happiness; not the petty +pilferings of poverty, but the large overflowings of mental affluence; +it begs not on the highway, but gives great largess, like a king; it +preys not on a neighbour's wealth, but enriches him; it may light, +indeed, a lamp, at another's candle, but pays him back with brilliancy; +it may borrow fire from the common stock, but uses it for genial warmth +and noble hospitality. + +Remember well, good critic, (for verily bad there be,) my purposes in +this odd volume--this queer, unsophisticate, uncultivated book: to empty +my mind, to clear my brain of cobwebs, to lift off my head a porters's +load of fancy articles; and as in a bottle of bad champaign, the first +glass, leaping out hurryskurry, at a railroad pace boiling a gallop, +carries off with it bits of cork and morsels of rosin, even such is the +first ebullition of my thoughts: take them for what they are worth, and +blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do you +suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their +shallowness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty +reasoning and pellucid vanity?--There I have saved you the labour of a +sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a +little, perhaps, your patience may find me otherwise; of clearer flow, +but flatter flavour: these desultorinesses must first of all be +immolated, for in their Ariel state they vex me, but I bind them down +like slaving Calibans, by the magic of a pen; and glad shall I be to +victimize my monsters, eager to dissipate my musquito-like tormentors; +yea, I would "take up arms against a sea"--["Arms against a sea?" +dearest Shakspeare, would that Theobald, or Johnson's stock-butt, "the +Oxford Editor," had indeed interpolated that unconscionable image! It +has been sapiently remarked by some hornet of criticism, that +"Shakspeare was a clever man;" but cleverer far must that champion +stand forth who wars with any prospect of success upon seas; perhaps +Xerxes might have thought of it--or your Astley's brigand, who +rushes sword in hand on an ocean of green baize. Who shall cure me of +parentheses?]--well, "a sea of troubles, [thoughts trouble us more than +things--I sin again; close it;] and by opposing, end them;" that is, by +setting forth these troublous thoughts opposite, in stately black and +white, I clip their wings, and make them peck among my poultry, and not +swarm about my heaven. But soon must I be more continuous; turn over to +my future title-pages, and spare your objurgation; a little more of this +medley while the fit lasts, and afterward a staid course of better +accustomed messes; a few further variations on this lawless theme of +authorship, and then to try simpler tunes; briefly, and yet to be +grandiloquent, as a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy +clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "perfect, smooth, and round," green +young worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with systematic +skill. + +As an author, meanwhile, let man be most specifically characterized: a +real author, voluntary in his motives, but involuntary as regards his +acts authorial; full of matter, prolific of images and arguments, +teeming, bursting, with something, much, too much, to say, and well +witting how to say it: none of your poor devils compulsory from +poverty--Plutus help them!--whose penury of pocket is (pardon me) too +often equitably balanced by their emptiness of head; and far less one of +the lady's-maid school, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets +at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's +reticule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions +for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the +moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock: but a man who has it +weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist, +refute, enjoin: a man--frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen, +as the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and +sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance +upon carpet-work; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy +lessons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the +more coerulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly +geranium, miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs--these +we masculine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have +accounted your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sevigne and +Somerville, Edgeworth and De Stael, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and +Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less +accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated +slander: riding with the self-conceited _cortege_ of male critics, my +boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of _leze majeste_: but I repudiate +the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship +no fear: how much has man to learn from woman! teach us still to look on +humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on +heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant +calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers--making +yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to +hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural +dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if +you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill +becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta, +another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing, +return we to our author; to wit, a man, _homo_--a human, as they say in +the west--with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen +competent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly. + +Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves +far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our +ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that +make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write a book: and of +this triad of needfuls, who perceives not the superior and innate +majesty of the last requisite?--"Build a house?" I humbly conceive, and +steal my notion from the same ancestral source, that, in nine cases out +of ten, fools build houses for wise men to live in; besides, if houses +be made a test of supreme manhood, your modern wholesale runner-up of +lath and plaster tenements, warranted to stand seven years--provided +quadrilles be excluded, and no larger flock of guests _than six_ be +permitted to settle on one spot--such a jackal for surgeons, such a +reprobate provider for accident-wards as this, would be among our +heroes, a prize-man, the flower of the species. "Children" too?--very +happy, beautiful, heart-gladdening creations--God bless them all, and +scatter those who love them not!--but still for a proof of more than +average humanity, somewhat common, somewhat overwhelming: rabbits beat +us here, with all our fecundity, so offensive to Martineau and Malthus. +But as to "books"--common enough, too, smirks gentle reader: pardon, +courteous sir, most rare--at least in my sense; I speak not of flat +current shillings, but the bold medallions of ancient Syracuse; I heed +not the dull thousands of minted gold and silver, but the choice +coin-sculptures of Larissa and Tarentum. There do indeed flow hourly, +from an ever-welling press, rivers of words; there are indeed shoaling +us up on all sides a throng of well-bound volumes--novels, histories, +poems, plays, memoirs, and so forth--to all appearance, books: but if by +"books" be intended originality of matter, independent arguments, water +turned wine, by the miracle of right-thinking, and not a mere +re-decantering of dregs from other vessels--these many masqueraded +forms, these multiplied images of little-varied likenesses, these +Protean herds, will not stay to be counted, nor abide judgment, nor +brook scrutiny, but will merge and melt by thousands into the one, or +the two, real, original, sterling books. We live in a monopolylogue of +authorship: an idea goes forth to the world's market-place well dressed +from the wardrobe of some master-mind; it greets the public with a +captivating air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical; +it comes out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a +cookery-book, a tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an +abstract _ism_, or a concrete _ology_; till the poor worn-out, +dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably +affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father, +for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two +minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been +the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung +from the seed of some singular book, or of books counted in the dual. + +Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too much +whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I question not +that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of--I will say, +unintended, plagiarism; you are thieves--patience--I thieve from +thieves; Diogenes cannot see me any more than you; you copy phrases, I +am perpetually and unconsciously filching thoughts; my entomological +netted-scissors, wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are +always within reach; you will never find me without well-tenanted +pill-boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in +spinning thraldom on my castor; you are petty larceners, I profess the +like _metier_ of intellectual abstractor; you pilfer among a crowd of +volumes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your +success depends upon reusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone +and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies, +reconsidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in +the warehouse of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly +digesting, as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated +ages ago. + +Is it necessary to remind you--dropping this lightsome vein for a +precious moment--that I am penning away my "crudites," off-hand, at the +top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down +instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed?--I stick to +my title, '_An Author's Mind_,' and that with a laudable scorn of +concealment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser +than it is; then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of +speech, or my sarcasms mingled with charity; for consistency with me +were inconsistent. + +Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a +palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth +time a _cacoethes_; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth. +Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the +Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of +transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with +leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is +poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it _is_ +fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes +little thought: the mixture serves for my cider-press, and, fermentation +over, the product will be clarified. Judge me too, am I not consecutive? +I've shown man to be a writing animal; and writing, what it is and is +not; and meanwhile have been routing recreatively at pen's point whims, +and fancies, and ideas, and images, pulled in manfully by head and +shoulders: and now--after an episode, quite relevant and quite +Herodotean, concerning the consequences of a bit of successful +authorship on a man's scheme of life, to illustrate yet more the +"author's mind"--I shall proceed to tell all men how many books I might, +could, should, or would have written, but for reiterated and legitimated +_buts_, and how near of kin I must esteem myself to the illustrious J. +of nursery rhymes, being, as he is or was, "Mister Joe Jenkins, who +played on the fiddle, and began twenty tunes, but left off in the +middle." Moreover, no one can be ignorant of the close consanguinity +recognised in every age and every dictionary between I and J. But now +for the episode: + +If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: the +showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with +here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, +in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of +vision; the trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns; +the slightest change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the +whole mixture a poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his +equanimity thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his +whole wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those +useful reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns--spurs of +diligence, incentives to better things--are exaggerated into sixfold +spears, and terribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achaeans: a careless +fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, +stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with +folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord +paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its +warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for +that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated +morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure +rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last +an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and +haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day +by day, every man's life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is +somewhat of the longest, but the whim is upon me, and I must have my +way; the fit possesses me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a +fairer thesis; he that hates verse--and the Muses now-a-days are too +old-maidish to look many lovers--may skip it, and no harm done; but one +or two may like this stave on + + +LIFE. + + I saw a child with a kaleidoscope, + Turning at will the tesselated field; + And straight my mental eye became unseal'd, + I learnt of life, and read its horoscope: + Behold, how fitfully the patterns change! + The scene is azure now with hues of Hope; + Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange; + With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright; + Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold; + Made glorious by Religion's purple light; + Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold; + So, good or evil coming, peace or strife, + Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old, + In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life. + +It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yonder +prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with somewhat of +malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead?--Categorically, sir, +[there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables,] +categorically, sir, to this: of all life's turns and twists, few things +produce more change to the daring _debutant_ than successful authorship; +it is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness +among those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field +of vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact, +it fixes on it a predestinated "author's mind." + +An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of +metaphysical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a whirling +scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! what +a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored depths of an +ever-undiscovered country! That strange world hath a structure and a +furniture all its own; its chalcedonic rocks are painted with rare +creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness; forms of other +spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs; seeds of unknown plants, relics +of unlimned reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a +fanciful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its +fertile soil: and then its lawless botany; flowers of glorious hue hung +upon the trees of its forests; luscious fruits flung liberally among the +mosses of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored +water-lilies dancing in its bright cascades; and this, too, a world, an +inner secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a +peculiar creation; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the +dragon and the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and +herds of uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Who can sound its seas, +deep calling unto deep? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height +beckoning unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its +caverns? A limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen +fruit-tree, a riddle unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions, +an over-mantling tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a +full, independent, generous--a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly, +such--bear witness--is an author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos +of ill-sorted fancies! Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or +imaginary wrongs of authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; +"for the time present"--I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on +that highly exhilerating topic, the common-law--"hereof let this little +taste suffice." Is it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant, +a mercenary purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and +philosophy, of instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole +consideration of value received, as one would use a stalking-horse for +getting near a stag? this, too, when ten to one some cormorant on the +tree of knowledge, some staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is +complacently pocketing the profits, and modestly charging you with loss? +and this, moreover and more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility +on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even +if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls +unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I +must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your +estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of +success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal +who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to +that antiquated reproach, a Grub-street attic; or suspected among +gentler company in this most mercantile age for a pickpocket, a pauper, +a _chevalier d'industrie_? And then those hounds upon the bleeding +flanks of many a hunted author, those open-mouthed inexorable critics, +(I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher caste brethren,) how +suddenly they rend one, and fear not! Only for others do I speak, and in +no degree on account of having felt their fangs, as many have done, my +betters; gentle and kind, as domesticated spaniels, have reviewers in +general been to your humble confessor, and for such courtesies is he +their debtor. But who can be ignorant how frequently some hapless writer +is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, that a flagging magazine may +be served up with _sauce piquante_, and pander to the world for its +waning popularity by the malice of a pungent article? who, while as a +rule he may honour the bench of critics for patience, talent, and +impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, not seldom of +occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly condemnation; +where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax shield of anonymous +reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the foe fair-exposed +whom he dares not fight with?--But, as will be seen hereafter, I +trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than this: Is it not +a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no excuse for the +writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all he may be +innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good-natured world, +on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes either that the +author has written for himself the favourable notice, or that pecuniary +bribes have made the honest editor his tool? Verily, my public, thou art +not generous here; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, as well as +sordid: for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given for +corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, poor +maltreated authors speak to many wrongs: and of them more anon. + +What moreover shall we say of chilling friendships, near estrangements, +heartless lovers loitering behind, shy acquaintance dropping off? +Verily, there is a mighty sifting: you have dared to stand alone, have +expounded your mind in imperishable print, have manifested wit enough to +outface folly, sufficient moral courage to condemn vice, and more than +is needful of good wisdom to shame the oracles of worldliness: and so +some dread you, some hate, and many shun: the little selfish asterisks +in that small sky fly from your constellatory glories: you are +independent, a satellite of none: you have dared to think, write, print, +in all ways contrary to many; and if wise men and good be loud in their +applause, you arrive at the dignity of manifold hatreds; but if those +and their inferiors condemn, you sink into the bathos of multiplied +contempts. Of other wrongs somewhen and where, hereafter; meanwhile, a +better prospect glows on the kaleidoscopic field--a flattering accession +of new and ardent friends: "Sir," said an old priest to a young author, +"you have made a soft pillow for your head when it comes to be as white +as mine is;" a pretty saying of sweet charity, and such sink deep: as +for the younger and the warmer, being mostly of the softer sex, some +will profess admiring sensations that border not a little on idolatries; +others, gayer, will appear in the dress of careless, unskillful +admiration; not a few, both men and women, go indeed weakly along with +the current stream of popularity, but, to say truth, look happiest when +they find some stinging notice that may mortify the new bold candidate +for glory; while, last and best, a fewer, a very much fewer, do +handsomely the liberal part of friends, commending where they can, +objecting where they must, sincere in sorrow for a fault, rejoicing +without envy for a virtue. + +Many like phenomena has authorship: a certain class of otherwise +humanized and well-intentioned people begin to regard your scribe as a +monster--not a so-called "lion" to be sought, but some strange creature +to be dreaded: Perdition! what if he should be cogitating a novel or a +play, and means to make free with our characters? what if that libellous +coepartnership of Saunders and Ottley is permitted to display our faults +and foibles, flimsily disguised, before a mocking world? Disappointed +maidens that hover on the verge of forty, and can sympathize with +Jephtha's daughter in her lonely mournings, causelessly begin to fear +that a mischievous author may appropriate their portraits; venerable +bachelors, who have striven to earn some little local notoriety by the +diligent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling +in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque; +table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff +intends cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence; the twinkling +stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose +very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before +some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided +themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as +the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings +in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so +looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how +dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets +instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most +uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and +wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to +drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical +precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid! +those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim +and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated +character of the general, and not experimentally; so, flinging self +aside, let me speak what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown +a man with bays, and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of +rejoicing; is the victor there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as +Nemean heroes should be or does he not rather droop instantly again into +the obscure unit among a level mass, only the less welcome for having +stood up, a Saul or a Musaeus, with his head above his fellows? Verily, +no man is a proph--Enough, enough! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious +calling, and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah; +enough, enough! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of +fervent, overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the +eyes--there, well born in beauty--there perpetually (so your fondness +hopes) to live--slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest +daughter; the Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching +head, and stands in her immortal independence; an Eve, his own heart's +fruit, welcomes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work, +bodily; your communion has commenced with those of times to come; your +mind has produced a witness to its individuality; there is a tablet +sacred to its memory standing among men for ever. + +A thinker is seldom great in conversation, and the glib talkers who have +silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder in his +deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos--(let Caliban be +swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often unexplained, +because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and lightly +for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportunities +in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs; such +heart-emptyings yield heart-ease: an author, who has done his good work +well--for such a one alone we speak--while, privately, he scarce could +have refreshed mankind by petty driblets--in the perpetuity, publicity, +and universal acceptation of his high and honourable calling, does good +by wholesale, irrigates countries, and gladdens largely the large heart +of human society. And are not these unbounded pleasures, spreading over +life, and comforting the struggles of a death-bed? Yes: rising as +Ezekiel's river from ankle to knee, from knee to girdle, from girdle to +the overflowing flood--far beyond those lowest joys, which many wise +have trampled under foot, of praise, and triumph, and profit--the +authorship of good, that has made men better; that has consoled sorrow, +advanced knowledge, humbled arrogance, and blest humanity; that has sent +the guilty to his prayers, and has gladdened the Christian in his +praises--the authorship of good, that has shown God in his loveliness, +and man in his dependence; that has aided the cause of charity, and +shamed the face of sin--this high beneficence, this boundless +good-doing, hath indeed a rich recompense, a glorious reward! + +But we must speed on, and sear these hydra-necks, or we shall have as +many heads to our discourse, and as puzzling, as any treatise of the +Puritan divinity. Let us hasten to be practical; let us not so long +forget the promised title-pages; let it at length satisfy to show, more +than theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming +projects, and then casts out its half-made progeny; how scraps of paper +come to be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts, +thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; +how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order, +each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal, +educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen +precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own true +crystal. + +Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as +heretofore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall +follow a full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now +in the book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last +times, that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be +pleased herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one +mind should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a +performance so various, inconsistent, and unusual; premising, also, that +wherein I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is +unwittingly and unwillingly; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a +man must read harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising +this much farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger, +neither using up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so; +and that, whether I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify +and perfect any of these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and +booksellers, STEAL NOT; for so surely as I catch any one thus +behaving--and truly, my masters, the temptation is but small--I will +stick a "_Sic vos, non vobis,_" on his brazen forehead. + +Wait! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant of my +mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying utterances +before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; I would pray a +catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, and the +undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your pardons +universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, strangely and +Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caerphilli, out of the perpendicular +of truth; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, for good +or for evil; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhallowed +special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; I am +guilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on the +powerful gusts of feeling that burst upon my irritable breast; my heart +is no smooth Dead Sea, but the still vexed Bermoothes: therefore I would +print my penitence; I would publish my confessions; I would not hide my +humbleness; and it pleases me to pour out in sonnet-form my +unconventional + + +APOLOGY TO ALL. + + --For I have sinn'd; oh! grievously and often; + Exaggerated ill, and good denied; + Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften; + And Truth's own light unkindly misapplied: + Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd, + When some stern judgment, haply erring wide, + Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell + Other men's deeds all evil! Oh, my heart! + Renew once more thy generous youth, half perish'd; + Be wiser, kindlier, better than thou art! + And first, in fitting meekness, offer well + All earnest, candid prayers, to be forgiven + For worldly, harsh, unjust, unlovable + Thoughts and suspicions against man and Heaven! + +Friends all, let this be my best amendment: bear with the candour, +homely though it may be, of your author's mind; and suffer its further +revelations of unborn manuscript with charitable listening; for they +would come forth in real order of time, the first having priority, and +not the best, ungarnished, unweeded, uncared-for, humbly, and without +any further flourish of trumpets. + + * * * * * + +Serjeant Ion--I beg his pardon, Talfourd--somewhere gives it as his +opinion, that most people, in any way troubled with a mind, have at some +time or other meditated a tragedy. Truly, too, it _is_ a fine vehicle +for poetical solemnities, a stout-built vessel for an author's graver +thoughts; and the bare possibility of seeing one's own heart-stirring +creation visually set before a crowded theatre, the preclusive echoes +of anticipated thundering applause, the expected grilling silence +attendant on a pet scene or sentiment, all the tangible, accessories of +painting and music, clever acting and effective situation, and beyond +and beside these the certain glories of the property-wardrobe, make most +young minds press forward to the little-likely prize of successful +tragedy. That at one weak period I was bitten, my honesty would scorn to +deny; but fortunately for my peace of mind, "Melpomene looked upon me +with an aspect of little favour," and sturdy truth-telling Tacitus made +me at last but lightly regardful of my subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was +visited with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my +fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon +other people's topics--for who can find any thing new under the +sun?--and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of +speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of +which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's +'_Lives of the Poets_' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of +some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment +my goodly aerial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an +after-recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed +me that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to +tell the destined name of my abortive play; in four letters, then, + + +NERO; + +A CLASSICAL TRAGEDY: + +IN SEVEN SCENES. + +And now, in pity to an afflicted parent, hear for a while his +offspring's Roscian capabilities. First of all, however, (and you know +how I rejoice in all things preliminary,) let me clear my road by +explanations: we must pioneer away a titular objection, "in seven +scenes," and an assumed merit, in the term "classical." I abhor +scene-shifters; at least, their province lies more among pantomimes, +farces, and comedies, than in the region of the solemn tragic muse; her +incidents should rather partake of the sculpture-like dignity of +_tableaux_. My unfashionable taste approves not of a serious story being +cut up into a vast number of separate and shuffled sections; and the +whistle and sliding panels detract still more from the completeness of +illusion: I incline as much as is possible to the Classic unities of +time, place, and circumstances, wishing, moreover, every act to be a +scene, and every scene an act; with a comfortable green curtain, that +cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be the grass-like drop, +mildly alternating with splendid crime and miserable innocence: away +with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, some intruded ballet; +bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty of head-aches. + +But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the +utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of +weariness; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of one +scene each: for the number seven, there always have been decent reasons, +and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven seeming +insufficient, and more, superfluous; again, so mystical a number has a +staid propriety, and a due double climax of rise and fall. Now, as to +our adjective "classical:" Why not, in heroic drama, have something +a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon motives and +moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in his truly +patriotic '_Henry the Fifth?_'--However, taking other grounds, the +epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern +method of its treatment: but of all this enough, for, on second +thoughts, perhaps we may do without the chorus. + +It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true +unity of time; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of +life, than the space of some three hours can allow for: we must +unavoidably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as +well have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet +is justified in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards +the goal of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates +arrests your critical ken, believe that it is not ignorantly careless, +but learnedly needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is +an utter inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light, +however hidden, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture, +it may charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his +most reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced +many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially +lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the +corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in +the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better +perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career. +Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to +gild the brass brow of vice; and verily, I have not spared my odious +hero; nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather +emperor,) I wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is +a soil for hope and charity; and that if despotism has high +prerogatives, its wealth and state are desperate temptations, whose +dangers mightily predominate, and whose necessary influences, if quite +unbiased, tend to utter misery. + +Now to introduce our _dramatis personae_, with their "cast,"--for better +effect--rather unreasonably presumed. _Nero_--(Macready, who would +impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or not +by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as every +Numismatist will vouch,)--a naturally noble spirit, warped by sensuality +and pride into a very tyrant; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in passion; +not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden changes, +and at times tempestuously cruel. _Nattalis_--(say Vandenhoff,)--his +favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still wearing +the Eastern costume: a sort of Iago, spiriting up the willing Nero to +all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise +mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and +glory, to subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and +licentiousness, and to avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own +country on the chief of her destroyers. _Marcus Manlius_--(who better +than Charles Kean?--supposing these artistic combinations not to be +quite impossible,)--a fine young soldier, of course loving the heroine, +captain of Nero's body-guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and +faithful to his bad master amid conflicting trials. _Publius +Dentatus_--(any _bould_ speaker; besides, it would be rather too much to +engage all the actors yet awhile;)--a worthy old Roman, father of the +heroine. _Galba_, the chief mover in the catastrophe, as also the opener +of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, but well-intentioned patriot, +who ultimately becomes the next emperor. With _Curtius_ a tribune, +senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, &c. And so, after +the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as to a class inferior +to the very &c. of masculines--(of less intention withal than one of +those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasseed into +savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)--come we to the +women-kind. _Agrippina_, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother, +a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the +world who can awe her amiable son. _Lucia,_ (_you_ cannot be spared +here, clever Helen Faucit)--the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced +to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. _Rufa_, a +haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for detesting +Nero and Nattalis: and all the fitting female attendants to conclude the +list. + +Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially, +so to speak, a _tableau_ in the commencement, and a _tableau_ of +situation in the end. Let us draw up upon scene _the first_. +Back-ground, Rome burning; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still +smoking; and a terminal altar in the garden. Plebs. running to and fro, +full of conventional little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and +other lumber, rescued from the flames; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,) +in a somewhat incendiary oration concerning poor men's calamities, and +against the powers that be, sends them to the capital with a procession +of flamines Diales and vestals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "_Ad +Capitolium, Ad Jovis solium_," and so forth] to good music. At the +end of the train come in Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite +hurriedly walks Galba, full of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism, +and old Rome's ruin. To these let there be added--to speak +mathematically--open-hearted Manlius; and let there follow certain +disceptatious converse about Nero, Manlius excusing him, extenuating his +vices by his temptations, giving military anecdotes of his earlier +virtues, and in fact striving to make the most of him, a very gentle +monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, blacker shadows. After +disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a +moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl +hails him Caesar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his +own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so +forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out +of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero. Sibyl, still +unseen from behind the altar, again hails Galba as future Caesar; who, no +longer doubting his ears, and all present taking the omen, they conspire +at the altar with drawn swords, and as the Sibyl suddenly +presides--_tableau_--and down drops the soft green baize. This first +act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many characters; and the +picture of the seven-hilled city, seen in a transparent blaze, might +give the followers of Stanfield a triumph. + +_Second_: The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of Nero's, +also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero discovered +enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately chapleted, and +holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a pancratist, the +world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost in flatteries, +after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris +in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero _had_ gloriously fired Rome; +he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at +the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as +blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to +Phoenixes, and fire-kingships, and _coups-de-soliel_ falling from the +same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero should be +worshipped, and calls on the priest of Jupiter to set a good example. +None dare refuse, and the senate bend before him; whereupon enter, in +clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes, +and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice: all this pandering +to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of +these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the +haughty queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his +triumph, commands to bend too; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him +fiercely to task, objurgating likewise Rome's degenerate +gray-beards--great bustle--senate broken up hurriedly--and she, with a +"_feri ventrem_," dragged off to be killed by her son's order. Nero +alone with Nattalis by imperial command; his momentary compunction +nullified by the wily Iago, who turns off the subject smoothly to a new +object of desire: Publius was the only senator not in his place, and +Publius has a daughter, the fairest in Rome, Lucia--had not the emperor +noticed her among Agrippina's women? Nero, charmed with any scheme of +novelty that may change remorseful thoughts, is induced, nothing loth, +to attempt the subtle abduction of the heroine; a body-guard, headed as +always by Manlius, ready in the vestibule to escort him, and exit. +Nattalis, alone for a minute, betrays his own selfish schemes concerning +Lucia, who had refused him before, and alludes to his secret reasons for +urging on the maddened Nero to the worst excesses. + +_Third scene_ (or part, or _act_, if it must be so), expounds, in +fitting contrast to the foregoing, the tender loves of Lucia and +Manlius; a gentle home-scene, a villa and its terraced gardens: also, as +Lucia is a Christian, we have, poetically, and not puritanically, an +insight into her scruples of conscience as to the heathenism of her +lover: and also into _his_ consistent nobility of character, not willing +to surrender the religion of his fathers unconvinced. To them rushes in +Publius, who has been warned by friend Galba of the near approach of +Nattalis and a guard, to seize Lucia for disreputable Nero: no possible +escape, and all urge Lucia to imitate Virginia, Lucretia, and others of +like Dian fame, by cowardly self-murder; she is high-principled, and +won't: then they--the father and lover--request leave to kill her; +conflicting passions and considerable stage effect; Lucia, who with calm +courage derides the dastard sacrifice, standing unharmed between those +loving thirsty swords: in a grand speech, she makes her quiet departure +a test of Manlius' love, and her ultimate deliverance to be a proof to +him that her God is the true God, the God who guards the innocent. +Manlius, struck with her martyr-like constancy, professes that if indeed +she is saved out of this great trouble, he will embrace her faith, +renounce his own, and so break down the of wealth and rank, are alike +thrown away upon Publius; at last, the prince promises; and when +Publius, after a burst of earnest eloquence, proclaims the new pleasure +to consist in _showing mercy_, Nero's utter wrath, his hurricane of +hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying away old Publius to die +at the same stake with his daughter. + +_Seventh_: the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre; (I +mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured +behind, and those "human torches" at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned in +side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some of +the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in +white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and +soldiers guarding them: he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test +miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the +chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at +the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech, +characteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding +the fagot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius _do +it_--a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl, +up to Nero; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the +hidden armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself +Caesar still, the inviolable majesty;--suddenly stopped by a centripetal +rush of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted +in despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero, +unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech. +Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his +treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral +justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil; Manlius and +Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing +them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted +by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Caesar by the assembled +Romans. So, upon a magnificent _tableau_, slowly falls the lawny +curtain. + +Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No quibbling +about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the murder of +Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his innocence +of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in the matter +of London's; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspicions about +Galba's too probable _alibi_ in Spain. Tell me rather this: do I falsify +history in any thing more important than mere accidental anachronisms +and anatopisms? do I make an untrue delineation of character, blackening +the good, or white-washing the wicked? Do I not, by introducing Nero's +three greatest crimes so near upon his assassination, merely accelerate +the interval between causes and effect? And is not tragic dignity +justified in varnishing, with other compost than the dregs of Rome, the +exit of the last true Caesar of the Augustan family? For all the rest, +good manager, provide me actors, and I am even now uncertain--such is my +weakness--whether this skeleton might not at some time be clad with +flesh and skin, and a decent Roman toga. I fear it will yet haunt me as +a '_Midsummer Night's Dream_,' destroying my quiet with involuntary +shreds and patches of long-metred blank; the notion is still vivacious, +albeit scotched: Alexandrine though the synopsis appear, it must not be +thrown on the highroad as a dead snake; nay, let me cherish it yet on my +hearth, and not hurl it away like a _bonum waviatum_; a little more +boiling up of Roman messes in my brain, and my tragedy might flow forth +spontaneously as lava. What if this book be, after all, a sort of +pilot-balloon, to show my huge Nassau the way the wind blows--a feeler +as to which and which may please? Whether or not this be so, I will +still confess on, emptying my brain of booklets, and, if by happy +possibility I can keep my secret, shall hear unsuspected, friend, _your_ +verdict. + + * * * * * + +I must rather hope, than expect, that my next bit of possible authorship +is not like the last, a subject forestalled. Scribbling as I find myself +for very listlessness in a dull country-house, there's not a publisher's +index within thirty miles; so, for lack of evidence to the contrary, I +may legitimately, for at least a brief period of self-delusion, imagine +the intoxicating field my own. And yet so fertile, important, +interesting a subject, cannot have been quite overlooked by the corps of +professed literary labourer's: the very title-page would insure five +thousand readers (especially with a Brunswicker death's-head and +marrow-bones added underneath). + + +OPIUM; + +A HISTORY; + +standing alone in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, +warranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of +information, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of +every calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of +poppies, their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of +increase, and the like; its human history, discovery as a drug; how, +when, where, and by whom cultivated; dissertations as to the possibility +of Chaldean, Pharaonic, Grecian, or Roman opium eating, with most +erudite extracts out of all sorts of scribes, from Sanchoniathon down to +Juvenal, on these topics; its medicinal uses, properties, accidents, and +abuses; as to whether it might not be used homoeopathically or in +infinitesimal doses, to infuse a love of the pleasures of imagination +into clodpoles, lawyers' clerks, and country cousins; its intellectual +possibilities of usefulness, stimulating the brain; its moral ditto, +allaying irritability; together with a dreadful detail of its evils in +excess, idiotizing, immoralizing, ruining soul and body. Plenty of stout +unquestionable statistics, from all crannies of the globe, to +corroborate all the above to the extreme satisfaction of practical men, +with causes and consequences of its insane local popularity. All this, +moreover, at present, with especial reference to China and the East; +added to the moral bearings of the Opium-war, and our national +responsibilities relative to that unlucky traffic. The metaphysical +question stated and answered, whether or not prohibition of any thing +does not lead to its desire; showing the increasing appetency of those +sottish Serics for the forbidden vice, and illustrating Gay's fable of +the foolish young cock, who ne'er had been in that condition, but for +his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so captivating a +form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken journeymen? +queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the humbug of +teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit of +grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring +demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating, +drinking, or smoking, for the wholesomer toddies, among factory folk and +the finest pisantry. Millions of anecdotes regarding Eastern Rajahs, +Western Locofocos, Southern Moors, and North-country Muscovites, as to +the drug in its abuses: strange cures (if any) of strange ailments of +mind or body by its prudent use: how to wean men and nations from those +deleterious chewings and smokings; with true and particular accounts of +such splendid self-conquests as Coleridge and De Quincey, and--shall I +add another, a living name?--have attained to. Then, again, what a field +for poetical vagaries, and madnesses of imagination, would be afforded +by the subject of opium-dreams! Now, strictly speaking, in order to +hallucinate honestly, your opium-writer ought to have had some +practical knowledge of opium-eating: then could he descant with the +authority of experience--yea, though he write himself thereby down an +ass--on its effects upon mind and body; then could he tell of luxuries +and torments in true Frenchified detail; then could he expound its pains +and pleasures with all the eloquence of personal conviction. But, as to +such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a +mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably +demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my +apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum +negus, to imagine myself--a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the +paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn +such a petty realm as the Solar System, with Cassiopeia, Booetes, and his +dog, to boot; an intellect, so ravished, that it feels all flame, or a +mass of matter so inert, that it lies for ages in the silent depths of +ocean, a lump of primeval metal: Madness, with the red-hot iron hissing +in his brain: Murder, with the blood-hound ghost, over land, over sea, +through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, ever tracking silently +in horrid calmness; the oppression of indefinite Guilt, with that Holy +Eye still watching; the consciousness of instant danger, the sense of +excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague wild fear, without +will or power to escape: spurring for very life on a horse of marble: +flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies--O, that universal +crash!--greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations of the +assembled dead--that hollow, far-echoing, malicious laughter--that +hurricane-sound of clattering skulls; to be pent up, stifling like a +toad, in a limestone rock for centuries; to be haunted, hunted, hooted; +to eat off one's own head with its cruel madly crunching under-jaw; +to--but enough of horrors: and as to delights, all that Delacroix +suggests of perfume, and Mahomet of Houris, and Gunter of cookery, and +the German opera of music: all Camilla-like running unexertive, all that +sea unicorns can effect in swift swimming, or storm-caught condors in +things aerial; all the rapid travellings of Puck from star to star, +system to system, all things beauteous, exhilarating, ecstatic--ages of +all these things, warranted to last. Now, multiply all these several +alls by forty-nine, and the product will serve for as exaggerated a +statement as possible of opium pandering to pleasure; yes, by +forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of +extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive +one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens +being the algebraic _n_, and if so, into their huge undefined +aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed +flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making +much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, excitation. The brain waltzing +intoxicated, the heart panting as in youth's earliest affection, the +mind broad, and deep, and calm, a Pacific in the sunshine, the body +lapped in downy rest, with every nerve ministering to its comfort; what +more can one, merely and professedly of this world of sensualism--an +opium-eater for instance--conceive of bliss? Such imaginative flights as +these, with its pungent final interrogatory, suggestive to man's +selfishness of joys as yet untried, might tempt to tamper with the dear +delight; whereas the plain statement of the most that opium could +minister to happiness, as contrasted with those false vain views of it, +remind me of Tennyson's poetical '_Timbuctoo_,' gorgeous as a new +Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth-obstructed kraals +dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, his soaring +fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in '_Der Freischutz_.' + +Let this then serve as a meagre sketch of my defunct treatise on opium: +think not that I love the subject, curious and fertile though it be; +perhaps, philosophically regarded, it is not a better one than _gin_; +but ears polite endure not the plebeian monosyllable, unless indeed with +a reduplicated _n_, as Mr. Lane _will_ have it our whilom genie should +be spelt: accordingly, I magnanimously give up the whole idea, and am +liberal enough, in this my dying determination, to sign a codicil, +bequeathing opium to my executors. + + * * * * * + + +Novelism is a field so filled with copy-holders, so populously tenanted +in common, that it requires no light investigation to find a site +unoccupied, and a hero or heroine waiting to be hired. Nevertheless, I +seem to myself to have lighted on a rich and little-cultivated corner; +imagining that the subject is a good one, because still untouched, +founded on facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the +probable. He that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of +the Shakspearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of +hapless + + +CHARLOTTE CLOPTON, + +as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of +her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal +vault; he will hear something of her noble birth--her fine +character--her fascinating beauty--her short, innocent, eventful +life--her horrible death. Consider, too, the age and locality in which +she lived, Elizabethan, Shakspeare's; the great contemporary characters +that might be casually introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim +dreadful pool at the end of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of +her poor only sister, Margaret; equalled only in the miserable interest +by that of Charlotte herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted +parricide of years agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt +its curse upon the now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence, +still-not-acquitted family; a parricide consequent on passionate love, +differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating +feudal fathers--Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir +a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering +curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, +followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual +hatred, and the former found in his own park with the broken point of +his son's sword in him, the latter flying the realm: the curse has slept +for a generation; and now two fair daughters are all that remain to the +high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir +descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering +curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story, +whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, +to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young +Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage, +as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to +his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's +joy the greater, Saville has interest sufficient to meet the old +knight's humour of keeping up the ancient family name, by getting it +added to his own; so that the Beauvoir hatred and parricidal curse seem +likely to be frustrated. But--the first hindrance to their union is poor +sister Margaret's secret and infatuated love for that scheming villain +Rowland, her then too probable seduction, melancholic madness, and +suicide: successively upon this follow the last illnesses and deaths of +the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful ubiquity terrifies +in their very chamber of disease; and as the too likely consequence of +such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite sensibility, +Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage, +gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible +trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all the +secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who thereby +gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that silent +chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride: she, +all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-consciousness; +and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the curse +complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured mind +over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives an +involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the curse, +she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced than ever. +Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe: a +catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, _quite true_. +Fully aware of all that is going on--the preparations for burial, the +misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe--she is placed in +the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his +last long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault +under Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive! +And then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the +church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the +curse: how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault +opened; and the wretch Rowland--partly from curiosity, partly from +malice--determined to be there to see. As they and some church-followers +come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and desperate +plunges within; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in terror, and +the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, in her +shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair shoulders, +rushes out the maniac Charlotte: in phrensied half-reason she has seized +Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has strangled him, +and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of Saville--who, as +having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and who leaves the +country for ever--little or nothing is more said: and Clopton Hall +remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats. + +P.S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in +ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recorded her experiences in +the vault, by writing with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates. + +Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth: a +true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long +since extinct: the house, now rebuilt and restyled--the vault--the +picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often +are the ways of Providence! how frequently the innocent suffer for the +guilty!)--the gloomy well--and something extant of the story--remains +still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically, +one should go there, and gain materials on the spot: and nothing could +be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century +costumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions; accessories of the +humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic; Charlotte's +own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the +assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned +recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though +justly, visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full +reward. + +Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill! +Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the +kingdom!--As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and +unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the +_Buried-alive-one_!--is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that +would pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel, +criminal, and useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In +emptying my head of the notion, I have ministered too much already: but +the sample of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes, +and poisons no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor +beautiful Charlotte! shall not be disturbed by me; thy misfortunes sleep +with thee. Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than +Werter's, so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume +measure, is capable of being fabricated into something of deep, +romantic, tragical interest; such a character, in such circumstances, in +such an age, and such a place: I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic +school, who love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned +sorrows: but, I throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual +passer-by to pick up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the +waters, but Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth. + +Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a morsel; +be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and spare your +gasconade: the expediency of a sample has been cleverly suggested, and +WE _ego et canis meus_, royal in munificence, do graciously +accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any +rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract +which explains itself--the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will +suppose preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt. + + * * * * * + +"That bitter speech shot home; it had sped like an arrow to her brain: +it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to +be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such +conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused +moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than +honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous +world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her--when the cold finger +of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her +altered form--now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty has a sting +more scorpion than ever--to be taunted with that once-kind tongue with +having rightfully inherited _a curse_--to be told, in a sort of fiendish +triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her father's +fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine professed, +had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin--to know, to hear, yea, from +his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm and credulous +youth--of her too free, unsuspicious affection--had calmly been +contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only love--here +was misery, here was madness! + +"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind +the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret: +his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still +haunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered +one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered. + +"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine; +her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized; +but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of +trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for +Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of +disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the +heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of +perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister, +suspicion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled +asleep: now, however, it awaked in all its terrors; and, as Margaret lay +fainting, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never +was a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on +her pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started +at their strange wild glare: they glittered with a freezing brilliancy, +and stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad? +She bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation; +her cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse; her +hair, still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down +loose and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls +stood on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to +strike the brain; her eyes were set in a steady horror; slowly, with +dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than +herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering, +fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door: so, like a +ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and +away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for +her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it, +and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence +to him. But, see! she has silently passed by; her hand is on the lock of +the hall-door; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind her, +as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns +upon its hinge, and she, still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither, +oh God!--whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the +old knight's guests at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely +preferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the +dreary white apartment looking on the moat--nay, the haunted room of the +parricide himself--to encountering the dangers and darkness of a +night-return so desperate; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire, +near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the +splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her--but cannot rescue +from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful +creature, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which +way did the maniac turn?--whither in that desolate gloom shall Charlotte +fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's +study, she rushes back in terror to the hall; and then--Help, +help!--torches, torches! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance +among the shrubberies; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by +cap or cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance +about through the darkness, like sportive wild-fires: Sir Clement in +moody calmness looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who +anticipates evil long-deserved; the broken-hearted mother is on her +knees at the cold door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her +eyes, and ejaculating distracted prayers: and so the live-long +night--that night of doubt, and dread, and dreariness--through bitter +hours of confusion and dismay, they sought poor Margaret--and found her +not! + +"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of a +terraced walk, mournfully shaded by high-cropped yews, stood an arbour, +and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half-forgotten +fountain; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Rowland met with +Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse to perish. With +the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution of a phrensied +fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds about her face, and +twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the shallow pool might +not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay scarcely half immersed +in those waters of death; a few lazy tench floating sluggishly about, +appeared to be curiously inspecting their ghastly, uninvited guest; and +the fragments of an enamelled miniature, with some torn letters in the +hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were found scattered on the +overflowing margin of the pool." + + * * * * * + +Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, not +a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been better +educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been served +up with higher seasoning as a savoury _ragout_: but you get it in +simplicity, scarce grilled; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to +sneer at a novel than to imagine one; and far more self-complacency may +be gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding +to his honours in the compliment of humble imitation. + + * * * * * + +Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised mortal +curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, fierce +as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn; and forasmuch as +no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having never known +fear, and no man also--from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hume, Leviathan +Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified +Van-Diemanite--can honestly swear himself free from the influence of +some sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet +with universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected +with those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of +in your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self, +(whereof, to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore +induced me to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen +round their chief, throng about the topic of + + +THE MARVELLOUS. + +A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of +admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy +publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts, +dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true +vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, +but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially +detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, +no stories from the '_Terrific Register_,' nor fancies of hysterical +females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins +should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should +propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's +'_Philosophy of Sleep_,' Scott's '_Demonology_,' treatises on +Apparitions, and many a rare black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might +lend us here their aid; the British Museum is full of well-attested +ghost-stories, and there are very few old ladies unable to add to the +supply: then, this ghost department might be climaxed by the author's +own experience; forasmuch as he is ready to avouch that a person's fetch +was heard by many, and seen by some, in an old country-house, a hundred +miles away from the place of death, at the instant of its happening. + +As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross +were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools +quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the +Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal +Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about +the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, to our church, +commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a tale of no less than +eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a poor friend, who died +on the next, which none could be expected to believe unless I delivered +it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the facts. Dreams +also--strange, vague, mysterious word; there is a gloomy look in it, a +dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep: the records of public +justice will show many a murder revealed by them, as instance the Red +Barn; more than one poor client, in the clutch of a "respectable" +attorney, has been helped to his rights by their influence; from +Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the oppressors of mankind have +in those had kindly warning. Dreams--how many millions false and +foolish, for the one proving to be true!--but that one, how clear, +determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other agency than +imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers! Who has not tales to +tell of dreams? A warning not to go on board such and such a ship--which +founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon the mind, concerning +friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in the manner and at the +time of its occurrence; the fore-shown coming of an unexpected guest; +the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: these, and others like these, +many can attest, and I not least. And of other marvels, though here left +unconsidered, yet might much be said: truths so strange, that the pages +of romance would not trench on such extravagance; combinations so +unlikely, that thrice twelve cast successively by proper dice, were but +probability to those. Thus, in authorial fashion, has the marvellous +dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I suggest a hand-book thereof to +catering booksellers and the insatiable public. + + * * * * * + +Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs in +a _vis-a-vis_, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and +propriety enters strong protest; an emancipated parrot attracts my +sympathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for +I dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought +into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders +dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint +song of liberty behind their prison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a +school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my +antipathies; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the +honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as +_compagnons de voyage_; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room. +Nevertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if +you will) for the animal creation: often have I walked on in weariness, +rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus; and +my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured scion +of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like--for we learn +from AEsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be +unpopular--is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is +my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. Bishop Butler, we +may all of us remember, in 'THE _Analogy_' argues that the +objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that +which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be +shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now, +for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be +extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with +equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, +and--dare we add?--of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young +lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground +without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's +young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be +mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and +the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this, +there _is_ a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in +some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals +may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that St. Paul, +arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type +of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God +care for oxen?"--or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly, +though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable?--and the +implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are +left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to +think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his +creatures: in a certain sense + + "He sees with equal eye, as God of all, + A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;" + +and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent +creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some +laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple +consideration that [Greek: melei] is not so strictly rendered "care for" +as [Greek: kedetai]. Scripture, then, so far from militating against the +possible truth, that animals have souls, would seem, by a side-long +glance, to countenance the doctrine: and now let us for a passing moment +turn and see what aid is given to us by moral philosophy. + +No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a +sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no +conscience, necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty +and tyranny, without the chance of compensation for sufferings +undeserved. Neither can any good government be so partial, as (limiting +the whole existence of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one +of a litter to be pampered with continual luxuries, and another to be +tortured for all its little life by blows, famine, disease--and in its +lingering death by the scientific scalpels of a critical Majendie or a +cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, that in the so-called parallel case +of partialities among men--the this-world's choice of a Jacob, the +this-world's rejection of an Esau--the answer is obvious: there are two +scales to the balance, there is yet another world. Far be it from us to +think that all things are not then to be cleared up; that the innocent +little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be +heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an +overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and +example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside +as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain +every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless +extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, no +explanation; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they have +died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or +cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different +the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in +various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to +justify the ways of God to"--brutes: we need not then consider, with a +certain French abbe, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for +their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, +account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits +of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not +regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible +deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends +itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of +guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, +have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His +handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why--in that +Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth +shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were "caught up +into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand +saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy +season on this renovated globe--tell me why there should not be some +tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure, +as they once ministered in pain? And for the rest, the other nine, what +hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the +large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from +enjoying some emancipate existence--we need not perhaps accord them +more of immortality than justice, demands for compensation--for a +definite time, a millennium let us think, in scores of those million +orbs that twinkle in the galaxy? + + Space stretches wide enough for every grain + Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas, + Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart + As far as sun from sun. + +Shall I then say what hinders?--the littleness of man's mind, refusing +possibility of room for those countless quadrillions; and the +selfishness of his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose +doctrine (certainly too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level +with mankind, and + + "Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky, + His faithful dog shall bear him company." + +Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his kingdom, +give hope of after-life to all creation: Saint Antony of Padua did waste +time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes; but may they not find +blessings, though ignorant of priests?--And now, suffer me, in my +current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this +topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess, +in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with +ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zooephyte and a caterpillar have +brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know +whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked +with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang +outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses +instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is +moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary +disposal of what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to +ourselves for exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which +is called Soul. But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral +sense? Obviously, since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in +the scale of being, and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we +ought to be able to take the best instances of animal morals from those +creatures which have come most within the influence of human example; as +pets of every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a +sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is +a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and +who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection, +in a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an +educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though +limited in speech, said many a witty thing?--Again, read some common +collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there +between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of +sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, whose +solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? The +soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle-field; +and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shepherd's +requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high sense of duty +in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, and that in +the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor menaced blows +can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed to his care? Once +more: Who does not recognise individuality of character in animals? A +dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, any domesticated creature, +will act throughout life, in a certain course of disposition, at least +as consistently as most masters: it will also have its whims and ways, +likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows; and, verily, +in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its monarch to +the blush. + +But upon this theme--meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful, +illogical--my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended +barely to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for +name to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as + + +PSYCHOTHERION, + +AN INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT ON THE SOULS OF BRUTES; + +And my thoughts have run on thus far so little conclusively (I humbly +admit to you), that we will, to save trouble, leave the riddle as +unsolved as ever, and gain no better advantage than thus having loosely +adverted to another fancy of your author's mind. + + * * * * * + +Not yet is my mind a simple freeman, a private, unincumbered, individual +self-possessor: its slaves are not yet all manumitted; I lack not +subjects; I am no lord of depopulated regions; albeit my aim is indeed +akin to that of old Rufus, and Goldsmith's tyrannical Squire of Auburn; +I wish to clear my hunting-grounds, to make a solitude, and call it +peace. Slowly, but still surely, am I working out that will. Meanwhile, +however, there is no need to advertise for heroes; they are only too +rife, clinging like bats to the curtains of my chambers of imagery, or +with attendant satellites hanging in bunches, as swarming bees about +their monarch, to the rafters of my brain. Selection is the hardest +difficulty; here is the labour, here the toil; because for just +selection there should be good reasons. Now, amongst other my +multitudinous authorial projects, this perhaps is not the worst; namely, +by a series of dissimilar novels, psychological rather than religious, +and for interest's sake laid in diverse ages and countries, to +illustrate separately the most rampant errors of the Papacy. For +example, say that Lewis's '_Monk_' is a strong delineation of the evils +consequent on constrained and unchosen celibacy; though its colouring be +meretricious, though its details offend the moralities of nature, still +it is a book replete to thoughtful minds with terrible teaching--be not +high-minded, but fear. In like manner, guilty thoughts dropped upon +innocent young hearts in that foul corner, + + +THE CONFESSIONAL, + +might make a stirring tale, or haply a series of them: the cowled +hypocrite suggesting crime to those whose answer is all innocence; his +schemes of ambition, or avarice, or lust, slowly elaborated by the +fiend-like purposes to which he puts his ill-used knowledge of the human +heart; his sacrilegious violation of the holy grievings made by mistaken +penitence. History should bring its collateral assistance: the Medicean +Queens, Venice, bloody Spain, hard-visaged monks calmly directing the +engines of torture, the poison of anonymous calumny, and dread secrets +more dreadfully betrayed, could furnish much of truthful precedent. The +bad obstructions placed between the sinner and his God by selfish +priestcraft; the souls that would return again, like Noah's weary dove, +enticed by ravens to forsake the ark, mate with them, and feed on their +banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal +harms brought out in full detail; the progress of this world's misery in +the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the +absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the sunny plains they +topple over; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort; the +actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors; the prominent +characters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,) +whose ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple +about means, bloody, bad, vindictive, atheistic; and then his victims, a +youth that he trains from infancy to the sole end of poisoning, subtly +and slowly, all who stand in his path; a girl who loves this youth, and +who, flying from the foul friar in the day of temptation, betakes her to +the mountains, and ultimately saves her lover from his terrible +destination in guilt, by hiding him in her own haven of refuge, the +persecuted little church; and with these materials to work upon, I need +hardly detail to you an intricate plot and an obvious _denouement_. + +This class of theme, it is probable, has exercised the talents of many; +but as the evils of confessing to deceitful man, and of blind trust in +his deleterious advice, have not specifically met my eye, the subject is +new to me, and may be so to others. Still, I stay not now further to +enlarge upon it; I must press on; and will not cruelly encourage the +birth of thoughts brought forth only to be destroyed, like father +Saturn's babes--the anthropophagite. + +A good reason for selection at last presents itself. Sundry collateral +ancestors of mine [every body from Cain downwards must have had +ancestors; so no quibbling, please, nor quarrelling about so exploded an +absurdity as family-pride,] were lucky enough in days lang syne to +appropriate to themselves, amongst other matters, a respectable +allowance of forfeited monastic territory; and I know it by this token: +that in yonder venerable chest of archives and muniments, rest in their +own dust of ages, duly and clearly assorted, all those abbey deeds from +the times of Henry Beauclerc. Here's a fine unlooked-for opportunity of +making dull ancestral spots classic ground, famous among men; here's a +chance of immortalizing the crumbling ruins of an obscure, but +interesting, abbey-church; here's a fair field for dragging in all that +one knows or does not know, all that parchments can prove, or fancy can +invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place +of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind of +the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and +why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak, +rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between +the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gentle blood, +familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and +Ratcliffe? Why not press into the service of instructive novelism truths +stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, and names of higher +note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes? + +All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in + + +THE PRIOR OF MARRICK. + +And now for a story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it +is one--both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite +incredible? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our +prior was once a good man--an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl +in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting +family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And +wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very +nursery, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who +had buckled on his harness, and fallen in the wars: they loved, of +course, and the deeper, because secretly and without permission: they +were too young to marry, and indeed had thought little of the matter; +still, substance and shadow, body and soul, were scarcely more needful +to each other, or more united. But--a hacking cough--a hectic cheek--a +wasting frame, were to blue-eyed Mary the remorseless harbingers of +death, and Eustace, standing on her early grave, was in heart a widower: +henceforth he had no aim in life; the cloister was--so thought he, as +many do--his best refuge, to dream upon the past, to soothe his present +sorrows, and earn for a future world the pleasures lost in this. Time, +the best anodyne short of what Eustace could not buy at +Rome--true-healing godliness--alleviates his grief, and makes him less +sad, but not wiser; years pass, the desire of preeminence in his own +small world has hitherto furnished incentives to existence, and he find +himself a prior too soon; for he has nothing more to live for. Yes: +there is an object; the turmoil of small ambition with its petty cares +is past, and the now motiveless man lingers in yearning thought on the +only white spot in his gloomy journey, the green oasis of his desert +life, that dream of early love. He has long loved the fair, quiet image +of our Lady of Marrick, unwittingly, for another Mary's sake; +half-oblivious of the past in scheming for the present, he has knelt at +midnight before that figure of the Virgin-mother, and knew not why he +trembled; he thought it the ecstacy of devotion, the warm-gushing flood +of calmness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees +it, he knows it; there is, indeed, good cause: how miraculously the +white marble face grows into resemblance with _hers!_ the same sainted +look of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and +unruffled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip, +the same wild compassion in the eye! Great God--he loves again!--that +staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness; +the image is now dearer than the most sacred; there is a halo round it, +like light from heaven: he adores its placid, eternal, changeless +aspect; if it could move, the charm would half dissolve; he loves it--as +an image! And then how rapturously joins he with the wondering choir of +more stagnant worshippers, while they yield to this substantial form, +this stone-transmigration of his love, this tangible, unpassionate, +abiding, present deity, the holy hymns of praise, due only to the unseen +God! How gladly he sings her titles, ascribing all excellence to her! +How tenderly falls he at her feet, with eyes lighted as in youth! How +earnestly he prays to his fixed image--_to_ it, not _through_ it, for +his heart is _there_! How zealously he longs for her honour, her worship +among men--hers, the presiding idol of that Gothic pile, the hallowed +Lady, the goddess-queen of Marrick! Stop--can he do nothing for her, can +he venture nothing in her service? Other shrines are rich, other images +decked in gold and jewels; there is yet an object for his useless life, +there are yet ends to be attained, ends--that can justify the means. He +longs for wealth, he plots for it, he dares for it: he plans lying +miracles, and thousands flock to the shrine; he waylays dying men, and, +by threatened dread of torments of the damned, extortionizes conscience +into unjust riches for himself; he accuses the innocent, and reaps the +fine; he connives at the guilty, and fingers the bribe. So wealth flows +in, and the altar of his idol is hung with cloth of gold, her diadem is +alight with gems, costly offerings deck her temple, bending crowds kneel +to her divinity. Is he not happy? Is he not content? Oh, no: an +insatiate demon has possessed him; with more than Pygmalion's insanity, +he loves that image; he dreams, he thinks of that one unchanging form. +The marvelling brotherhood, credulous witnesses of such deep devotion, +hold him for a saint; and Rome, at the wish of the world, sends him, as +to a living St. Eustatius, the patent of canonization: they praise him, +honour him, pray to him; but he contemptuously (and they take it for +humility) spurns a gift which speaks of any other heaven than the +presence of that one fair, beautiful, beloved statue. A thought fills +him, and that with joy: he has heard of sacrifices in old time, +immolations, offerings up of self, as the highest act of a devout +worshipper; he cares not for earth nor for heaven; and one night, in his +enthusiastic vigils, the phrensy of idolatry arms that old man's own +weak hand against himself, and he falls at the statue's feet, +self-murdered, _its_ martyr. + +Here were scope for psychology; here were subtle unwindings of motive, +trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. All ages, +before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even to +excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the ends +of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger into which +the wisest of old time were entrapped: we scarcely allow that the +Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man and a shrewd, when we see +him fall before his monster; we have not wits to understand how the +Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties could be so besotted. +For this superior illumination of mind, let us thank not ourselves, but +the Light of the world; and, warned by the history of ages, let us +beware how we place created things to mediate between us and the most +High; let us be shy of symbolic emblems--of pictures, images, +observances--lest they grow into forms that engross the mind, and fill +it with a swarm of substantial idols. + +Now, this tale of the '_Prior of Marrick_' would, but for the present +premature abortion, have seen daylight in the form of an +auto-biography--the catastrophe, of course, being added by some +brother-monk, who winds up all with his moral: and to get at this +auto-biographical sketch--a thing of fragments and wild soliloquies, +incidentally laying bare the heart's disease, and the poisonous +breathings of idolatrous influence--I could easily, and after the true +novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, somewhat as follows: Let me go +gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or cart, say for a sportsman's +pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon +the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former +beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an +antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and general +huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct: I find the +sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively +at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in +the water-proof line; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as +thus. Our sexton has got a name among his neighbours for his capital +double-leather brogues, warranted to carry you dry-shod through a river; +and, warmed by my brandy-flask and _bonhomie_, considering me moreover +little likely to set up a rival shop, cunningly communicates his secret: +he puts parchment between the leathers--Parchment, my good man? where +can you get your parchment hereabouts? I spoke innocently, for I thought +only of ticketing some grouse for my friends southward: but the question +staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the uncharitable +conclusion--he had stolen it. And then follows confession: how, among +the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak chest--broke it +open--no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing,"--except parchment; a lot of +leaves tidily written, and--warranted to keep out the wet. A few +shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I promising as extra to +send a huge bundle of ancient indentures in place of the precious +manuscript. Thus, in the way of Mackenzie's '_Man of Feeling_,' we +become fragmentary where we fear to be tedious; and so, in a good +historic epoch, among the wars of the Roses, surrounded by friars and +nuns, outlaws and border-riders, chivalrous knights and sturdy bowyers, +consign I to the oblivescent firm of Capulet and Co. my happily +destroyed '_Prior of Marrick_.' + + * * * * * + +A crank boat needs ballast; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition +towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady +it. Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene: to the gay, suffer +in its season the addition of the serious. Amongst other wholesome +topics of of meditation--for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, +although of some little danger to the presumptuous and inflated--the +study of the sure word of Prophecy has more than once excited the +writing propensity of your author's mind. On most matters it has been my +fate, rather from habits of incurable revery than from any want of +opportunities, to think more than to read; and therefore it is, with +very due diffidence, that as far as others and their judgments are +concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality or novelty. To my own +conscience, however, these things are reversed; for contemplation has +produced that as new to my own mind, which may be old to others deeper +read, and has thought those ideas original, which are only so to its own +fancy. Very little, then, must such as I reasonably hope to add on +Prophetical Interpretation; the Universal Wisdom of two millenaries +cannot be expected to gain any thing from the passing thought of a +hodiernal unit: if any fancies in my brain are really new, and hitherto +unbroached upon the subject, it can scarcely be doubted but that they +are false; so very little reliance do principles of catholicity allow to +be placed upon "private interpretations." + +With thus much of apology to those alike who will find, and those who +will not find, any thing of novelty in my notions, I still do not +withhold them. By here a little and there a little, is the general mind +instructed: it would be better for the world if every mighty tome really +contributed its grain. + +The prophecies of Holy Writ appear to me to have one great peculiarity, +distinguishing them from all other prophecies, if any, real or +pretended; and that peculiarity I deferentially conceive to be this: +that, whereas all human prophecies profess to have but one fulfilment, +the divine have avowedly many true fulfilments. The former may indeed +light upon some one coincidence, and may exult in the accident as a +proof of truth; the latter bounds as it were (like George Herbert's +sabbaths) from one to another, and another, through some forty +centuries, equally fulfilled in each case, but still looking forward +with hope to some grander catastrophe: it is not that they are loosely +suited, like the Delphic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that +they, by a felicitous adaptation, sit closely into each era which the +Architect of Ages has arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a +loose bag, which would hold and involve with equal ease almost any +circumstance; biblical prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone, +though not all similar in perfection, its own true casts will fit: or +again, in another view of the matter, accept this similitude: let the +All-seeing Eye be the centre of many concentric circles, beholding +equally in perspective the circumference of each, and for accordance +with human periods of time measuring off segments by converging radii: +separately marked on each segment of the wheel within wheel, in the way +of actual fulfilment, as well as type and antitype, will appear its +satisfied word of prophecy, shining onward yet as it becomes more and +more final, until time is melted in eternity. Thus, it is perhaps not +impossible that every interpretation of wise and pious men may alike be +right, and hold together; for different minds travel on the different +peripheries. So our Lord (to take a familiar instance) speaks of his +second advent in terms equally applicable to the destruction of one +city, of the accumulated hosts at Armageddon, and of this material +earth: Antiochus and Antichrist occur prospectively within the same pair +of radii at differing distances; and, in like manner and varying +degrees, may, for aught we can tell, such incarnations of the evil +principle as papal Rome, or revolutionary Europe, or infidel +Cosmopolitism; or, again, such heads of parties, such indexes of the +general mind, as a Caesar, an Attila, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a--whoever +be the next. So also of hours, days, years, eras; all may and do coeexist +in harmonious and mutual relations. Good men, those who combine prayer +with study, need not fear necessary difference of result, from holding +different views; the grand error is too loosely generalizing; a little +circle suits our finite ken; we cannot, as yet, mentally span the +universe. These crude and cursory remarks may serve to introduce a +likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have given entertainment, and +which, with others of a similar sort, were once to have come forth in an +essay-form, headed + + +THE SEVEN CHURCHES; + +moreover, for aught that has come across my reading, to be additionally +styled '_A New Interpretation, for these Latter Days_.' Without desiring +to do other than quite confirm the literal view, as having related +primarily to those local churches of old times, geographically in Asia +Minor; without attempting to dispute that they may have an individual +reference to varieties of personal character, and probably of different +Christian sects; I imagine that we may discover, in the Apocalyptic +prospect of these seven churches, an historical view of Christianity, +from the earliest ages to the last: beginning as it did, purely, warmly, +and laboriously, with the apostolic emblematic Ephesus, and to end with +the "shall He find faith on earth" of lukewarm Laodicea: thus Smyrna +would symbolize the state of the church under Diocletian, the +"tribulation ten days:" Pergamus, perhaps the Byzantine age, "where +Satan's seat is" the Balaam and Balak of empire and priesthood; +Thyatira, the avowed commencement of the Papacy, "Jezebel," &c.; Sardis, +the dreary void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the +rise of Protestantism, "an open door, a little strength;" and Laodicea, +(the riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its +decline, and, but for the Founder's second coming, its fall; if, indeed, +this were possible. + +The elucidation of these several hints might show some striking +confirmations of the notion; which, as every thing else in this book, +would humbly claim your indulgence, reader, for my sketches must be +rapid, and their descriptions brief. Concurrently, however, with this, +(which I know not whether any prophetic scholiasts have mentioned or +not,) there may be deduced a still further interpretation, equally, as +far as I am concerned, underived from the lucubrations of others. This +other interpretation involves a typical view of the general +characteristics of Christendom's seven true churches, as they are to be +found standing at the coming of their Lord; the Asiatic seven may be +assimilated, in their religious peculiarities, with the national +Protestant churches of modern Europe: what order should be preserved in +this assimilation, unless indeed it be that of eldership, it might be +difficult to decide; but, excluding those communities which idol-worship +has unchurched, and leaving out of view such anomalies as America +presents, having no national religion, we shall find seven true churches +now existing, between which and the Asiatics many curious parallels +might be run: the seven are, those of England, Scotland, Holland, +Prussia, perhaps Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany. Without professing to +be quite confident as to the list, the idea remains the same: it is but +a light hint on a weighty subject, demanding more investigation than my +slender powers can at present compass. It is merely thrown out as +undigested matter; a crude notion let it rest: if ever I aspire to the +dignity and dogmatism of a theological teacher, it must be after more +and deeper inquiry of the Newtons, Faber, Frere, Croly, Keith, and other +learned interpreters, than it is possible or proper to make in a hurry: +volumes have been, and volumes might be again, written for and against +any prophecy unfulfilled; it is dangerous to teach speculations; for, if +found false, they tend to bring holy truths into disrepute. Let me then +put upon the shelf, as a humble layman should, my hitherto +unaccomplished prophetical treatise; and receive its mention for little +more than my true revelation of another phase of authorship. + + * * * * * + +And many like attempts have been hazarded by me in the mode theological; +though, from some cause or other, they have mostly fallen abortive. Were +mention here made of the more completed efforts of your author's mind, +in this walk of literature, or of others, it might too evidently lay +bare the mystery of my mask; a piece of secret information intended not +as yet to be bestowed. But this book--purporting to be the medley of my +mind, the _bona fide_ emptying of its multifarious fancies--must of +necessity, if honest, pourtray all the wanings and waxings of an +ever-changing lunar disposition: so, haply you shall turn from a play to +a sermon, from a novel to a moral treatise, from a satire or an epigram +to a religious essay. Such and so inconsistent is authorial man. Here +then, in somewhat of order, should have followed lengthily various other +writings of serious import, half-fashioned, and from conflicting reasons +left--perhaps for ever--half-finished. But considering the crude and +apparently careless nature of this present book, and taking into account +the solemn and responsible manner in which such high topics ought +invariably to be treated, I have struck out, without remorse or mercy, +all except a mere mention of the subjects alluded to. The contiguity of +lighter matter demands this sacrifice; not that I am one of those who +deem a cheerful face and a prayerful heart incongruous: there is danger +in a man, however religious, when his brow lowers, and his cheek is +stern; so did Cromwell murder Charles; so did Mary (though bigoted, +sincere,) consign Cranmer to the flames and Jane to the scaffold: +innocence and mirth are near of kin, and the tear of penitence is no +stranger to the laughter-loving eye. But I ramble as usual. Let it +suffice to say, that in accordance with common prejudices, I suffer my +mind to be shorn of its consecrated rays; for albeit my moral censor has +spared the prophetical ideas, and one or two other serious sobrieties, +on the ground that, although they are mere hints, they are at all events +hints of good, still more experimental and more hazardous pieces of +biblical criticism have been not unwisely immolated. The full cause of +this will appear in the mere title of the first of these half-attempted +essays, viz: + + +THE WISDOM OF REVISION; + +whereof my predication shall be simply and strictly _nil_. + +The next piece of serious study, as yet little more than a root in my +mind, was to have fructified in the form of + + +HOMELY EXPOSITIONS, + +or domestic readings in Scripture for daily use in family worship, with +an easy, sensible, useful sort of commentary; a book calculated +expressly for the understandings, wants, vices, temptations, and +peculiarities of household servants, and quite opposed to the usual +plans of injuriously raising doubts to lay them, of insisting upon +obsolete Judaisms, of strict theological controversy, of enlarging to +satiety on the meaning of passages too obvious to require explanation, +and ingeniously slurring over those which really need it; indeed, of +pursuing the courses generally adopted by the mass of commentators. + +A further notion extended to + + +LAY SERMONS, + +whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being +each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and +their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and +images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service +of illustrating Gospel truths. + +Another religious essay has been relinquished, although to a great +degree effected, from the apprehension that it may suggest matter +fanciful or false: also, in part, from the material being perhaps of too +slender a character to insist upon. Its name stood thus, + + +SCRIPTURAL PHYSICS; + +being an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Holy Writ in matters of +natural science; for example, cosmogony, geology, the probable centre of +the earth, the vitality and circulation of the blood, hints of magnetism +and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's +shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other +spheres, the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics, +much of recondite natural history:--all these can be easily proved to be +alluded to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew +Scriptures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated +some of this, although I have never met with his writings; and a great +deal more of it is mentioned in notes and sermons which many have read +or heard. Until, therefore, I become surer of neither invading the +provinces of others, nor of detracting from their wisdom, let those +ill-written fancies still lie dormant in my desk. + +A fifth tractate on things theological, still in the egg state, was to +have been indued with the rather startling appellation of + + +AN APOLOGY FOR HEATHENISM; + +especially as contrasted with practical atheism, which, truth to tell, +is the contradictory sort of religion most universally professed among +the moderns: working out the idea, that any-how it is better to have +many objects of veneration than none, and that, although idol-worship is +a dreadful sin, still it is not so utterly hopeless as actual +ungodliness. That, among the heathens, temporal judgment ever vindicated +the true Divinity; whereas the consummation of the more modern +unworshiping world will be an eternal one: so, by the difference in +punishments comparing that of their criminalities. Showing also that, +however corrupted afterwards by impure rites and fatuous iniquities, +heathenism was, in its most ancient form, little more than the +hieroglyphic dress of truth: this exemplified by Moses and the brazen +serpent, by interpretations of Grecian mythology, shown, after the +manner of perhaps too ingenious Lord Bacon, to be consistent with +philosophy and religion; by the way, in which Egyptian priests satisfied +so good and shrewd, though credulous, a mind as that of Herodotus; by +Hesiod's '_Theogony_;' by the practical testimony of the whole educated +world in earliest times to the deep meaning involved in idolatrous +rites; by the mysteries of Eleusis in particular; by the characters of +all most enlightened heathens--as Cicero, Socrates, and +Plato--(half-convinced of the Godhead's unity, and still afraid to +disavow His plurality,) contrasted with those of the school of Pyrrho, +and Lucretius, and the later Epicureans. The possibility of early +allusions to the Trinity, as "Let us make man," _etc._, having led to +the idea of more than one God; and if so, in some sort, its veniality. + +All the above might be applied with some force, and, if so, with no +little value, to modern false semblances of religion, and non-religion; +to Roman Catholicism, with its images, its services in an unknown +tongue, its symbols, its adoption of heathen festivals, its actual +placing of many Gods in the throne of One; to Mammonism, as practically +a religion as if the golden calf of Babylon were standard at Cornhill; +to Voluptatism--if I may fabricate a name for pleasure-hunters, +following still, with Corybantic fury, the orgic revels of Osiris or +Astarte: in brief, to all the shades of human heresy, on this side or on +that of the golden mean, the worship of one true God, as revealed to us +in His three mysterious characters. + +But, query? Has not all this, and the very title, for any thing I know, +been done already by another, by a wiser? and, if so, by whom?--Speak, +some friend: it is the misfortune of mere thinkers (and this present +amygdaloid mass, this breccia book, exemplifies it well) to stumble +frequently upon fancies too good not to have been long ago appropriated +by others like-minded. A read, or heard, hint may be the unerring clue, +and we vainly imagine some old labyrinth to be our new discovery: +education renders up the master-key, and we come to regard ancient +treasuries as wealth of our own amassing, from which we deem it our +right to filch as recklessly as he from the mint of Croesus, who so +filled his pockets--ay, his mouth--that we read he [Greek: hebebusto]. +Who, in this age of literature, can be fully condemned, or heartily +acquitted of plagiarism? An age--and none so little in advance or in +arrear of it as I--of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas +unpatented, and books that have outlived copy-right. But this has +detained us long enough: for the present, my brain is quit of its +heathenish exculpations: let us pass on; many regiments are yet to be +reviewed; their uniforms [_Hibernice_] are various, but their flag is +one. + +A last serious subject--(they grow tedious)--is a fair field for +ingenious explanation and Oriental poetry, + + +THE SIMILES OF SCRIPTURE: + +(of course "similes" is an English word: the author of a recent '_Essay +on Magna Charta_' has been _learned_ enough to write it "similae," for +which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely +follow Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at "similia;" and, +though Shakspeare does write it "similies," it may stoutly be contended +that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior's "similes" is the +purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.) + +The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt and +happy: for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and propriety, +and strict resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the +whirlwind,"--"as when a standard-bearer fainteth"--"as the rushing of +mighty waters,"--"as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done,"--"as a +dream,"--"as the morning dew,"--"as"--but the whole book is a garden of +similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude." +It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of translation +deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, its gush, +and blush of beauty: to quote Aristotle's example, it too frequently +converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted; and so the poetry +of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refreshment, +its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of night, +falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is suggestive +only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the deposits of +a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not been an +episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered similitude of +Scripture might be advantageously vindicated; local diversities and +Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise: for example, in the +'_Canticles_,' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an +apple-tree among the trees of the wood:" now, amongst us, an apple-tree +is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood; whereas the +Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more +correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to a +Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps +the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or some +other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image, +until shown to be a wine-skin. "Who is this that cometh out of the +wilderness, like pillars of smoke?"--probably intending the +swiftly-rushing columns of _sand_ flying on the wings of the whirlwind. +"Thine eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened +into fountains--tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing; and in +showing the poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it +might clearly be set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity +and of Christian universality, that bride was; while comparisons of a +like un-European imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who +will not scruple to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose, +with a tower, and admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair +which they call purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this +vein of literature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar +and a natural poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be +more considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an +English ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the +horse swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being +afraid as a grasshopper." A thousand like instances could be displayed +with little searching; let the above be taken as they are meant, for +good, and as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best +advantage: but it will appear that this essay trenches on the former one +so slenderly hinted at, as '_The Wisdom of Revision_,' therefore has +been stated too much at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf +till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the +object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to +other themes of a more sublunary aspect. + + * * * * * + +One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's +mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome, +unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my candour +humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal days, I +was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, capital, +and noble-minded thesis, no other than + + +HOME. + +Alas, for the epidemy to which, few can doubt, ideas are subject! Alas, +for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is +disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing +will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "Olla Podrida," a "Book +without a name," or some other such like _rechauffee_ publication; +whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived +long before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite +advertisements--at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my +poor epic: scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings, +and divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative +lay;" scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of +metrical specimens; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to me in +black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's '_Home, an +Epic_.' So, as in the case of '_Nero_,' and haply of other subjects, had +it come to pass, that my high-mettled racer had made another false +start; that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been +self-appropriated, was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the +flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into +the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all +those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a +subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, +besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, _if_ only one could manage it +well enough to be named in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and +Akenside. Well, it was a mental mortification; for I am full of moral +land-marks, and would not (poetically speaking) for the world move +rooted termini into other people's grounds. Whether the field has been +well or ill preoccupied I wot not, having neither seen the poem nor +heard its maker's name: therefore shall my charity hope well of it, and +mourn over the unmerited oblivion which generally greets modern +poetry--yea, upon its very natal-day. Nevertheless, as an upright man +will never wish barefacedly to steal from others, so does he determine +at all times to claim independently his own: to be robbed, and not +resent it (I speak foolishly), is the next mean thing after pilfering +itself; and rash will be thy daring, O literary larcener! (can such +things be?) if thou art found unpermissively appropriating even such +sorry spoil as these poor seedlings of still possible volumes. + +Prose and verse are allowed to have some disguising differences, at +least in termination; and as we must not--so hints the public +taste--spoil honest prose, bad as it may be, with too much intermixture +of worse verse, it will be prudent in me to be sparing of my specimens. +Yet, who will endure so _staccato_ a page of jerking sentences as a +confirmed synopsis?--"Well, any thing rather than poetry," says the +world; so, for better or worse, I will jot down prosaically a few of my +all but impromptu imaginings on Home. + +After some general propositions, it would be proper to indulge the +orthodoxy of invocation; not to Muses, however, but to the subject +itself; for now-a-days, in lieu of definite deities, our worship has +regard to theories, doctrines, and other abstract idolisms: and +thereafter should follow at length an historical retrospect of domestic +life, from the savage to the transition states of hunters and warriors; +Nimrods and New Zealanders; Actaeons and Avanese, Attilas, Roderics, and +all the Ercles' vein or that of mad Cambyses, Hindoos and Fuegians, +Greece, Egypt, Etruria, and Troy, in those old days when funds and taxes +were not invented, but people had to fight for their dinner, and be +their own police: so in a due course of circumconsideration to more +modern conditions, from ourselves as central civilization, to Cochin +China, and extreme Mexico, to Archangel and Polynesia. + +Divers national peculiarities of the _physique_ of homes; as, Tartars' +tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffre kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea +palm-thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth. Then, a +wide view of the homes of higher society, first Continental, afterwards +British through all the different phases of comfort to be found in +heath-hovels, cottages, ornees, villas, parsonage-houses, squirealities, +seats, town mansions, and royal palaces. Thus, with a contrastive peep +or two about the feverish neighbourhood of a factory, up this musty +alley, and down that winding lane, we should have considered briefly all +the external accidents of home. The miserable condition of the homeless, +whether rich or poor; an oak with its tap-root broken, a house on +wheels, a boat without a compass, and all that sort of thing: together +with due declamation about soldiers spending twenty years in India, +shipwrecked Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out +hopelessly forever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other +absentees, voluntary or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton +affluence, poor laws, mendicancy, and Ireland; not omitting some +thrilling cases of barbaric destitution. + +Now come we lawfully to descant upon matters more mental and +sentimental--the _metaphysique_ of the subject--the pleasures and pains +of Home. As thus, most cursorily: the nursery, with its dear innocent +joys; the school-boy, holiday feelings and scholastic cruelties; the +desk-abhorring clerk; the over-worked milliner; the starving family of +factory children, and of agricultural labourers, and of workers in coal +mines and iron furnaces, with earnest exhortations to the rich to pour +their horns of plenty on the poor. England, once a safer and a happier +land, under the law of charity: now fast verging into a despotic +centralized system, kept together by bayonets and constables' staves. +Home a refuge for all; for queens and princes from their cumbrous state, +as well as for clowns from their hedging and ditching. The home of love, +and its thousand blessings, founded on mutual confidence, religion, +open-heartedness, communion of interest, absence of selfishness, and so +on: the honoured father, due subordination, and results; the loving +wife, obedient children, and cheerful servants. Absolute, though most +kind, monarchy the best government for a home; with digressions about +Austria and China, and such laudable paternal rule; and _contra_, bitter +castigation of republican misrule, its evils and their results, for +which see Old Athens and New York, and certain spots half-way between +them. + +The pains of home: most various indeed, caused by all sorts of opposite +harms--too much constraint or too little, open bad example or impossible +good example, omissions and commissions, duty relaxed by indulgence, and +duty tightened into tyranny; but mainly and generally attributable to +the non-assertion or other abuse of parental authority. The spoiled +child, and his progress of indulgence, unchecked passions, dissipation, +crime, and ruin. Interested interlopers, as former friends, relatives, +flatterers, and busy parasites, undermining that bond of confidence +without which home falls to pieces; the gloomy spirit of reserve, +discouraging every thing like generous open-heartedness; menial +influences lowering their subject to their own base level; discords, +religious, political, and social; the harmful consequence of +over-expenditure to ape the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier; +foolish education beyond one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking +lessons in Italian, and opera-stricken butcher's-boys strumming the +guitar; immoral tendencies, gambling, drinking, and other dissipations; +and the aggregate of discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for +all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, +invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular +crash of a stout-expiring overture. + +It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done; +but the difficulty is--not so much to do it, answers writer, as to +escape the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and +how speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these +ticketing times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand +good grist, ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters. +But in this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed +should I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused, +uncomplaining public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the +very phrase is a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be +for me if my thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could +brook the scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an +embryo?--Let then a few shreds and patches suffice--a brick or two for +the house: and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty; for +what man of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the +Muses, the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be +pensioned on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great +heir-at-law, Prose Prose, Esq.? + +With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober +seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work +into a respectable commencement; I don't pretend it _is_ one; but +_valeat quantum_, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for, +unaltered, + + Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast, + Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast, + Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest, + Haven of refuge found and peace possest, + Oasis in the desert, star of light + Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night, + All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground + Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round, + Imperial realm amid the slavish world, + Where Freedom's banner ever floats unfurl'd, + Fair island of the blest, earth's richest wealth, + Her plague-struck body's little all of health, + Home, gentle name, I woo thee to my song, + To thee my praise, to thee my prayers belong: + Inspire me with thy beauty, bid me teem + With gracious musings worthy of my theme: + Spirit of Love, the soul of Home thou art, + Fan with divinest thoughts my kindling heart; + Spirit of Power, in pray'rs thine aid I ask, + Uphold me, bless me to my holy task; + Spirit of Truth, guide thou my wayward wing; + Love, Power, and Truth, be with me while I sing. + +_V'la_: my consolation is that somewhere may be read, in hot-pressed +print, too, many worse poeticals than these, which, however, nine +readers out of ten will have had the worldly wisdom to skip; and the +tenth is soon satiated: yet a tithe is something, at least so think the +modern Levites; so, then, on second thoughts, a victim who is so good a +listener must not be let off quite so cheaply. However, to vary a little +this melancholy musing, and to gild the compulsory pill, Reserve shall +be served up sonnet-wise. (P. S. I love the sonnet, maligned as it is +both by ill-attempting friend and semi-sneering foe: of course, in our +epic, Reserve ambles not about in this uncertain rhyme, but duly stalks +abroad in the uniform dress; iambically still, though extricated from +those involutions, time out of mind the requisite of sonnets.) Stand +forth to be chastised, unpopular + + +RESERVE. + + Thou chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane, + Lethargic poison of the moral sense, + Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain, + Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence, + Fly from the threshold, traitor--get thee hence! + Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind; + Mistrusting none but self, injurious self, + Of and to others wishing only good; + With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind, + Suggesting all the world a viperous brood + That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf: + Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood, + Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve, + Beneath thy dull domestic curse, Reserve. + +Without professing much tendency to the uxorious, all may blamelessly +confess that they see exceeding beauty in a good wife; and we need never +apologize for the unexpected company of ladies: at off-hand then let +this one sit for her portrait. Enduring listener, will the following +serve our purpose in striving worthily to apostrophize + + +THE WIFE. + + Behold, how fair of eye, and mild of mien, + Walks forth of marriage yonder gentle queen: + What chaste sobriety whene'er she speaks, + What glad content sits smiling on her cheeks, + What plans of goodness in that bosom glow, + What prudent care is throned upon her brow, + What tender truth in all she does or says, + What pleasantness and peace in all her ways! + For ever blooming on that cheerful face + Home's best affections grow divine in grace; + Her eyes are ray'd with love, serene and bright; + Charity wreathes her lips with smiles of light; + Her kindly voice hath music in its notes; + And heav'n's own atmosphere around her floats! + +Thus, wife-like, for better or worse, is the above _portrait charmant_ +consigned to the dingy digits of an unidistinguishing printer's-devil; +so doth Caesar's dust come to stop a bung-hole. One morsel more, about +children, blessed children, and for this bout I shall have tilted +sufficiently in the Muses' court; or, if it must be so said, unhandsome +critic, stilted to satiety in false heroics: stay--not false; judge me, +my heart. Suppose then an imaginary parent thus to speak about his + + +INFANT DAUGHTERS. + + Oh ye, my beauteous nest of snow-white doves, + What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? + My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls, + My pretty flock of loving little girls, + My stores of happiness with least alloy, + My treasuries of hope and trembling joy! + Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and warm + On a young yearning mother's cradling arm; + The soft angelic smiles of natural grace + Tinting with love that other little face; + And the sweet budding of this sinless mind + In winning ways, that round my heart-strings wind, + Dear winning ways--dear nameless winning ways, + That send me joyous to my God in praise. + +Enough! not heartlessly, but to shame the heartlessness of YOUR +_ennui_, let me veil those holiest affections; yes, even at the risk of +leaving nominatives widowed of their faithful verbs, will I, until +required, epicise no more. Let these mauled bits be intimations of what +a little care might have made a little better. Gladly will I keep all +the remainder in a state quiescent, even to doubling Horace's wholesome +prescription of nine years: for it is impossible but that your fervent +poet, in the heat of inspiration, (credit me, lack-wits, there is such a +thing,) should blurt out many an unpalatable bit of advice, rebuke, or +virtuous indignation against homes in general, for the which sundry +conscience-stricken particulars might uncharitably arraign him. But +divers other notions are crowding into the retina of my mind's-eye: I +must leave my epic as you see it, and bid farewell, a long farewell, to +'_Home_.' Still shall my egotism have to appear for many weary pages a +most impartial and universal friend to the world of bibliopolists; I +cater multifariously for all varieties of the literary profession: +booksellers at least must own me as their friend, though the lucky purse +of Fortunatus saves me from being impaled upon the point of poor +Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave to [----] the questionable praise of +being their hack. For Bentley and Hatchard, alike with Rivington and +Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, +and Murray, I seem to be gratuitously pouring out in equal measure my +versatile meditations; at this sign all customers may be suited; only, +shop-lifters will be visited with the utmost rigour of that obnoxious +monosyllable.--Well, poor Epic, good night to you, and my benison on +those who love you. + + * * * * * + +To any one, much in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very +unsatisfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the +chaotic cobwebs of his mind; as he plods along penning it, a thousand +fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his +ever-teeming hot imagination cannot away with the slow process of +concreted composition. For me, I must write impromptu, or not at all; +none of your conventional impromptus, toils of half-a-day, as little +instantaneous as sundry patent lights; no working-up of laborious +epigrams, sedulously sharpened antitheses, or scintillative trifles, +diligently filed and polished; but the positive impromptu of longing to +be an adept at shorthand-writing, by way of catching as they fly those +swift-winged thoughts; not quick enough by half; most of those bright +colours unfixed; most of those fair semi-notions unrecorded. To say +nothing of reasons of time, there being other things to do, and reasons +of space, there being other things to write. And thus, good friend, +affectionately believe the best of these crude intimations of things +intellectual, which the husbandry of good diligence, and the golden +shower of Danae's enamoured, and the smiles of the Sun of encouragement +might heretofore have ripened into authorship; nay, more, perhaps may +still: believe, generously, that if I could coil off quietly, like +unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics, +analytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and +better-defined proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I +would, and that I would, if the game were worth its candle. + +But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that +small-tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself +within the narrowest limits; a _diable boiteux_, not the huge spirit of +the Hartz; concentrated meat-lozenges, not _soup maigre_; pocket-pistols +of literature, not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a +mightier mass of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from +very brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable +plains of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are +left to stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is +abroad: we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts: the +friend who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing +by the button; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon +on the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than +he of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and +down those airy promontories. + +I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of +yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this +unnecessary preface: rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject, +another work in my unseen circulating library, + + +THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM, + +ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES. + +Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating +booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It +might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical +wrapper: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from +antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked +the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story. +There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each +other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all +the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of +the subject. The different tales should be of different countries and +ages of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to +_ennui_. As thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern +favourite raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver +all upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith +falls into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might +concern the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end--delirium +tremens, or spontaneous combustion: better, perhaps, as less vulgarian, +the grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The +"Watch your opportunity" of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes of +some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napoleon of +war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the world, might +seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as their fellows +have served them well or ill; but a brief history of some hypocrite's +life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylobatist's +resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like a stork, +might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for Periander's +aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyramid-building +old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish proverbial +perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber clearing, +will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising "moderation in +all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal application, as +to pleasures, riches, and rank; or especially perhaps as preferring true +temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some +Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent +honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old +English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to +Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain +has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too +precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a +cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too +deeply seated in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such +caustic surgery as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by +patent gold-salve. + +Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and +illustrative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I +trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original--ay, and more +entertaining, too--than the common run of magazine adventures. It may +not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my +unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men +about town, and ladies of the _pave_. I protest against gilding crimes, +and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good +Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those +bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite +acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and +graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if +the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty, +care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and +Co.--inimitable Pickwick--hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and +escapes of murderers, aroint ye! + +Why then should I throw this cargo overboard?--Friend, my ship is too +full; _if_ I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it +within the limits of its originating fit, these things all might be less +abortive. But I doubt if my glorification of Greek aphorisms ever +reaches any higher apotheosis than the airy castles sketchily built +above. + + * * * * * + +Similar in idea with these last tales, but essentially more sacred as to +character, would be an illustrative elucidation of the seven last +sayings of our Blessed Lord, when dying in the crucifixion. The Romish +Church, in some of her imposing ceremonies, has caused the sayings to be +exhibited on seven banners, which are occasionally carried before the +holy cross: from this I probably derived the idea of detaching these +sentences from the frame-work of their contexts, and regarding them in +some sort as aphorisms. For a name, not to be tautologous, should be +proposed a Graeco-Anglicism, + + +THE HEPTALOGIA; + +OUR SAVIOUR'S SEVEN LAST SAYINGS. + +The addition of "hagia" might be rather too Attic for English ears; and +I know not whether "the Sacred Heptalogia" would not also be too +mystical. This series of tales is capable of like illustration with the +last, except in the matter of portraits, unless indeed some eminent +fathers of the church, or some authenticated enamels, gems, or coins, +(if any,) displaying our Lord's likeness, served the purpose; and of +course the character of the stories should not be much in dissonance +with the sacredness of the text. The first might well enforce +forgiveness of enemies, especially if their hatred springs from +misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:" +many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial +torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere +conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid +among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might +enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the +efficacy of repentance: the certainty of hope and life being +co-extensive, so that it might still be said of the seeming worst, the +brigand and the blasphemer, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" +a story to check presumption, while it encourages the humility of +pentitent hope; the details of a prodigal's career and his return, say +a falsely philosophizing German student, or the excesses of some not +ungenerous outburst of youthful wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate +Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy +son--behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in +Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabaean mother, and her noble +children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the +Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the +case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth, +necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My +God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--the confidence of _my_ God +still, even in His recognised judgments trusted in as merciful: the +history of many an unrecorded Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear +children; an aged merchant beggared by the roguery of others, and his +very name blamelessly dishonoured; the extremity of a martyr's +sufferings; or some hunted soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;" +which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a +thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge--or physically also, in +some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of +Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the +torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip +Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught +from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings +might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more +advisable to shape the publication into seven sermons: but this, it will +at once be perceived, is not the present object; the word "sermons" has +to most men a repulsive sound, and a tale, similar in disguised motive, +may win, where an orderly discourse might unhappily repel: a teacher's +best influences are the indirect: like the conquering troops at +Culloden, his charge will be oblique; his weapon will strike the +unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, "It is +finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary value +of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed; but, more +generally, to display the evils and dangers of leaving mental, +spiritual, or even worldly good designs unfinished: a tale of natural +procrastination conquered, difficulties overcome, prejudices broken +down, and gigantic good effected: a Russian Peter, a literary Johnson, a +missionary Neff, a Wesley, or a Henry Martyn. The seventh, descanting +upon noble patience, and agonies vanquished by faith, the death and +glorious expectance of a martyr, the end of one of Fox's heroes; +"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Of necessity in these +Christian tales there would be more of sameness than in those heathen; +because it would be improper and impolitic, with such theses, to enter +much into the lower human passions and the common events of life. But my +intentions of further proceeding in this matter have, as at present, +very sensibly subsided; for many wise and many good might reasonably +object to making those holy last dying words mere pegs to hang moral +tales upon. The idea might please one little sect, and anger half the +world; I care not to behold it accomplished, and question my own +capabilities; only, as it has been an authorial project heretofore +conceived by me, suffer it to boast this brief existence. + + * * * * * + +It is scandalously reported of some folks that they are not musical, a +calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my own +convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I partly +acquiesce; that is to say--for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to +explain a little--although I _am_ charmed with all manner of music, +still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an +English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every +reason to despise my taste: especially if I add that Welsh songs, and +Scotch and Irish national melodies--[where are our English +gone?]--rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. And now this next +little notion is scarcely of substance sufficient to assume the garb of +authorship: it is little more than a passing whim, but I choose for the +very notion's sake to make it better known. Except in a very few +instances--as Haydn's '_Seasons_,' e.g.--Oratorios, from some +conventional idea of Lent, we may suppose, seem obligated to concern +matters sacred. Of course, every body is aware of the prayerful meaning +of the name; but we know also that a madrigal has long ago put off its +monkish robe of a hymn to the Virgin, and worn the more laic habit of a +love song. Now, it is a fact, that very many good men who delight in +Handel's melody, and of course cannot object to psalms and anthems, +entertain conscientious objections to hearing the Bible set to music in +a concert-room; and sure may we all be, that, unless the whole thing be +regarded as a religious service, (in a mixed gay company who think of +sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, +and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise, +and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing +despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a +mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor +splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, +the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some +lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen, +delighted with its melody, without the needless offence of seeming to +countenance idolatry; why should they not have solemn music, new or +ancient as may be adapted, administering to their patriotism, or their +tragic interests, or historic recollections, without grating against +their feelings of religious veneration?--To be specific, let me suggest +a subject, and show, for the benefit of any Pindar of this day, its +musical capabilities: we are, or ought to be as Englishmen, all stirred +at the name of + + +ALFRED; + +and he would minister as well to the harmonies of an oratorio as Abel, +or Jephtha, Moses, or St. Paul--nay, as the Messiah, or the last dread +Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied the +Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here for +gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot band, +and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the truly +royal bard: he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of +children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field: the +churchmen might receive their queenly charge with music: the Danes riot +in their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old-country-staves: +a storm might occur, with elemental crash: the succeeding silence of +nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight; their +war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in their +camp and in their cups; the hurlyburly of the fight--a hail-stone chorus +of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and clattering +horse-hoofs; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat between +Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor and bass; the +routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the conquerors +pressing on in steady overwhelming concord; how are the mighty +fallen--and praise to the God of battles! + +Most briefly, then, thus: there is religion enough to keep it solemn, +without being so experimental as to intrude upon personal prejudice. The +notion is too slight, and too slenderly worked out, even for admission +here, if I were not still, my shrewd and mindful reader, sedulously +endeavouring to get rid of all my brain-oppressing fancies: and this, +happening to come uppermost as I write, finds itself caught, to my +comfort. It is commended, if worth any thing, to the musical proficient: +for I might as well think of adding a note to the gamut as of trying to +compose an oratorio. + + * * * * * + +The authorial mind is infinitely versatile: books and book-making are +indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity; but +still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of +idea, though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous +departments of science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical +discovery, music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture as below, +give it exercise continually. The authorial mind never is at rest, but +always to be seen mounted and careering on one hobby-horse or other out +of its untiring stud. If the coin of some rude Parthian, or the +fragments of some old Ephesian frieze, serve not as a scope for its +present ingenuities, it will break out in a new method of grafting +raspberries on a rosebush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or +the safest machinery for a steamer. _Ne sutor ultra crepidam_ is a rule +of moderation it repudiates; incessant energy provokes unabated +meddling, and its intuitive qualities of penetration, adaptation, and +concentration, are only hindered by the accidents of life from carrying +any one thing out to the point at least of respectable attainment. Look +at Michael Angelo; poet, painter, sculptor, architect, and author: and +if indeed we are not told of Milton having modeled, or Horace having +built up other monuments than his own imperishable fame, still nothing +but manual habit and the world's encouragement were wanting to perfect, +in the concrete, the conceptions of those plastic minds. Who will deny +that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a +heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic +architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, +the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the +delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine +poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and +Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or +Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest in this argument, the +heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of an Omniscient Author, +fairly written in a universal tongue of grandeur and beauty, of skill, +poetry, philosophy, and love. + +But let me not seem to prove too much, and so leap over my horse instead +of vaulting into the saddle: though authorship may claim thus +extensively every master-mind, from the Adorable Former of all things +down to the humblest potter at his wheel fashioning the difficult +ellipse; still, in human parlance, must we limit it to common +acceptations, and think of little more than scribe, in the name of +author. Nevertheless, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly +flung out, nurtured in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced +into foolish accusations of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is +general, (as if forsooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity, +and not liberally broadcast that he may run that reads,)--let such crude +considerations excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the +provinces of other men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal +division of labour, may be proved good by working well; but its lowering +influences on the individual mind cannot be doubted: that an intelligent +man should for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist +pin-heads, or wind cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving; +and while I grant great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make +some use of that argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to +exercise the mind on all things. Thus, in my assumed metier of +authorship, let notions be extenuated that popularly concern it little, +and yield admittance to any thought that may lead to that Athenian +desideratum, "some new thing." + +While the echoes of the name of Alfred still linger on the mind, and our +patriotism looks back with gratitude on his thousand virtues unsullied +by a fault, (at least that History, seldom so indulgent, has +recorded,)--while we reflect that in him were combined the wise king, +the victorious general, the enlightened scholar, the humble Christian, +the learned author, the excellent father, the admirable MAN in +all public and private relations, in domestic alike with social duties, +I cannot help wishing that forgetful England had raised some +architectural trophy, as a worthy testimonial of Alfred the noble and +the good. Whether Oxford, his pet child--or Westminster Hall, as mindful +of the code he gave us--or Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of +those sons of thunder whom the genius of Alfred first raised up to man +our wooden walls--should be the site of some great national memorial, +might admit of question; but there can be none that something of the +kind has been owing now near upon a thousand years, and that it will +well become us to claim boastingly for England so true, so glorious a +hero. With a view to expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the +topic in author-fashion, it has come into my thought how much we want a + + +LIFE OF ALFRED: + +my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered +from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old +time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written +originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a +popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a +translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified +dilution of '_Don Quixote_,') the primary source should be again +consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon +coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me +in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by +pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it +may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the +light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that +early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should +the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English +version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among +the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray +pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with +the world for writing so much before he reads. + +But this is an accessory--an episode; I plead for a statue to King +Alfred: and--(now for another episode; is there _no_ cure for these +desperate parentheses?)--_apropos_ of statues, let me, in the simple +untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some +recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more +presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a +scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin, +or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet +high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an +unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a +countenance so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I +presume that Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any +thing on its summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne +of higher and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,) +is the most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns: now, +Pompey, or, as some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus, +had that fine pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus; +at least, this is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie +three or four other columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and +believed to have been intended to support the triglyph of some new +temple. Pompey's idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either +entering the harbour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or +the like; but apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its +acknowledged ornament as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be +an architectural absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or +nothing to support: an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower +decorated with shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a +pyramid, or a Waltham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these +supporting nothing on their apices,) in fact, _any thing but_ a +Corinthian or Tuscan, or other regular pillar, seems to be permissable; +but for base, shaft, and capital to have nothing to do but lift a +telescopic man from earth's maternal surface, does look not a little +unreasonable; and therefore as much out of taste, as for the marble arch +at Buckingham Palace to spend its energies in supporting a flag-staff. + +The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit of +criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,) +because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the +recognised orders of architecture; it partakes rather of the character +of a triumphal tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly +from the rest; the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his +positive exploits; he does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon, +but like a gallant climber treading on his conquests: and, as to +Phocas's column at Rome, I shall only say, that it illustrates my +meaning, except in so far as an immense base to the super-imposed +statuere deems it from the jockey imputation of carrying too light a +weight. Now, with respect to the Nelson memorial, your meddlesome scribe +had an unexhibited notion of his own. Mehemet Ali is understood to have +given certain two obelisks respectively to the French and English +nations: the Parisians appropriated theirs, and have set it up, +thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an emblem of what African +conquest has been in the heartside of France; but we English, less +imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have permitted our _petit +cadeau_ to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, unclaimed and +unconsidered. + +Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour: and +if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have +proposed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by +shallow Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the +principal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an +alto-relievo of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid: the +globe and wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame, +and his now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance; a +sphinx, or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt, +should sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three +remaining doorways would be represented closed, and carved externally +with some allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile, +Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my +metier, (a happy metier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my +limned outline for the Nelson testimonial: the real interesting antique +needle, rising from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and +pointing to the skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk +raised upon a heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an +interior alto-relievo. + +It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an _alibi_ +prevented me from seeing, included several obelisks; but the +peculiarities I should have insisted on, would have been first to make +good use of the real thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and, +next, to have had our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the +eye. + +But to return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great +and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove +of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns +reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic +in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so +put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of +sticking heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the +summit of a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce +a most unlikely and chaotic treatise on + + +NATIONAL MEMORIALS. + + * * * * * + +Politics are a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a +Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My +principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of +self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet +coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice +principles may not be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend +reader, hear me profess myself honestly--if you approve, or +shamelessly--if you _will_ so think it--"a rabid Tory!" At least, by +such a nomenclature sundry veracious journals, daily leaders of the +public opinion, would call me, were such a groundling as I prominent +enough to attract their indignation; and, from all that can be gathered +from their condemnatory clauses against others like minded, I have no +little reason to be proud of the title. For, on collation of such +clauses with their causes, I find, and therefore take (under correction +always) the rabid Tory to be--a temperate lover of order, whom his +mother has taught to "fear God," his father to "honour the king," and +his pastor to "meddle not with them who are given to change." A rabid +Tory, in matters of national expenditure, remembers to have heard an old +unexploded proverb, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and +there is that withholdeth what is due, but it tendeth to poverty;" and +he is by no means sure that a certain mismanaged nation is not +immolating her prosperity to what actuaries would call economical +principles. A rabid Tory is bigoted enough to entertain a ridiculous +fear of that generation abstraction, Catholic Rome, whom further he is +sufficiently vulgar-minded to consider as a lady of easy virtue arrayed +in the colours of a cardinal: he thinks one Luther to be somewhat more +than a renegade monk; and is childish enough to venerate, when a man, +the same Liturgy which his grandmother had taught him when a boy. For +other matters, the higher born, the better bred, the more classically +educated, and the more extensively possessed of moneys and lands our +honest-spoken Tory may be, ten to one the more is he afflicted with this +rabbies: and his mad propensities become positively criminal, when, as a +magistrate or a captain of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in +honourable duty to quell the enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots, +whose innocent wishes rise no higher than to subvert the existing order +of things, to secure for themselves a reasonable share of parks, +palaces, and pocket-money, and (as the very justifiable means for so +happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in the temple of Freedom the rogues +who would object to being robbed, and the tyrants who would be bloody +enough to fight for life and liberty. + +A rabid Tory--you see it is a pet name of mine--feels no little contempt +for a squeezable character; and he is well assured, from history as well +as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived and died +upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cowards, whom +the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle induced to run +away, _relictis non bene parmulis_--the clamorous cohort of bullies, +whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly induced to +eat their words--the volunteer company of light-heeled swindlers, whom +nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has neglected to +inform how--every one, in short, whose grand maxim (_quocunque modo +rem_) is temporizing expediency, and with whom the cogent argument "you +shall" has more force than the silly conscience-whisper of "you +ought,"--contributes to swell the band which the professor of Toryism, +the abstracted follower of principles and not of men, has the honour of +beholding in the angle of his diagram, inscribed "contradictory." Not +that your true Tory believes so ill of _all_ his adversaries; there are +some few geese among the cranes; an Abdiel here and there, who has long +felt irksome in the host, but for false shame is there still; sundry +men, having ambitious or illuminated wives, and too amiable, or too +prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at home; some thronging the +opposite benches, because their fathers and grandfathers topographically +occupied those same seats--a decent reason, supposing similarity of +places and names, to insure similarity of principles and practice; and +some--I dislike them not for honesty--confessing and upholding the +republican extremes, upon a belief that all short of these are but an +unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious experiment. Now, the rabid +Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend; but your go-between, your +midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your perjured miser who will swear to +any thing for an extra per centage--all these are his detestation: and +although he will readily acknowledge some good and some wise in the +adversary's ranks, still he recognises that tri-coloured banner as the +one under which all naturally fight, who are poor in both worlds--- with +neither money nor religion. Thus much of my reasonable rabies. + +One may hate principles without hating men; and for this sentiment we +have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong; if right, +do; if wrong, forbear: nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and to do +a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is +false morality, and, therefore bad government. Why should not honesty +and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be guilty +of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? It +is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they deem +unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate the +noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade him +abdicate rather than do wrong. + +But to come abruptly on a title-page: often-times, in reading +deleterious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to +set before the world of faction + + +A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS, + +which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be +synonymous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over +many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me +freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory: +for I fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one +who is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as +is common among arguers, _my_ doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to +reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay +them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned +Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little +tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of +absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the +dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency +for so great a task being conceded--no small supposition, by the way,) +much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fearful +example made of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for conduct very analogous +with numberless instances of modern Liberalism; the rights of rulers, as +well as of the governed; of kings, as well as people; the connexion +subsisting now, as through all former ages, between church and +state--well indeed and deeply argued out already by such great minds as +Coleridge and Gladstone, but perhaps, for general usefulness, requiring +a more brief and popular discourse; the question of passive obedience; +the true though unfashionable doctrine of man's general depravity +invalidating the consignment of power to the masses; and so forth. There +are, however, if Scripture is to be held a constitutional guide, some +examples to a certain extent contrary to the argument: as, elective +monarchy in the case of Saul; non-legitimate succession in families even +where election is omitted, as in the case of Solomon; and, honestly to +say it, many other difficulties of a like nature. In fact, upon the +whole, this distinction might be drawn; that although the Bible at large +favours what we may, for shortness' sake, term Conservative politics, +still it would not be easy to deduce from its page as code of rules, so +necessarily of a social, temporary, and accidental nature: The principle +is given, but little of the practice; the seed of true and undefiled +religion produces among other good fruit what we will call Conservatism, +but we must be very microscopic to detect that fruit in the seed: of +this admission let my _Liberal_ adversary make--as indeed he will--the +most; but let him remember that truth has always been most economically +distributed. It is a material too costly to be broadcast before swine; +and in slender evidence lurks more of moral test, than in stout +arguments and open miracles. At any rate, as unfitted for the task, I +leave it. For any thing mine un-book-learned ignorance can tell, the +very title may be as old as Christianity itself; it is a good name, and +a fair field. + +This manual was commenced in the form of familiar letters to a radical +acquaintance, whom I had resolved to convert triumphantly; but John +Locke disarmed me, without, however, having gained a convert: he made me +drop my weapon as Prospero with Ferdinand; but the fault lay with +Ferdinand, for want of equal power in the magic art. + + * * * * * + +"MEASURES, NOT MEN" is, as we have hinted already, the +ground-work of a true Tory's political creed; and measures themselves +only in so far as they expound and are consistent with principles. A man +may fail; the stoutest partisan become a renegado; and the pet measure +of a doughtiest champion may after all prove traitorous, unwise, +unworthy: but principle is eternally an unerring guide, a master to +whose words it is safe to swear, a leader whose flag is never lowered in +compromise, nor sullied by defeat. Defalcations of the generally +upright, derelictions of duty by the usually noble-minded, shake not +that man's faith which is founded on principle: for the cowardice, or +rashness, or dishonesty of some individual captain, he may feel shame, +but never for the _cause_ in which such hold commissions; he may often +find much fault with _soi-disant_ Tories, but never with the 'ism they +profess. We over-step their follies; we disclaim their corruptions; we +date above their faults; we wash our hands of their abuses. An +abstracted student in his chamber, building up his faith from the +foundations, and trying every stone of the edifice, takes little heed of +who is for him, and who against him, so Conscience is the architect, and +the Master of the house looks on approving. A man's mind is but one +whole; be it palace or hovel, feudal stronghold or Italian villa, it is +all of a piece: a duly subordinated spirit bears no superstructure of +the Radical, and the friable soil of discontented Liberalism, is too +sandy a foundation for ponderous fanes of the religious. + +I rejoice in being accounted one of those unheroic, and therefore more +useful, members of society, who profess to be by no means ambitious of +reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) well at +ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in his +case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached the acme +of human felicity; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, to +exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, of +royalty, and fully crediting that _never-quoted_ sentiment of +Shakspeare's "Uneasy," &c., my motto, within the legitimate limits of +right reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of +Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, "Whoever's king, I'll be +subject!"--ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While, +however, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing +circumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in +courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,) +still in mere speculation, and irrespectively of things as they are, our +abstract musings tended to approve the original word in its unextended +gender. Every one of Edmund Burke's school would honour the ensign of +Divine vice-regency wherever he found it; but, apart from this +uninquisitive respect, he will claim to be reasonably patriotic, +patriotically rational; habit encourages to practice one thing, but +theory may induce to think another. Now, little credence as so +unenlightened so illiberal an integer as I give to an equalization in +the rights of man, certainly on many accounts my blindness gives less to +the rights of women with man, and very far less to those rights over +man: it might be inconvenient to be specific as to reason; but the +working of an ultra-republican scheme, in which females should ballot as +well as males, would briefly illustrate my meaning. Barbarism makes +gentle woman our slave; right civilization raises her into a loving +helpmate; but what kind of wisdom exalts her into mastery? + +Readily, however, shall sleep in dull suppression sundry comments on a +certain Rhenish law, whereof my author's mind had at one time studiously +cogitated a grave and wholesome homily. For our censor of the press, one +strait-laced Mr. Better Judgment, has, "with his abhorred shears," +clipped off the more eloquent and spirited portion of a trenchant +argument concerning--the revealed doctrine of a superior sex, the social +evils of female domination, church-headships considered as to type and +antitype, improper influences, necessary hindrances, anomalous example, +feminine infirmities, and an infinitude more such various objections +springing out of this fertile subject. Thereafter might have come the +historical view, evils and perils, for the majority of instances, +following in the wake of such mastery. However, to leave these +questionable matters quiescent, the principles of passive obedience +mildly interpose, forbidding to stir the waters of commotion, although +with healing objects, for the sake of an abstract theory; there is +ill-meant change enough afloat, without any call for well-intentioned +meddlers to launch more. So, judicious after-thought resolves rather to +strengthen too-much-weakened authority, in these ungovernable times, +than attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at +the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking +away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish +magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that +injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far +too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to +be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always +under shelter of a domino, and protesting against any who would move my +mask, I confess to + + +WOMAN, A SUBJECT: + +it was a mere speculative argument; a flock of fancies now roaming +unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion--"black, +white, and gray, with all their trumpery." + + * * * * * + +Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are to me +what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions +little short of hateful; perpetual mulligatawney; curried capsicums; a +very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many +pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduction +of this dish! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile +wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little-civil +wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention! Yes, I hate it; +and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been used +scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest as +my own, though fixed in full hostility--and so, courteously be entreated +for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to regard me as +sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. We have heard of +women marrying men they may detest, in order to get rid of them: even +with such an object is here indited the last I ever intend to say about +politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this page will cease to +haunt my brain; and let no one doubt but that after relief from these +pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, less unamiable, +less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, suffer with all +brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my patriotic +conscience; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's mind in +consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. Every +successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece of what my +view of the case would designate non-government or mis-government, has +pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent country's love day by day, +session after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound +in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena: +eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation +and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries. +Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals, +and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal +centralizing system, corrupting all generous individualities: patriotism +ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted on the back; vice in full +patronage, and virtue out of countenance; Protestantism discouraged, +Popery taken by the hand; Dissent of _any_ kind preferred to sober +Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done under pretences of perfect +wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the crown and the +constitution:--these things have made me too often sympathize in Colonel +Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the alligator. Accordingly +let me not deny having once attempted a bitter diatribe, in petto, +surnamed + + +FALSE STEPS; + +BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN; + +a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity, +destined at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found +all that sort of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in +numberless newspaper articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge +requisite, and my little practice in controversy, could have managed, +that I wisely drew in my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided +upon not proceeding political pamphleteer, till, on awaking some fine +morning, I find myself returned to parliament for an immaculate +constituency. + +Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor +despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not +trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend +"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his +after-dinner topic: but we will cut him short; for, in fact, nothing can +be more provoking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than +this perpetual intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me, +with matters they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate. + + * * * * * + +A poet is born a poet, as all the world is well aware; and your +thorough-paced lawyer is not less born a lawyer; while the junction of +these two most militant incompatibles clearly bears out the hackneyed +quotation as above, with the final misfit, that is, "_non fit_." Your +poetaster at the bar is that grotesque ideal, which Flaccus thought so +funny that his friends _must_ laugh; (although really, Romans, it _is_ +possible to contemplate a sort of sphinx figure, "a human head to a +horse's neck," and so on, varied plumes and all, without much chance of +a guffaw;) and yonder sickly-looking clerk, perched upon his high stool, +penning "stanzas while he should engross," is the lugubrious caricature +of Apollo on his Pegassus, with Helicon for inkstand. + +It may be nothing extraordinary that, jostled in so wide a theatre as +ours of the world, chance-comers should not, at once or at all, +comfortably find their proper places; but that wise-looking chaperons, +having with prospective caution duly taken a box, should by malice +prepense thrust all the big people in front, and all the little folks +behind, is rather hard upon the latter, and not a little foolish in +itself. Even so in life: who does not wish a thousand times he could +help some people to change places? Look at this long fellow, fit for +Frederick of Prussia's regiment of giants: his parents and guardians +have bent him double, broken his spirit, and spoiled his paces, by +cramming him, a giraffe in the stable, between that frigate's gun-decks +as a middy: while yonder martial little bantam, by dint of exaggerated +heels, and exalted bear-skin, peeps about among his grenadiers, much as +Brutus and Cassius did with their collossal Caesar. So also of minds: +look at brilliant Burns, the exciseman; and quaintly versatile Lamb, the +common city clerk: Look at--had you only patience, you should have +examples by the gross; but, to make a shorter tale of it, (I presume +this shows the etymology of cur-tail,) just think over the pack of your +acquaintance, and see if you could not shuffle those kings, queens--yes, +and knaves too--more to your satisfaction, and their own advantage: at +least, so most folks imagine, silly meddlers as they are; for, after +all, what with human versatility, and the fact of a probationary state, +and the influence of habit, and the drudging example set by others, +things work so kindly as they are, that, notwithstanding misfits, the +wiser few must be of Pope's mind, "whatever is, is right;"--ay, that it +is. + +A year or two ago--if your author is little better than one of the +foolish now, what in charity must he have been then?--I took it upon me +to indite an innocent, stingless satire, whereof for samples take the +following. Skip them one and all; you will, if you are wise, for they +bear the ban of rhyme, are peevish, dull, ill-reasoned; but if you are +not wise, (and, strange to say, malicious people tell me there are many +such,) you may wish to see in print a metred inconclusive grumble. Take +it, then, if you will, as I do, merely for a change; at any rate, your +manciple has furnished this buttery of yours with ample choice of +viands; and omnivoracious as man may be--gormandizing, with gusto, fat +moths in Australia, cockchafers at Florence, frogs in France, and snails +in Switzerland, equally as all less objectionable meats, drinks, fruits, +roots, composites, and simples--still, in reason, no one can be expected +or expect himself to like every thing: have charity, for what suits not +one man's taste may please the palate of another; so hear me +complacently turn + + +"KING'S EVIDENCE," + +and give heed to certain confessions, extorted under the _peine forte et +dure_ of a whilom state legal. Yet, when I come to consider of this, +(_mihi cogitanti_, as school themes invariably commenced,) it strikes my +memory that all confessions, short of the last dying one, are weak and +foolish impertinence; whether Jean Jacques or Mr. Adams thought so, or +caused others to think so, are separate topics beside the question: for +myself, I will spare you a satire dotted with as many I's as an Argus +pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome +contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's +cast-off mistress, the Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine +amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be +tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still +unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning +innumerable black sheep that crowd about a woolsack; especially of +certain "highly respectables," whom the omnipotence of parliament (no +less power presumably being competent) commands to be accounted +"gentlemen." Should then my meagre sketches seem but little spiteful, +accord me credit for tolerance at the expense of wit, (yea, in mine own +garbled satire, hear it Juvenal!) and view them kindly in the same light +as you would sundry emasculated extracts from a discreet Family +Shakspeare. Indignation ever speaks in short sharp queries; and it is +well for the printer's pocket that the self-experience hereof was +considered inadmissible, for a new fount of notes of interrogation must +have been procured: as it is, we are sailing quietly on the Didactic +Ocean, and have, I fear, been engaged some time upon topics actionable +on a charge of _scandalum magnatum_. Hereof then just a little sample: +let us call it '_A Judgment in the Rolls Court_;' or in any other; I +care not. + + Precedent's slave, this mountebank decides + As great Authority, not Reason, guides. + "'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say + Faults can be mended at this time of day, + For Coke himself declared--no matter what-- + Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not? + And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan, + Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man: + I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just, + My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must; + That _very_ learned Lord could not be wrong. + Besides, in fact, it has been settled long, + For the great case of Hitchcock versus Bundy + Decided--(Cro. Eliz. per Justice Grundy), + That [black was white];--and so, what can I say? + Landmarks are things must not be moved away: + I cannot put the clock of Wisdom back, + And solemnly pronounce that black _is_ black. + Though plaintiff has the right, I grant it clear, + I must be ruled by Hoax and Hitchcock here: + Equity follows, does not mend the laws: + Therefore declare, defendant gains the cause." + +Then, as virtuously bound, Indignation interrogates sundry +ejaculations; or, if you like it better, ejaculates sundry +interrogations: as thus, take a brace: + + If right and reason both combine in one, + Why, in God's name, should justice not be done? + If law be not a lie, and judgments jokes, + Why not _be just_, and cut adrift Lord Hoax? + +After a vast deal more in this vein of literature--for you perceive my +present purpose is dissection in part of this ancient rhyme--we arrive +at a magnanimous-- + + No! Right shall have his own, put off no longer + By rule of Former, or by whim of Stronger; + Nor, because Jack goes tumbling down the hill, + Shall precedent create a tumbling Jill. + Public opinion soon shall change the scene, + And wash the Law's Augaean stable clean; + Sweep out the Temple, drive the sellers thence, + And lead, in novel triumph, Common Sense. + +Verily, this is of the dullest, but it is brief: endure it, and pray you +consider the deadliness of the topic, and the barbarous cruelty +wherewith courtesy has clipped the wings of my poor spite. Let us turn +to other title-pages; assuring all the world that no specific mountebank +has been here intended, and that nothing more is meant than a nerveless +blow against legal cant, quainter than Quarles's, and against that +well-known species of Equity, which must have been so titled from like +antiquated reasons with those that induced Numa and his company to call +a dark grove, lucus. + + * * * * * + +How many foes, in this utilitarian era, has that very unwarrantable +vice, called Poetry! All who despise love and love-making, all who +prefer billiards to meditation, all who value hard cash above mental +riches, feel privileged to hate it; while really, typographers, the +illegible diamond print in which you generally set it up, whether in +book, or newspaper, or handbill, or magazine, induces many an +indifferent peruser to skip the poem for the sake of his eye-sight. I +presume that the monosyllable, rhyme, comprehends pretty nearly all that +the world at large intends by poetry; and, in the same manner as certain +critics have sneered at Livy--no, it was Tacitus--for commencing his +work with a bad hexameter, so many a reader will now-a-days condemn a +whole book, because it is somewhere found guilty of harbouring a +distich. But poetry, friend World, means far other than rhyme; its +etymology would yield "creation," or "fabrication," of sense as well as +sound, and of melody for the eye as well as melody for the ear. So did +[_epoiese_] Milton; and so did not---- Well, I myself, if you will. Yet, +in fact, there are fifty other kinds of poetries, beside the poetry of +words: as the poetry of life--affection, honour, and hope, and +generosity; the poetry of beauty--never mind what features decorate the +Dulcinea, for this species of poetry is felt and seen almost only in +first love; the poetry of motion, as first-rates majestically sailing, +furiously scudding waves, bending corn-fields, and, briefly, all things +moveable but railway-trains; the poetry of rest, as pyramids, a tropical +calm, an arctic winter, and generally all things quiescent but a +slumbering alderman; the poetry of music, heard oftener in a country +milkmaid's evening song, than in many a concert-room; the poetry of +elegance, more natural to weeping willows, unbroken colts, flames, +swans, ivy-clad arches, greyhounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those +_pirouette_-ing and _very_ active _danseuses_ of the opera; the poetry +of nature, as mountains, waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all +manner of landscapes, except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art, +acqueducts, minarets, Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate +designs; the poetry of ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers; +and the poetry of awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr. +trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of +impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose, +(for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace: +for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of +doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to +its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will +save her from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your +innumerous dull lyrics--ay, and mine--your unnatural heroics--I too have +sinned thus--your up-hill sonnets--that labour of folly have I known as +well--in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the +cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it: as an +average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or +a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the +age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly +may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has +lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has +robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men +of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try +a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom +the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with +advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at '_Johnson's +Lives_.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without +rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?--With a +few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope--and +shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?--are there,) a more wretched +set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The +poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the +lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulsome flattery of +titles, and foolish adoration of painted shepherdesses: poor weak +hobbling lines, eked out by 'eds and expletives, often terminated by +false rhymes, and made lamer by triplets and dreary Alexandrines; +ill-selected subjects, laboured, indelicate, or impossible similes, +passions frigid as Diana, wit's weapons dull as lead. Yet these (many +exceptions doubtless there were, and many redeeming _morceaux_ even in +the worst, charitable reader, but as of the rule we speak not falsely), +these are the poets of England, the men our great grandfathers delighted +to honour, the feared, the praised, the pensioned, and those whom we +their children still denominate--the poets! Praise, praise your stars, +ye lucky imps of Fame! who could tolerate you now-a-days?--You lived in +golden times, when Dorset, Harley, Bolingbroke, Halifax, and Company, +gave away places of a thousand a-year, as but justly due to any man who +could pen a roaring song, fabricate a fulsome sonnet, or bewail in +meagre elegiacs the still-resisting virtue of some persecuted Stella! +Happy fellows, easy conquisitors of wealth and fame, autocrats of +coffee-houses, feted and favoured by town-bred dames! In those good old +times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was sure to lead to a +Ministry-of-State, and even an epigram produced its pension: to be a +poet, or reputed so, was to be--eligible for all things; and the +fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have governed Europe +with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times are of the +past--and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long farewell, +children of oblivion! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King, +Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore: ye who, in that day of very small +things, just rose, as your Leviathan biographer so often testifies, "to +a degree of merit above mediocrity:" ye who--but (Candor and good +Charity, I thank you for the hint,) limited indeed is my knowledge of +your writings, ye long-departed poets, whom I thus am base enough to +pilfer of your bays; and therefore, if any man among you penned aught of +equal praise with "_My Mind to me a Kingdom is_," or "_No Glory I covet, +no Riches I want_," humbly do I cry that good man's pardon. Believe that +I have only seen the chateau of your fame, but never the rock on which +it rested; and therefore candidly consider, if I might not with reason +have accounted it a castle in the air? + +Now, after this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of +old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny +would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring +exhibited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with +those slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with +poetry; in public I abjure and do renounce the minx: and although +privately my author's mind is so silly as to doat right lovingly on such +an ancient mistress, and has wasted much time and paper in her praise or +service, still that mind is sufficiently self-possessed in worldly +prudence, as to set seemingly little store on the worth of an +acquaintance so little in the fashion. Therefore I disown and disclaim + + +A VOLUME OF POETICS, + +ill-fated offspring of a foolish father; miscellaneous collection of +occasionals and fugitives, longer or shorter, as the army of Bombastes. +Poetical as in verity I must confess to have been, (using the word +"poetical" as most men use it, and the words "have been" in the sense of +Troy's existence,) there must have lingered in me, even at that +hallucinating period, some little remnant of prosaic wisdom; for it is +now long since that I consigned to the most voracious of elements all +the more love-sick rhythmicals, and all the more hateful satiricals. +Now, I will maintain that act of incremation to be one of true heroism, +nearly equal to the judgment of Brutus; nor less is it matter of +righteous boasting to have immolated (warned by Charles Lamb's ghost) +divers albuminous preparations, which to have to do, were, Clio knows, +little pleasure, and to have done, we all know, as little praise. Such +light follies are like skeins of cotton, or adjectives, or babies, unfit +to stand alone; haply, well enough, times and things considered, but +totally unworthy to be dragged out of their contexts into the +imperishability of print; it is to take flies out of treacle, and embalm +them in clear amber. As to sonnets, what real author's mind will not, +if honest, confess to the almost daily recurrence of that symptom of his +disease? With mine, at least, they have increased, and are increasing; +yea, more--as a certain statesman suggested of Ireland's multitudinous +_pisantry_, or as tavern patriots declare of the power of the +crown--they ought to be diminished. Nevertheless, resolutely do I hope +that some of these at least are little worthy of the days of good Queen +Anne. + +In matters of the sacred muse, lengthily as others have I trespassed +heretofore; the most protracted _fytte_, however, made a respectable +inroad on a new metrical version of the '_Psalms_,' attempting at any +rate closer accuracy from the Hebrew than Brady's, and juster rhymes +than Sternhold's: but this has since been better done by another bard. +On the whole budget of exploded poeticals is now legibly inscribed "to +be kept till called for," a period rather more indefinite than the +promise of a spendthrift's payment. Let them rest in peace, those +unfortunate poetics! + +There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry +metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really +_waste-failures_ as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westphalias. +For of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be +more desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt +upon the tinder-box of social intercourse; and to detach such a sentence +from its producing circumstances, is about as efficacious a method of +producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet +grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than +abortive efforts at the humorous; the stream of conversation instantly +freezes up; the disconcerted punster wears the look of his well-known +kinsman, the detected pickpocket; and a scribe, so mercilessly suicidal +as regards his better fame, deserves, when a plain blunt jury comes to +sit upon the body, to be found in mystical Latin, _felo de se_, or in +plain English "a fellow deceased." + +"There shall come in the last days, scoffers;" those same last days in +which "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." It +is true that these phrases (quoted with the deepest reverence, though +found in lighter company) are forcibly taken from their context; but +still, the judgment of many wise among us will agree that they present a +remarkable coincidence: in this view of the case, and it is a most +serious one, the concurrent notoriety of humour having just arisen like +a phoenix from its ashes, of railroads and steamboats having partially +annihilated space, and of the strides which education, if not intellect, +has made upon the highroad of human improvement, assumes an importance +greater than the things themselves deserve. To a truly philosophic ken, +there is no such thing as a trifle; the ridiculous is but skin-deep, +papillae on the surface of society; cut a little deeper, you will find +the veins and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride +the notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books +of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular +views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil +and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick +upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are +flying forward before a storm. As symptoms of changing nationality, and +of a disposition to make fun of all things ancient and honourable, and +wise, and mighty, and religious, they serve to evidence a state of the +universal mind degenerated and diseased. Still, let us not be too +severe; and, as to individual confessions, let not me play the +hypocrite. Like every thing else, good in its good use, and evil only in +abuse of its excesses, humour is capable of filling, and has filled, no +lightly-estimable part in the comedy of temporal happiness. What a good +thing it is to raise an innocent and cheerful laugh; to inoculate +moroseness with hearty merriment; to hunt away misbelieving care, if not +with better prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations; +to make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour +has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after +office-drudgery--an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. +Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more +than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic +panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you +on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who +lanterns his path by the glaring eyes of his own truncated head); and +when it ceases to become merely the casual scintillation, the flitting +_ignus fatuus_ of a summer evening--then only is wit to be condemned. +Often, for mine own poor part in this most mirthful age, have I had + + +HEARTY LAUGHS, + +IN PROSE AND VERSE; + +but take no thought of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in +the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's +hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing +inevitable; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one: and who +dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, these +acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some fifty +more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby, +and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention--(but that +artists are authors)--laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and +inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently +ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age +more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would cease +to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in that wake, to be +reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do harm to his own +reputation? There are professors enough in this quadrangle of the +college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing obesity, without +so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours on the world: and +surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, thundering their +mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. Paul's, may well +frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as the frog with +the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like Bottom's +Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as your +sucking-dove. + + * * * * * + +Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great +distinguishing characteristic of an author's mind; pen and ink are to +it, what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body: observe, we +do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the +other--their relations are far from being mutual; but we only suggest +that the mind, as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged +OEdipus, resting on its proper staff of life. And what can be more +provocative of scribbling than travel? How eagerly we hasten to describe +unheard-of adventures, how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to +prove some printed hand-book _quite wrong_ in the number of steps up a +round-tower: or to crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the +once fair fame of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how +pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story +of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of +friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and +to taste the dulcet joys of those first essays at authorship. A great +charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the +mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters +that have made it memorable: moreover, for fixing scenery on the mental +retina, as well as for comparison of notes as to an _alibi_, for duly +remembering things heard and seen, as well as for being humbled in +having (as a matter inevitable) left unseen just the best lion of the +whole tour, journals are a most praiseworthy pastime, and usually rank +among the earliest efforts of an embryo author's mind. + +It is a thing of commonest course, that, in this age of inveterate +locomotion, your present humble friend, now talking in this candid +fashion with your readership, has been every where, seen every thing, +and done his touristic devoirs like every body else about him: also, as +a like circumstance of etymological triviality, that he has severally, +and from time to time, recorded for self-amusement and the edification +of others all such matters as holiday-making school-boys and +boarding-misses, and government-clerks in their swift-speeding vacation, +and elderly gentlemen vainly striving to enjoy their first fretful +continental trip, usually think proper to descant upon. Of such +manuscripts the world is clearly full; no catacomb of mummies more +fertile of papyri; no traveller so poor but he has by him a packet of +precious notes, whereon he sets much store: every tourist thinks he can +reasonably emulate clever Basil Hall, in his eloquent fragments of +voyages and travels; and I, for my part, a truth-teller to my own +detriment, am ashamed to confess the existence of + + +A DECADE OF JOURNALS; + +which of olden time my _cacoethes_ produced as regularly as recurred the +summer solstice. Unlike that of Livy's, I am satisfied that this poor +Decade be irrevocably lost; but, for dear recollection's sake of days +gone by, intend it at least to be spared from malicious incremation. +Records of roamings in romantic youth, witnesses of wayward way-side +wanderings, gayly with alliterative titles might your contents, _a la +Roscoe_, be set forth. But--what conceivable news can be told at this +time of day about the trampled Continent, and the crowded British isles? +Had my luck led me to Lapland or Formosa, to Mexico or Timbuctoo, to the +top of Egyptian pyramids or the bottom of Polish salt-mines, my +authorship would long since have publicly declared, in common with many +a monkey, that it had "seen the world." As things are, to Bruce, +Buckingham, Belzoni, and that glorious anomaly, the blind brave Holman, +let us leave the harvest of praise, worthy to be reaped as their own by +modern travellers. + + * * * * * + +More, yet more, most exemplary of listeners; and a web or webs of very +various texture. Let any man tell truths of himself, and seem to be +consistent, if he can. From grave to gay, from simple to severe, is the +line most expressive of such foolish versatility as mine; _varium et +mutabile semper_, to one thing constant never. I have heard, or read, +among the experiences of a popular preacher, that one of his most +vexatious petty temptations, was the rise of humorous notions in his +mind the moment he stepped into the pulpit; and it is well known that +many a comic actor has been afflicted with the blackest melancholy while +supporting right facetiously his best, because most ludicrous character. +Let such thoughts then as these, of the frailties incident to man, serve +to excuse the present juxtaposition of fancies in themselves +diametrically opposite. + +It is proper to preamble somewhat of apology before announcing the next +presumptuous tractate; presumptuous, because affecting to advise some +thousands of men whose office alike and average character are sacred, +and just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired counsel? Read +the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously inflamed for the +cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against sundry lukewarm +cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love with the +Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-extenuated evils of +omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and truly, not long +since, for few things in this book can boast of higher antiquity than a +most modern existence, some things being the birth of an hour, some of a +day, a week, or a month; and not more than one or two above a twelve +month's age.--Alas, for Horace's forgotten counsels!--alas, for Pope's +and Boileau's reiterated prescription of revisal for--_morbleu et +parbleu_--nine years!] I wrote then a good cantle of an essay addressed +to the clergy on some matters of judicious amelioration, which we will +call, if you please--and if the word hints be not objectionable-- + + +LAY HINTS. + +Now, as to the unclerical authorship of this, it is wise that it be done +out of metier. Laymen are more likely to gain attention in these +matters, from the very fact of their influence being an indirect one, +speaking as they do rather from the social arm-chair, the high-stool of +the counting-house, or the benches of whilom St. Stephen's, than _ex +cathedra_ as of office and of duty. + +It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote +tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have +commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic +let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of +taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a +Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so +commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. +Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, +appropriate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture--Gothic, +Norman, and Saxon: the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted +up with galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a +steeple. But all this is useless gossip. + +Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet +strongholds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as +perpetually separating within wooden walls members of the same +communion; unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like +parallelograms the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one +will testify, whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain +conventicle; expensive in their original formation, their fittings and +repairs; and, when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of +a church already ten times too small for its neighbouring population. +Fixed benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of +congregational accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary +lecture-rooms present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient. +But all this again is vain talking--a very empty expenditure of words; +we must be satisfied with churches as they are; and, after all, let me +readily admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as +belfries; (probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of +Ireland;) and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds +perfect what theory condemns as wrong, so--let these things pass. + +Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate and +abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ringers, +and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost every +hallowed precinct: pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad +companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and +ever-grumbling menials. Next, give more sublunary heed, we beseech you, +to the comforts or discomforts incidental to doors, windows, stoves, +paint, dust, dirt, and general ventilation; consider the cold, fevers, +lumbagos, rheums, life-long aches, and fatal pains too often caught +helplessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country +church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of +time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly +that insubordinate phalanx of _soi-disant_ musicians, a rustic +orchestra; and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the +huntsman's horn, the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the +wry-necked pipe. Much is being now done for congregational psalmody; but +when will country folks give up their murderous execution of the +fugue-full anthem, and when will London congregations understand that +the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? +When shall Bishop Kenn's '_Awake my soul_,' cease to be our noonday +exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our +eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon +discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if +possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk; +insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise +in the scale of society one of the leaders of its worship: as, at +present, these stagnant, recreant, ignorant clerks are sad +stumbling-blocks; no help to the congregation, and a nuisance to its +minister. In reading--suffer this foolishness, my masters--fight against +the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull formality; we take you +for earnest living guides to our devotion, not mere dead organs of an +oft-repeated service; quicken us by your manner; a psalm so spoken is +better than the sermon. In more fitting places has your author long ago +delivered his mind concerning matters of a character more directly +sacred than shall here find room; as, the sacrament with its holy +mysteries, and the many things amendable in ordinary preachments; but +for these my unseasonable Wisdom shrouds itself in Silence: therefore, +to do away with details, and apply a general rule, above all things, and +in all things, strive by judicious acquiescence with human wants, and +likings, and failings too, if conscientiously you can, as well as by +spirited and true devotion, to break down the sluggish mounds of needful +uniformity, and to build up round the church a rampart of good sense: +and so, Heaven bless your labours! A word more: if it be possible, take +no fees at a baptism, and let it not be thought, by either rich or poor, +that an entrance into Christ's fold must be paid for; no, nor at a +burial; but let the service for the Christian dead be accorded freely, +without money and without price. To a wedding, the same ideas are not +perhaps so closely applicable; therefore we will generously suffer that +you keep your customs there; but on the introduction of a little one to +the bosom of the church, or restoring the body of a saint to Him who +made it of the dust, nothing can be more repulsive to right religious +feelings than to be bothered by a fee-seeking clerk, thrusting in your +face an itching palm: to the poor, these things are more than a mere +annoyance; they amount to a hardship and a hindrance; for such demands +at such seasons are often nothing less than a bitter extortion upon the +self-denial of conscientious duty. + +More might be added; but enough, too much has been alluded to. Nothing +would strengthen the bulwarks of our Zion more than such easy reforms as +these: recent happy revivals in our church would thus be more +solidified; and where, as now, many have been lulled to slumber, many +grieved, many become disgusted or Dissenters, our sons and our daughters +would grow up as the polished corners of the temple, and crowds would +throng the courts of our holy and beautiful House. + +Suffer thus far, clerical and lay, these crude hints: in all things have +I studied brevity, throughout this little bookful; therefore are you +spared a perusal of my reasons, and so be indulgent for their absence. I +"touch your ears" but lightly; be you for charity, as in old Rome, my +favourable witnesses. + + * * * * * + +My before-mentioned Censor of the press had a very considerable mind to +dock all mention of the following intended _brochure_. But I answered, +Really, Mr. Judgment, (better or worse, as occasion may register your +Agnomen,) you must not weigh trifles in gold-assaying scales; be not so +particular as to the polish of a thumb-nail; endure a little incoherent +pastime; count not the several stems of hay, straw, stubble--but suffer +them to be pitch-forked _en masse_, and unconsidered: it is their +privilege, in common with that of certain others--lightnesses that froth +upon the surface of society. Moreover, let me remind your worship's +classicality that no one of mortals is sapient at all times. Item, that +if friend Flaccus be not a calumniator, even the rigid virtue of the +antiquer Cato delighted in so stimulant a vanity as wine hot. So give +the colt his head, and let it go: remembering always that this same +colt, as straying without a responsible rider, is indeed liable to be +impounded by any who can catch him; but still, if he be found to have +done great damage to his master's character, or to a neighbour's fences, +the estray shall rather be abandoned than acknowledged. Let then this +unequal work, this ill-assorted bundle of dry book-plants, this +undirected parcel of literary stuff, be accounted much in the same +situation as that of the wanton caitiff-colt, so likely to bait a-pound, +and afterwards to be sold for payment of expenses, in true bailiff-sense +of justice. And let thus much serve as discursive prolegomena to a +notion, scarcely worth recording, but for the wonder, that no professed +writer (at least to my small knowledge) has entered on so common-sense a +field. Paris, I remember, some years ago was inundated with copies of a +treatise on the important art of tying the cravat; every shop-window +displayed the mystic diagrams, and every stiff neck proclaimed its +popularity. This was my yesterday's-conceived precedent for entertaining +the bright hope of illuminating London on the subject of shaving: + + +ANTI-XURION; + +A CRUSADE AGAINST RAZORS, + +should have been my taking title; and perchance the learned treatise +might have been characteristically illustrated with steel cuts. Shaving +is a wider topic than most people think for; it is a species of insanity +that has afflicted man in all ages, deprived him of nature's best +adornment in every country under heaven. So contradictorily too; as +thus: the Spanish friar shaves all but a rim round his head, which rim +alone sundry North American aborigines determine to extirpate; John +Chinaman nourishes exclusively a long cue, just on that same inch of +crown-land which the P.P. sedulously keeps as bare as his palm: all the +Orientals shave the head, and cherish the beard; all the Occidentals +immolate the beard, and leave the honours of the head untouched. Then, +again, the strange successive fashions in this same unnatural, unneedful +depilation; look at the vagaries of young France: not to descend also to +savage men, and their clumsy shell-scrapings; and to devote but little +time to the voluminous topic of wigs, male and female, cavalier and +caxon, Marlborough and monstrous maccaroni--from the plaited +Absalom-looking periwig of a Pharaoh in the British Museum, to +Truefitt's last patent self-adjuster. Of all these follies, and their +root a razor, might we show the manifest absurdity: we might argue upon +Eastern stupidity as caused by thickness of the skull, such thickness +being the substitute for thatchy hair suggested by kind ill-used Nature +as the hot brain's best protection: we might reason upon the average +sheepishness of this peaceful West, as due to having shorn the lion of +his mane, Phoebus of his glory, man of his majestic beard. Then the +martyrdom it is to many! who stoically, day after day, persist in +scratching to the quick their irritable chins, and after all to little +better end than the diligent earning of tooth-aches, ear-aches, colds, +sore throats, and unbecoming blank faces. Habit, it is true, makes us +deem that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have +so) think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have +held a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification: prisoned +paupers in the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded, +and King David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes _not_ to +have been shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also, +it is equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin; by +razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as +in the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the +wand of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal +prejudices: so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to +live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a +watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class +_Welleria coachmanensis_ are now some time become,) still we desire all +possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland, +we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable +indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache +and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's +manes, or the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow +unsophisticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but +diligently squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural +manly decorations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham, +and Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable +apostolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our +comfortless starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more +in lieu thereof open necks and vandyke borders. + +Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon +this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present +close-fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare +imitate--this cumbersome, unbecoming garb--might, should, ought to be, +and would be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether +garments: cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest +of all imaginable head-dresses; and in lieu of the smock-frock +Macintosh, or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from +the shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By +way of distinguishing the now confused classes of society, my radical +reform in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their +own heraldic colours and livery buttons; and humbler domesticated +creatures walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have +presumed to call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let +us sensibly retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess: I will not say, +copy a Sir Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man +at the mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloured silk, trimmed +with fur;" neither, under these dingy skies, would I care to walk abroad +with Sir Philip Sidney in satin boots, or with Oliver Goldsmith in a +peach-coloured doublet: but still, for very comfort's sake, let us break +our bonds of cloth and buckram, and, in so far as adornment is +concerned, let us exchange this staid funeral monotony for the gallant +garb of our ancestors, the brave costumes of our Edwards and the bluff +King Hal. + +Behold, too scornful friend, how my Tory rabies reaches to the wardrobe. +The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble opinion, gone +far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize Egypt, to +degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, and carry +republican equality into the great prairies of America: it is the +undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold +cosmopolites. But enough of this: pews and spires are to my Quixotism +not more unextinguishable foes, than coats, cravats, waistcoats, and +unnameables. + +And now an honest word at parting, about such trivialities of +authorship. Why should a poor shepherd of the Landes for ever wear his +stilts? Or a tragic actor, like some mortified La Trapist, never be +allowed to laugh? Or Mr. Green be denied any other carriage than the +wicker car of his balloon? Even so, dear reader, pr'ythee suffer a +serious sort of author sometimes to take off his wig and spectacles, and +condescend to think of such minor matters as the toilet and its +still-recurring duties. And, if you _should_ find out the veritable name +of your weak confessing scribe, think not the less kindly of his graver +volumes; this one is his pastime, his holiday laugh, his purposely +truant, lawless, desultory recreance: impute not folly to the face of +cheerfulness; be charitable to such mixtures of alternate gayety and +soberness as in thine own mind, if thou searchest, thou shall find; let +me laugh with those that laugh, as well as sympathize with weepers; and +cavil not at those inconsistencies, which of a verity are man's right +attributes. + + * * * * * + +Ideas lie round about us, thick as daisies in a summer meadow. For my +own part, I know not what a walk, or a talk, or a peep into a book may +lead me to. Brunel hit upon the notion of a tunnel-shield, from the +casual sight of a certain water-beetle, to whom the God of Nature had +given a protecting buckler for its head. Newton found out gravitation, +by reasoning on the fall of an apple from the tree. Almost every +invention has been the suggestion of an accident. Even so, to descend +from great things to small, did a solitary stroll in most-English +Devonshire hint to me the next fair topic. It was while wandering about +the Pyrenean neighbourhood of Linton and Ly'mouth not many months ago, +that my reveries became concentrated for divers hallucinating hours on a +very pretty book, with a very pretty title. And here let me remark +episodically, that I pride myself on titles; what compositors call +"monkeyfying the title-page" is known to be a talent of itself, and one +moreover to which in these days of advertisements and superficialities +many a meagre book has owed its popular acceptance. The titles of +generations back seemed not to have been regarded honest, if they did +not exhibit on their face a true and particular table of contents; +whereas in these sad times, (with many, not with me,) mystery is a good +rule, but falsehood is a better. Again, those honest-speaking authors of +the past scrupled not to designate their writings as '_A Most Erudite +Treatise_' on so-and-so, or a '_A Right Ingenious Handling of the +Mysteries_' of such-and-such, whereas modern hypocrisy aims at +under-rating its own pet work; and more than one book has been ruined in +the market, for having been carelessly titled by the definite THE; as +if, forsooth, it were the world's arbiter of that one topic, +self-constituted pundit of, e.g., title-pages. And this word brings me +back: consider the truly English music of this one: + + +THE SQUIRE, + +AND HIS BEAUTIFUL HOME, + +a fine old country gentleman, pleasantly located, affluent, +noble-minded, wise, and patriotic. This was to have been shown forth, in +wish at least, as somewhat akin to, or congenerous with '_The Doctor_, +&c.,'--that rambling wonder of strange and multifarious reading: or +'_The Rectory of Valehead_,' or '_Vicar of Wakefield_,' or '_The Family +Robinson Crusoe_,' still unwrecked; or many another hearty, cheerful or +pathetic tale of home, sweet home: and yet as to design and execution +strictly original and unplagiaristic. The first chapters (simple healthy +writing, redolent of green pastures, and linchened rocks, and dew-dropt +mountains,) might introduce localities; the beautiful home itself, an +Elizabethan mansion, with its park, lake, hill and valley scenery; a +peep at the blue mile-off sea, brawling brooks, oak-woods, +conservatories, rookery, and all such pleasant adjuncts of that most +fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a country squire, with a princely +rent-roll. Then should be detailed, circumstantially, the lord of the +beautiful home, a picture of the hospitable virtues; the wife of the +beautiful home, a portraiture of happy domesticity, admirable also as a +mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the poor's best friend: children must +abound, of course, or the home is a heaven uninhabited; and shrewd hints +might hereabouts be dropped as to the judicious or injudicious in +matters educational: servants, too, both old and young, with discussions +on their modern treatment, and on that better class of bygones, whom +kindness made not familiar, and the right assertion of authority +provoked not into insolence; whose interest for the dear old family was +never merged in their own, and whose honesty was as unsuspected as that +of young master himself, or sweet little mistress Alice. + +After all this, might we descant upon the squire's characteristics. Take +him as a politician: liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me at +a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly; but none of +your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at +home and cowardly abroad--mean agitating fellows, the scum of disgorging +society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom to the +surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an +honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory: with a +detail of his reasons, notions, and practices thereabouts, inclusive of +his conduct at elections, his wholesome influence over an otherwise +unguided or ill-guided tenantry, and as concerning other miscalled +corruptions: his open argumentation of the representative doctrine, that +it ought to stop short as soon as ever the religion, the learning, and +the wealth of a country are fairly represented; that in fact the poor +man thinks little of his vote, unless indeed in worse cases looking for +a bribe; and that the principle is pushed into ruinous absurdities when +the destitution, the crime, and the ignorance of a nation demand their +proper representatives; that, almost as a consequence of human average +depravity, the greater the franchise's extension, the worse in all ways +become those who impersonate the enfranchised; and so, after due +condemnation of Whiggery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing +lie, the ballot. Then as to the squire's religion; and certain +confabulations with his parson, his household, his harvest-home +tenantry, and local preachers of dissent and schism; his creed, +practice, and favourable samples of daily life. Moreover, our squire +should have somewhat to tell of personal history and adventures; a youth +of poor dependence on a miser uncle; a storm-tost early manhood, +consequent on his high uncompromising principles; then the miser's +death, without the base injustice of that cruel will, which an +eleventh-hour penitence destroyed: the squire comes to his property, +marries his one old flame, effects reformations, attains popularity, +happiness, and other due prosperities. Anecdotes of particular passages, +as in affliction or in joy; his son lamed for life, or his house half +burnt down, his attack by highwaymen, or election for parliament. The +squire's general confidence in man, sympathy with frailties, and success +in regenerating long-lost characters. His discourse on field sports, +displaying the amiable intellectuality of a Gilbert White as opposed to +the blood-thirsty Nimrodism and Ramrodism of a mad Mytton. A marriage; a +funeral; a disputed legacy of some eccentric relative; with its +agreeable concomitants of heartless selfish strife, rebuked by the +squire's noble example: the conventicle gently put down by dint of +gradual desertions, and church-going as tenderly extended; vestry +demagogues and parochial incendiaries chastised by our squire; and +divers other adventures, conversations, situations, and conditions, +illustrative of that grand character, a fine old English gentleman, all +of the olden time. + +Altogether, if well managed, a book like this would be calculated to do +substantial good in these days of no principle or bad principle. A +captivating example well applied--witness the uses of biography--is +infectious among the well-inclined and well-informed. But--but--but--I +fancy there may exist, and do exist already, admirable books of just +this character. I have heard of, but not seen, '_The Portrait of a +Christian Gentleman_,' and another '_of a Churchman_:' doubtless, these, +combined with a sort of Mr. Dovedale in that clever impossible +'_Floreston_,' or an equally unnatural and charming Sir Charles +Grandison, with a dash of scenery and a sprinkle of anecdote, would +make up, far better than I could fabricate, the fair fine character that +once I thought to sketch. Moreover, to a plain gentleman, living in the +country, of perfectly identical ideas with those of the squire on all +imaginable topics, gifted too (we will not say with quite his princely +rent-roll, but at any rate) with sundry like advantages in the way of +decent affluence, pleasant scenery, an old house, a good wife, and fair +children--with plenty of similar adventures and circumstantials--and the +necessary proportion of highwaymen, radicals, rascals, and schismatics +dotted all about his neighbourhood, the idea would seem, to say the +least, somewhat egotistic. But why may not humble individualities be +generalized in grander shapes? why not glorify the picture of a cottage +with colouring of Turner's most imaginative palette? An author, like an +artist, seldom does his work well unless he has nature before him: +exalted and idealized, the Roman beggar goes forth a Jupiter, and +country wenches help a Howard to his Naiads. Nevertheless, let the +Squire and his train pass us by, indefinite as Banquo's progeny: let his +beautiful home be sublimely indistinct; even such are Martin's aetherial +cities: the thought shall rest unfructified at present--a mummied, vital +seed. The review is over, and the Squire's troop of yeomanry not +required: so let them wait till next year's muster. + + * * * * * + +Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship, +this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some +five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary +tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm, +unhurried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal. Far, very far be +it from me to arraign modern reviewers either of partialities or +incapacity; indeed, it is probable that few men of high talent, +character, and station, have not, at some time or other, temporarily at +least contributed to swell their ranks: moreover, from one they have +treated so magnanimously, they shall not get the wages of ingratitude; +they have been kind to my dear book-children, and I--_don't be so +curious_--thank them for their courtesy with all a father's feeling +toward the liberal friends of his sons and daughters. Speaking +generally, (for, not to flatter any class of men, truly there are rogues +in all,) I am bold to call them candid, honest, clever men; quite +superior, as a body, to every thing like bribery and corruption, and, +with human limitations, little influenced by motives, either of +prejudice or favour. For indefatigable industry, unexampled patience, +and powers of mind very far above what are commonly attributed to them, +I, for my humble judgment, would give our periodical journalists their +honourable due: I am playing no Aberdeenshire game of mutual scratching; +I am too hardened now in the ways of print to be much more than +indifferent as to common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with +me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from +eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel +rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint +praise, impotent to d---, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty +return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while +ago but soft young coral, the surges may lash me, but leave no mark; the +sun may shine, but cannot melt me. Argal, as the clown says, is my +verdict honest: and further now to prove it so, shall come the +limitations. + +With all my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and +hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette +and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of +literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; +the main cause of this consisting in the essential rapidity of their +composition. There is not--from the multiplicity of business to be got +through, there cannot be--adequate time allowed for any thing like +justice to the claims of each author. Periodicals that appear at longer +intervals are in all reason more or less excepted from this objection; +but by the daily and weekly majority, the labours of a life-time are +cursorily glanced at, hastily judged from some isolated passage, +summarily found laudable or guilty; and this weak opinion, strongly +enough expressed as some compensation in solid superstructure for the +sandiness of its foundations, is circulated by thousands over all +corners of the habitable world. To say that the public (those so-called +reviewers of reviews, but wiser to be looked on only as perusers,) +balance all such false verdicts, might indeed be true in the long run, +but unfortunately it is not: for first, no run at all, far less a long +one, is permitted to the persecuted production; and next, it is +notorious, that people think very much as they are told to think. Now, I +have already stated at too much length that I have no personalities to +complain of, no self-interests to serve: for the past I have been well +entreated; and for the future, supposing such an unlikelihood as more +hypothetical books, I am hard, bold, sanguine, stoical; while, as for +the present, though I refuse not my gauntlet to any man, my visor shall +be raised by none. But I enter the list for others, my kinsmen in +composing. Authors, to speak it generally, are an ill-used race, because +judged hastily, often superciliously, for evil or for good. It is +impossible for the poor public, (who, besides having to earn daily +bread, have to wade through all the daily papers,) from mere lack of +hours in the day, to entertain any opinions of their own about a book or +books: the money to buy them is one objection, the time to read them +another; to say less of the capacity, the patience, and the will. +Without question, they are guided by their teachers; and the grand fault +of these is, their everlasting hurry. + +At another necessary failing of reviewers I would only delicately hint. +The royal We is very imposing; for example, the king of magazines, No. +134, (need I name it?) informs us, p. 373, "We happen to have now in +wear a good long coat of imperial gray," &c.; and some fifteen lines +lower down, "We are now mending our pen with a small knife," and so +forth: now all this grandiloquence serves to conceal the individual; and +to reduce my other great objection to a single letter, let us only +recollect that this powerful, this despotic We, is, being interpreted, +nothing but an I by itself, a simple scribe, a single and plebeian +number one. A mere unit, an anonymous, irresponsible unit, dissects in a +quarter of an hour the grand result of some ten years; and this +momentary influence on one man's mind, (perhaps wearied, or piqued, or +biased, or haply unskilled in the point at issue, but at all events +inevitably in a hurry to jump at a conclusion,) this light accidental +impression is sounded forth to the ends of the earth, and leads public +opinion in a verdict of thunder. And as for yon impertinent +parenthesis--or pertinent, as some will say--give me grace thus blandly +to suggest a possibility. The mighty editorial We, upon whose +authoritative tones the world's opinion will probably be pivoted--whose +pen by casual ridicule or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune +of some pains-taking literary labourer--whose dictum carelessly +dispenses local honour or disgrace, and has before now by sharp +sarcasms, speaking daggers though using none, even killed more than one +over-sensitive Keats--this monarchic We is but a frail mortal, liable at +least to "some of the imperfections of our common nature, gentlemen," +as, for example, to be morose, impatient, splenetic, and the more if +over-worked. Neither should I waive in this place, in this my rostrum of +blunt, plain speech, the many censurable cases, unhappily too well +authenticated, where personal enmity has envenomed the reviewing pen +against a writer, and stabs in the dark have wounded good men's fame. +Neither, again, those other instances where reviewers, not being +omniscient, (yet is their knowledge most various and brilliant,) having +been from want of specific information incompetent to judge of the +matters in question, have striven to shroud their ignorance of the +greater topic in clamorous attacks of its minor incidents; burrowing +into a mound if they cannot force a breach through the rampart; and +mystifying things so cleverly with doubts, that we cannot see the +blessed sun himself for very fog. + +Now really, good folk, all this should be amended: would that the +WE were actually plural; would that we had a well-selected +bench of literary judges; would that some higher sort of Stationers' +Hall or Athenaeum were erected into an acknowledged tribunal of an +author's merits or demerits; would that, to wish the very least, the +wholesome practice of a well-considered imprimatur were revived! Let +famous men, whose reputation is firm-fixed--our Wordsworths, Hallams, +Campbells, Crolys, Wilsons, Bulwers, and the like--decide in the case of +at least all who desire such decision. I suppose, as no one in these +selfish times will take trouble without pay, that either the judges +should be numbered among state pensioners, or that each work so +calmly examined must produce its regular fee: but these are +after-considerations; and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for +calm, unbought, unsuspected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let +all those members of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an +assembly where all are good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that +word of evil omen,) judge, as far as possible, together and not +separately, of all kinds of literature: I would not have poets +sentencing all the poetry, historians all the history, novelists all the +novels, and theologists all the works upon religion; for humanity is at +the best infirm, and motives little searchable; but let all judge +equally in a sort of open court. The machinery might be difficult, and I +cannot show its workings in so slight an essay; but surely it is a +strange thing in civilization, and a stranger when we consider what +literature does for us, blessing our world or banning it--it is a wonder +and a shame that books of whatever tendency are so cast forth upon the +waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present +muttering, Utopian! Arcadian! Formosan! to be not ill-founded: the +sketch is a hasty one; but though it may have somewhat in common with +the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king in +impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, that many +an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own sake +as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. Some +poor man the other day, and in a reputable journal too, had five +new-born tragedies strangled and mangled in as many lines: we need not +suppose him a Shakspeare, but he might have been one for aught of +evidence given to the contrary; at any rate, five at once, five mortal +tragedies, (so puppy-fashion born and drowned,) must, however carelessly +executed, have been the offspring of no common mind. Again, how often is +not a laborious historiographer, particularly if of contrary politics, +dismissed with immediate contempt, because, perchance, in his three full +volumes, he has admitted two false dates, or haply mistakes the +christened name of some Spanish admiral! Once more, how continually are +not critical judgments falsified by the very extracts on which they +rest! how often the pet passage of one review is the stock butt of +another! Here you will say is cure and malady together, like viper's fat +and fang: I trow not; mainly because not one man in a thousand takes the +trouble to judge for himself. But it is needless to enumerate such +instances; every man's conscience or his memory will supply examples +wholesale: therefore, maltreated authors, bear witness to your own +wrongs: jealously regarded by a struggling brotherhood, cruelly baited +by self-constituted critics, the rejected of publishers, the victimized +by booksellers, the garbled in statement, misinterpreted in meaning, +suspected of friends, persecuted by foes--"O that mine enemy would write +a book!" It is to put a neck into a noose, to lie quietly in the grove +of Dr. Guillot's humane prescription: or, if not quite so tragical as +this, it is at least to sit voluntarily in the stocks with Sir Hudibras, +and dare the world's contempt; while fashionable--or unfashionable +idiots, who are scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner +invitation, (those formidably confounded he's and him's!)--think +themselves privileged to join some inane laugh against a clever, but not +yet famous, author, because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be +an old acquaintance, or one epithet in a long poem may be weak, +indelicate, tasteless, or foolish, or one philosophical fact in an essay +is misstated, or one statistical conclusion seems to be exaggerated. It +is perfectly paltry to behold stupid fellows, whose intellects against +your most ordinary scribe vary from a rush-light to a "long four," as +compared with a roasting, roaring kitchen-fire, affecting contemptuously +to look down upon some unjustly neglected or mercilessly castigated +labourer in the brick-fields of literature, for not being--can he help +it?--a first-rate author, or because one reviewer in seven thinks he +might have done his subject better justice. Take my word for it--if +indeed I can be a fair witness--the man who has written a book, is above +the unwriting average, and, as such, should be ranked mentally above +them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand +labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in +print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors +undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average) +unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however +well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the +opportunity to fabricate a volume; nor, supposing these requisites, the +moral courage (for moral courage, if not physical, must form part of an +author's mind,) to publish the lucubration: but "I magnify mine office" +above the unnumbered host of unwriting, uninformed, loose, unlettered +gentry, who (as full of leisure as a cabbage, and as overflowing with +redundant impudence as any Radical mob,) mainly tend to form by their +masses the average penless animal-man, who could not hold a candle to +any the most mediocre of the Marsyas-used authors of haply this week's +journals. Spare them, victorious Apollos, spare! if libels that diminish +wealth be punishable, is there no moral guilt in those legalized libels +that do their utmost to destroy a character for wisdom, wit, learning, +industry, and invention?--Critical flayer, try thou to write a book; +learn experimentally how difficult, yet relieving; how nervous, yet +gladdening; how ungracious, yet very sweet; how worldly-foolish, yet +most wise; how conversant with scorn, yet how noble and ennobling an +attribute of man, is--authorship. + +All this rhetoric, impatient friend--and be a friend still, whether +writer, reviewer, or unauthorial--serves at my most expeditious pace, +opposing notions considered, to introduce what is (till to-morrow, or +perhaps the next coming minute, but at any rate for this flitting +instant of time,) my last notion of possible, but not probable, +authorship: a rhodomontade oration, rather than an essay, after my own +desultory and yet determinate fashion, to have been entituled--so is it +spelled by act of parliament, and therefore let us in charity hope +rightly--to have been entituled then, + + +THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL; + +A COURT OF APPEAL AGAINST AMATEUR AND CONNOISSEUR CRITICISMS: + +and (the present being the next minute whereof I spake above) there has +just hopped into my mind another taking title, which I generously +present to any smarting scribe who may meditate a prose version of +'_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_'--_videlicet_, + + +ZOILOMASTRIX. + + * * * * * + +At length then have I liberty to yawn--a freedom whereof doubtless my +readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand +dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go +no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I +assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart: +but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it, +and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a +trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably +fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all +the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the +winged aerial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary author, just +eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating notions, can +sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a chance so lucky +as the transfer of his pack to Hercules; and can comprehend the relief +it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, when assured that he +no longer was afflicted with the care of governing a galaxy of worlds. + +Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating +perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth; some to indite solid +continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand; but +I clearly was born a zooelogical anomaly, _with a pen in my mouth_, a +sort of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison! + +Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the +cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor +excuse this light affliction of chattering in print.--Who asks you to +read it?--Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your +intellect by too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must +I then regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom +piping cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften? + +And now, friend, I've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my +acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply +what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially, +think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for +practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I +feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man +offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of +Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I +need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any +Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer +me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord +Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let +me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you: +"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater +length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better +than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow." + + +APPENDIX. + +AN AFTER-THOUGHT. + +It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently +characteristic of his desultory indoles--(not indolence, pray you, good +Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,)--if after having thus formally taken +his _conge_ with the help of a Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield, +he just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now, +the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little +honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with +Romeo I cried, "Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell +till it be morrow;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a +new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and wild, +before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened-up my +brown hay-field: or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel of +precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the purlieus +of Shoe-lane; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the truth +shall be told plainly; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints our +publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, whether or +not in this booklet your readership has already found seed sufficient +for cyclopaedias, I am free to admit that the expectant butter-man at +least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hundred +pages; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I can, is +my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best policy, +deny who dare? + +Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although, in +point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of +my '_Author's Mind_' shown in other specimens; for example, a +linsey-woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of +this arcade; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the +flowers of poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (O, dub it not +a goose!) would, like a _prima-donna_, go off this theatre of fancy, +singing. And again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still +willing to be pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with +me in peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical +and lawless; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall +not quarrel at the last. + +Empty, however--empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness--have +I boasted this my head but a page or two ago; and that boast, for all +the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from me +by renewal of determined meditations; now that my house is swept and +garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither let me +heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading +with the scanty harvest of a _soil effete_; this license of writing up +to measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation +shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve the +problem: not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy; not to +fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable +palate, therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render +up in fair array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not +metaphysically draw upon internal resources, I can at least externally +and physically resort to yonder--desk; (drawer would have savoured of +the Punic, which Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie +_perdus_ divers poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at +"poeticals," carp not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as +carp--so called from _carpere_, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp, +to cavil, because when caught they don't pay for mastication--even as +carp, a muddy fish, difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile +criticism, conceals its lack of savour in the flavour of port-wine--even +so shall strong prose-sauce be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets: +and ye who would uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of +Lethe's mud than of Helicon's sweet water, treat me to a better dish, or +carp not at my fishing. + +Imagination, as I need not tell psychologists by this time, is my +tyrant; I cannot sleep, nor sit out a sermon, nor remember yesterday, +nor read in peace, (how calm in blessed quiet people seem to read!) +without the distraction of a thousand fancies: I hold this an infirmity, +not an accomplishment; a thing to be conquered, not to be coveted: and +still I love it, suffering those chains of gossamer to wind about me, +that seductive honey-jar yet again to trap me, like some poor insect; +thus then my foolish idolatry heretofore hath hailed + + +IMAGINATION. + + My fond first love, sweet mistress of my mind, + Thy beautiful sublimity hath long + Charm'd mine affections, and entranced my song, + Thou spirit-queen, that sit'st enthroned, enshrined + Within this suppliant heart; by day and night + My brain is full of thee: ages of dreams, + Thoughts of a thousand worlds in visions bright, + Fear's dim terrific train, Guilt's midnight schemes, + Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces, + Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh, + Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races + Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf + Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky!-- + O, God of mind, I shudder at myself! + +Now, friend reader, you have accustomed yourself to think that every +thing in rhyme, _i. e._, poetry, as you somewhat scornfully call it, +must be false: and I am sorry to be obliged to grant you that a leaning +towards plain matter-of-fact, is no wise characteristic of metrical +enthusiasts. But believe me for a truth-teller; that sonnet (did you +read it?) hints at some fearful verities; and that you may further +apprehend this sweet ideal mistress of your author's mind, suffer me to +introduce to your acquaintance + + +IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED. + + Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me, + Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes, + Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me, + While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies: + Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies + Within thy silent lips! how rare a light + Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd + Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd! + In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright, + Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast! + And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings, + And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding + In thy crisp curls, like cherubs there abiding-- + Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs. + +Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But +verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if +crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the +Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, by way +of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty +soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold +legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and +would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political +philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged +up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than +surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is +not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season, +(parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair +service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious +pleasures: religion presupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle +to rein-in the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to +prescribe for most men an occasional course of + + +SOLITUDE. + + Therefore delight thy soul in solitude, + Feeding on peace; if solitude it be + To feel that million creatures, fair and good, + With gracious influences circle thee; + To hear the mind's own music; and to see + God's glorious world with eyes of gratitude, + Unwatch'd by vain intruders. Let me shrink + From crowds, and prying faces, and the noise + Of men and merchandise; far nobler joys + Than chill Society's false hand hath given, + Attend me when I'm left alone to think. + To think--alone?--Ah, no, not quite alone; + Save me from that--cast out from earth and heaven, + A friendless, Godless, isolated ONE! + +But of these higher metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations, +perhaps somewhat too much: you will dub me dreamer, if not proser--or +rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way of +clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into +the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts on these +full-blown glories of + + +SUMMER. + + Warm summer! Yes, the very word is warm; + The hum of bees is in it, and the sight + Of sunny fountains glancing silver light, + And the rejoicing world, and every charm + Of happy nature in her hour of love, + Fruits, flowers, and flies, in rainbow-glory bright: + The smile of God glows graciously above, + And genial earth is grateful; day by day + Old faces come again with blossoms gay, + Gemming in gladness meadow, garden, grove: + Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart, + Awake thy better hopes of better days, + Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise, + And in creation's paean take thy part. + +How different in sterner beauty was the landscape not long since! The +energies of universal life prisoned up in temporary obstruction; every +black hedge-row tufted with woolly snow, like some Egyptian mother +mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in glittering +chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the head of +Gorgon; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains of +iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable; therefore we need +scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days--I mean for this present +unseasonable introduction of dead + + +WINTER. + + As some fair statue, white and hard and cold, + Smiling in marble, rigid, yet at rest, + Or like some gentle child of beauteous mould, + Whose placid face and softly swelling breast + Are fixed in death, and on them bear imprest + His magic seal of peace--so, frozen, lies + The loveliness of nature: every tree + Stands hung with lace against the clear blue skies; + The hills are giant waves of glistering snow; + Rare and northern fowl, now strangely tame to see, + With ruffling plumage cluster on the bough, + And tempt the murderous gun; mouse-like, the wren + Hides in the new-cut hedge; and all things now + Fear starving Winter more than cruel men. + +Ay, "cruel men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent +from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who +does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not +rejoice to find even there somewhat of + + +CONSOLATION? + + Scholar of Reason, Grace, and Providence, + Restrain thy bursting and indignant tears; + With tenderest might unerring Wisdom steers + Through those mad seas the bark of Innocence. + Doth thy heart burn for vengeance on the deed-- + Some barbarous deed wrought out by cruelty + On woman, or on famish'd childhood's need, + Yea, on these fond dumb dogs--doth thy heart bleed + For pity, child of sensibility? + Those tears are gracious, and thy wrath most right + Yet patience, patience; there is comfort still; + The Judge is just; a world of love and light + Remains to counterpoise the load of ill, + And the poor victim's cup with angel's food to fill. + +For, as my Psycotherion has long ago informed you, I hope there is some +sort of heaven yet in reserve for the brute creation: if otherwise, in +respect of costermongers' donkeys, Kamskatdales' gaunt starved dogs, the +Guacho's horse, spurred deep with three-inch rowels, the angler's worm, +Strasburgh geese, and poor footsore curs harnessed to ill-balanced +trucks--for all these and many more I, for one, sadly stand in need of +consolation. Meanwhile, let us change the subject. After a dose of cruel +cogitations, and this corrupting converse with Phalaris and Domitian, +what better sweetener of thoughts than an "olive-branch" in the waters +of Marah? Spend a moment in the nursery; it is happily fashionable now, +as well as pleasurable, to sport awhile with Nature's prettiest +playthings; the praises of children are always at the tip of my--pen, +that is, tongue, you remember, and often have I told the world, in all +the pride of print, of my fond infantile predilections: then let this +little Chanson be added to the rest; we will call it + + +MARGARET. + + A song of gratitude and cheerful prayer + Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet, + As on life's firmament, serenely fair, + Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet + Of mild successive radiance: that small pair, + Ellen and Mary, having gone before + In this affection's welcome, the dear debt + Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret: + Be thou indeed a pearl--in pureness, more + Than beauty, praise, or price; full be thy cup, + Mantling with grace, and truth with mercy met, + With warm and generous charities flowing o'er; + And when the Great King makes his jewels up, + Shine forth, child-angel, in His coronet! + +And while hovering about this fairy-land of sweet-home scenery, and +confessing thankfully to these domestic affections, your author knows +one heart at least that will be gladdened, one face that will be +brightened by the following + + +BIRTH-DAY PRAYER. + + Mother, dear mother, no unmeaning rhyme, + No mere ingenious compliment of words, + My heart pours forth at this auspicious time: + I know a simple honest prayer affords + More music on affection's thrilling cords, + More joy, than can be measured or express'd + In song most sweet, or eloquence sublime. + Mother, I bless thee! God doth bless thee too! + In these thy children's children thou _art_ blest, + With dear old pleasures springing up anew: + And blessings wait upon thee still, my mother! + Blessings to come, this many a happy year; + For, losing thee, where could we find another + So kind, so true, so tender, and--so dear? + +Is it an impertinence--I speak etymologically--to have dropped that +sonnet here?--Be it as you will, my Zoilus; let me stand convicted of +honesty and love: I ask no higher praise in this than to have pleased my +mother. + + * * * * * + +Penman as I am, have been, and shall be, innumerable letters have grown +beneath my goose-quill. Who cannot say the same indeed? For in these +patriotic days, for mere country's love and post-office prosperity, +every body writes to every body about every thing, or, as oftener +happens, about nothing. Nevertheless, I wish some kind pundit would +invent a corrosive ink, warranted to consume a letter within a week +after it had been read and answered: then should we have fewer of those +ephemeral documents treasured up in pigeon-holes, and docketed +correspondence for possible publication. Not Byron, nor Lamb, nor West, +nor Gray, with all their epistolary charms, avail to persuade my +prejudice that it is honest to publish a private letter: if written with +that view, the author is a hypocrite in his friendships; if not so, the +decent veil of privacy is torn from social life, confidence is rebuked, +betrayed, destroyed; and the suspicion of eaves-droppings and casual +scribblings to be posthumously printed, makes silence truly wisdom, and +grim reserve a virtue. This public appetite for secret information, and, +if possible, for hinted scandal--this unhallowed spirit of outward +curiosity trespassing upon the sacred precincts of a man's own +circle--is to the real author's mind a thing to be feared, if he is +weak--to be circumspectly watched, if he is wise. Such is the present +hunger for this kind of reading, that it would be diffidence, not +presumption, in the merest school-boy to dread the future publication of +his holiday letters; who knows--I may jump scathless from the Monument, +or in these Popish times become excommunicated by special bull, or fly +round the world in a balloon, or attain to the authorship of forty +volumes, or be half-smothered by a valet-de-place, or get indicted for +inveterate Toryism, or any how, I may--notwithstanding all present +obscurities that intervene--wake one of these fine mornings, and find +myself famous: and what then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve +to one that sundry busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape +together with malice prepense, and keep _cachet_ for future print, a +multitude of careless scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour +of the reading. Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against? And, +utterly improbable on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should +judge their publication (but for certain stolidities of the same sort, +that often-times have wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's +mind here enter its eternal protest against any such treachery regarding +private + + +LETTERS. + + Tear, scatter, burn, destroy--but keep them not; + I hate, I dread those living witnesses + Of varying self, of good or ill forgot, + Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses. + Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead, + Those visions of the past, that idly blot + The present with regret for blessings fled: + This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head, + This flickering heart is full of chance and change; + I would not have you watch my weaknesses, + Nor how my foolish likings roam and range, + Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day + Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay, + Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange. + +So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypothetical +post-obits! + + * * * * * + +Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he sees his +manuscript in print: it is safe; no longer a treasure uninsurable, no +longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable of real +extermination; it has reached a changeless condition; the chrysalis of +illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the +world on the wings of those true Daedali, Faust, and Gutenberg: the +transition-state is passed: henceforth for his brain-child set free from +that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no +more than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain +hope of immortality. "'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is +the adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred; and, though zeal +might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no +better excuse for the fourteen lines that follow; they require but this +preface: a most venerable chapel of old time, picturesque and full of +interest, is dropping to decay, within a mile of me; where it is, and +whose the fault, are askings improper to be answered: nevertheless, I +cast upon the waters this meagre morsel of + + +APPEAL. + + Shame on thee, Christian, cold and covetous one! + The laws (I praise them not for this) declare + That ancient, loved, deserted house of prayer + As money's worth a layman landlord's own. + Then use it as thine own; thy mansion there + Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church + Stands new and decorate; thine every shed + And barn is neat and proper; I might search + Thy comfortable farms, and well despair + Of finding dangerous ruin overhead, + And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls: + Arouse thy better self: restore it; see, + Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls! + Fear, lest that crushing guilt should fall on thee. + +I fear much, poor book, this finale of jingling singing will jar upon +the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle +in its tail: and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may +chance to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in +this after-thought Appendix; yea, and I will keep that promise at all +mortal hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing +Fornarinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay +court-cards. After so much of villanous political ferment, society +returns at length to its every-day routine, heedful of other oratory +than harangues from the hustings, and glad of other reading than +figurative party-speeches. Yet am I bold to recur, just for a thought or +two, to my whilom patriotic hopes and fears: fears indeed came first +upon me, but hopes finally out-voted them: briefly, then, begin upon the +worst, and endure, with what patience you possess, this creaky stave of +bitter + + +POLITICS. + + Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer: + Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown, + Her sun of ancient glory going down, + Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair: + What wonder should the billows overwhelm + A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew, + "Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?" + Yet, no!--we will not fear; the loathing realm + At length has burst its chains; a motley few, + The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel, + The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand + No more besiege our Zion's citadel: + But high in hope comes on this nobler band + For God, the sovereign, and our father-land. + +That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and +therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes +to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in +regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a +subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found +lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to +whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in +old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to +blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast +myself free, a citizen of no mean city--my commission signed by duty--my +counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the +liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family +of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites +blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my +target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon +the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere +lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men, +were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of +their fraternity. + +But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to +intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the +occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken, +uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its +presumption + + Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek, + As duty prompts and loyalty commands, + To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak. + Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee + Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty, + Setting thee ruler over many lands; + Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek: + And many people, nations, languages, + Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands; + Them next to bless, to prosper and to please, + Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease: + Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state + The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great: + So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences! + +And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the +largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and +thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in +regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to +confess--(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale +Joe-Millerism?)--the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall +give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour +acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in +the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind +Maeonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the +majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's +own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance, +wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place +prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels; +in the '_Corsair_,' the '_Childe_,' and the '_Don_,' no one can mistake +the hero-author; Southey's works, Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full +of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least +equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with +instances illustrious as those, so with all humbler followers, the +skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships: +an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amusements, +business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and +qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing +individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with +choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate, +in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it +from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of +sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered +sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning +here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon; +for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time +antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my +muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly +avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this +avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may +ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic? + +List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for +authorship + + +THE CATHEDRAL MIND. + + Temple of truths most eloquently spoken, + Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power, + The '_Author's Mind_,' in all its hallowed riches, + Stands a cathedral: full of precious things; + Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken, + Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aery tower: + Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches, + And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings, + Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower, + Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings, + Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken: + An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul; + Deep music all around enchantment flings; + And God's great Presence consecrates the whole. + +Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor +printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before +have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that +many beginnings--and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing--should, +for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many +endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle +reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical +than--censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy +is held to be good-breeding; _item_, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is +much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;" +_item_, (Sir Walter again, _ipsissima verba_, in a letter to Miss +Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear to be a +sort of tinkers, who, unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for +_menders_ of them, and often make two holes in patching one;" _item_, +that in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for +"repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent +scribe is always at the mercy of compositors; and lastly, that if it is, +by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at +least as much, worthier of a noble mind to give credit for good +intentions, rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even +where hyper-criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has +been a failure. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's An Author's Mind, by Martin Farquhar Tupper + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUTHOR'S MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 19386.txt or 19386.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/3/8/19386/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/19386.zip b/19386.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf3f0e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/19386.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05c18c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #19386 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19386) |