My Life as an Author Part 11

TRANSLATIONS AND PAMPHLETS.

The best of my unpublished MSS. of any size or consequence is perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexameters: hitherto I have failed to find a publisher kind enough to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable. Still, some day I don't despair to gain an enterprising Sosius; for my literal and hexametrical translation is almost what Carthusians used to call "a crib," and perhaps some day the School Board or their organ, Mr. Joseph Hughes's _Practical Teacher_, may adopt my version. Its origin and history is this: finding winter evenings in the country wearisome to my homeflock, I used to read to them profusely and discursively. Amongst other books, a literary daughter suggested Pope's Homer; which, as I read, after a little while, I found to be so very free and incorrect a translation (if my memory served me rightly) that I resolved to see what I could do by reading from the original Greek in its own (English) metre. I soon found it quite easy to be both terse and literal; and having rhythm only to care for without the tag of rhyme, I soon pleased my hearers and in some sort myself, reading "off the reel" directly from the Greek into the English.

This version is still unblotted by printer's ink: if any compositor pleases he is welcome to work on the copy; which I can supply gratis: only I do not promise to do more than I have done, Book Alpha. Life is too short for such literary playwork.

Here followeth a sample: quite literal: line for line, almost word for word: my translation renders Homer exactly. I choose the short bit where Thetis pleads with Jove for her irate son, because I am sure Tennyson must have had this pa.s.sage in his mind when he drew his word-picture of Vivien with Merlin.

"But now at length the twelfth morn from the first had arrived; and returning Came to Olympus together the glorious band of immortals, Zeus the great king at their head. And Thetis, remembering the cravings Of her own son, and his claims, uprose to the surface of ocean, And through the air flew swift to high heaven, ascending Olympus.

There she found sitting alone on the loftiest peak of the mountain All-seeing Zeus, son of Kronos, apart from the other celestials.

So she sat closely beside him, embracing his knees with her left hand, While with her right she handled his beard, and tenderly stroked it, Whispering thus her prayer to Zeus, the great king, son of Kronos," &c. &c.

Let that suffice with a _caetera desunt_.

I need not say that I have written innumerable other, translated pieces, from earliest days of school exercises to these present. There is scarcely a cla.s.sic I have not so tampered with: and (though a poor modern linguist) I have touched--with dictionary and other help, a few bits of Petrarch, Dante, &c.; examples whereof may be seen in my "Modern Pyramid," as already mentioned.

Sundry Pamphlets.

My several publications in pamphlet shape may ask for a page or two,--the chief perhaps (and therefore I begin with it) being my "Hymn for All Nations" in thirty languages, issued at the time of the first great exhibition in 1851, due to a letter I wrote to the Bishop of London on November 22, 1850, urging such a universal psalm. Mr.

Brettell, a printer, issued this curiosity of typography: for it has all the strange types which the Bible Society could lend; and several other, versions than the fifty published (some being duplicated) are in a great volume before me, unprinted because neither England, nor Germany, nor America could supply types for sundry out-of-the-way languages contributed by missionaries in the four quarters of the world. My hymn was "a simple psalm, so constructed as scarcely to exclude a truth, or to offend a prejudice; with special reference to the great event of this year, and yet so ordered that it can never be out of season." "This polyglot hymn at the lowest estimate is a philological curiosity: so many minds, with such diversity in similitude rendering literally into all the languages of the earth one plain psalm, a world-wide call to man to render thanks to G.o.d." Dr. Wesley and several others contributed the music, and the best scholars of all lands did the literature: the mere printing of so many languages was p.r.o.nounced a marvel in its way; and I have a bookful of notices, of course laudatory, where it was not possible to find fault with so small a piece of literature. It may be well to give the hymn admission here, as the booklet is excessively scarce.

The t.i.tle goes--"A Hymn for all Nations," 1851, translated into thirty languages (upwards of fifty versions).

"Glorious G.o.d! on Thee we call, Father, Friend, and Judge of all; Holy Saviour, heavenly King, Homage to Thy throne we bring!

"In the wonders all around Ever is Thy Spirit found, And of each good thing we see All the good is born of Thee!

"Thine the beauteous skill that lurks Everywhere in Nature's works-- Thine is Art, with all its worth, Thine each masterpiece on earth!

"Yea,--and, foremost in the van, Springs from Thee the Mind of Man; On its light, for this is Thine, Shed abroad the love divine!

"Lo, our G.o.d! Thy children here From all realms are gathered near, Wisely gathered, gathering still,-- For 'peace on earth, towards men goodwill!'

"May we, with fraternal mind, Bless our brothers of mankind!

May we, through redeeming love, Be the blest of G.o.d above!"

Beside this, I give from memory a list of others of the pamphlet sort, perhaps imperfect:--

1. "The Desecrated Church," relating to ancient Albury,--whereof this matter is remarkable; I had protested against its demolition to Bishop Sumner, and used the expression in my letter that the man who was doing the wrong of changing the old church in his park for a new one elsewhere would "lay the foundation in his first-born and in his youngest son set up its gates" (Josh. vi. 26); and the two sons of the lord of the manor died in succession as seemingly was foretold.

2. "A Voice from the Cloister," whereof I have spoken before.

3. "A Prophetic Ode,"--happily hindered from proving true, only because the Rifle movement drove away those vultures, Louis Napoleon's hungry colonels, from our unprotected sh.o.r.es. There are also in the poem some curious thoughts about the Arctic Circle, its magnetic heat, and possible habitability; also others about thought-reading and the like; all this being long in advance of the age, for that ode was published by Bosworth in 1852. Also, I antic.i.p.ated then as now--

"To fly as a bird in the air Despot man doth dare!

His humbling c.u.mbersome body at length Light as the lark upsprings, Buoyed by tamed explosive strength And steel-ribbed albatross wings!"

With plenty of other curious matter. That ode is extinct, but will revive.

4. So also with "A Creed, &c.," which bears the imprint of Simpkin & Marshall, and the date 1870. Its chief peculiarities are summed up in the concluding lines:--

"So then, in brief, my creed is truly this; Conscience is our chief seed of woe or bliss; G.o.d who made all things is to all things Love, Balancing wrongs below by rights above; Evil seemed needful that the good be shown, And Good was swift that Evil to atone; While creatures, link'd together, each with each, Of one great Whole in changeful sequence teach, Life-presence everywhere sublimely vast And endless for the future as the past."

For I believe in some future life for the lower animals as well as for their unworthier lord; and in the immortality of all creation. Some other poems and hymns also are in this pamphlet.

5. My "Fifty Protestant Ballads," published, by Ridgeway, will be mentioned hereafter.

6. "Ten Letters on the Female Martyrs of the Reformation," published by the Protestant Mission.

7 and 8. "Hactenus" and "A Thousand Lines," most whereof are in my "Cithara" and Miscellaneous Poems.

9. A pamphlet about Canada, and its closer union to us by dint of imperialism and honours, dated several years before these have come to pa.s.s.

10. Sundry shorter pamphlets on Rhyme, Model Colonisation, Druidism, Household Servants, My Newspaper, Easter Island, False Schooling, &c.

&c. Not to mention some serial letters long ago in the _Times_ about the Coronation, Ireland, and divers other topics. Every author writes to the _Times_.

11. As a matter of course I have written both with my name and without it (according to editorial rule) in many magazines and reviews, from the _Quarterly_ of Lockhart's time to the _Rock_ of this, not to count numerous reviews of books _pa.s.sim_, besides innumerable fly-leaves, essayettes, sermonettes, &c. &c., in the _Rock_ and elsewhere.

12. I was editor for about two years of an extinct three-monthly, the _Anglo-Saxon_: in one of which I wrote nine articles, as the contributions received were inappropriate. I never worked harder in my life; but the magazine failed, the chief reason being that the monied man who kept it alive insisted upon acceptance when rejection was inevitable.

13. Some printed letters of mine on Grammar, issued in small pamphlet form at the _Practical Teacher_ office; and sundry others unpublished, called "Talks about Science," still in MS.

14. "America Revisited," a lecture, in three numbers, of _Golden Hours_.

15. Separate bundles of ballads in pamphlet form about Australia, New Zealand, Church Abuses, The War, &c. &c.

Besides possibly some other like booklets forgotten.

CHAPTER XX.

PATERFAMILIAS, GUERNSEY, MONA.

When I returned in the autumn of 1855 from my princ.i.p.al continental tour, wherein for three months I had conducted my whole family of eleven (servants inclusive) all through the usual route of French and Swiss travel,--I committed my journal to Hatchard, who forthwith published it; but not to any signal success,--for it was anonymous, which was a mistake: however, I did not care to make public by name all the daily details of my homeflock pilgrimage. The pretty little book with its fine print of the Pa.s.s of Gondo as a frontispiece, nevertheless made its way, and has been inserted in Mr. Gregory's list of guide-books as a convenience if not a necessity to travellers on the same roads, though in these days of little practical use: indeed, wherever we stopped, I contrived to exhaust, on the spot all that was to be seen or done, with the advantages of personal inspection, and therefore of graphic and true description. The book has been praised for its interest and includes divers accidents, happily surmounted, divers exploits in the milder form of Alpine climbing (as the Mauvais Pas, which I touch experimentally at the end of Life's Lessons, in "Proverbial Philosophy," Series IV.), divers grand sights, as the Great Exhibition, close to which we lived for some weeks in the Champs elysees, and many pleasant incidents, as greetings with friends, old and new, and other usual _memorabilia_.

Among these let me mention the honest kindliness of Courier Pierre,--always called Pere by my children, with whom he was a great favourite--the more readily because he has long gone to "the bourne whence no traveller returns," so he needs no recommendation from his late employer. This, then, I say is memorable. At Lucerne, as my remittance from Herries failed to reach me, I seemed obliged to make a stop and to return; but Pierre objected, saying it was "great pity not to pa.s.s the Simplon and see Milan,--and, if Monsieur would permit him, he could lend whatever was needful, and could be paid again." Certainly I said this was very kind, and so I borrowed at his solicitation:--it was 100, as I find by the journal; our travel was costing us 40 a week. Well, to recount briefly, when, after having placed in our _repertoire_ Bellinzona, Como, Milan, &c. &c., I found myself at Geneva, and with remittances awaiting me, my first act was to place in Pierre's hands 105,--and when he counted the notes, he said, "Sare, there is one five-pound too many."--"Of course, my worthy Pierre, I hope you will accept that as interest."--"Non, Monsieur, pardon; I could not, I always bring money to help my families:"--and he would not. Now, if that was not a model courier, worthy to be commemorated thus,--well, I hope there are some others of his brethren on the office-books of Bury Street, St.

James's, who are equally duteous and disinterested. "Some people are heroes to their valets; my worthy help is a hero to me:" so saith my journal. Here's another extract, after two slight earthquakes at Brieg, and Turtman (Turris Magna);--"Again a bad accident. One of our spirited wheelers got his hind leg over the pole in going down a hill: at once there was a chaos of fallen horses and entangled harness, and but for the screw machine drag locking both hind-wheels we must have been upset and smashed,--as it was, the scrambling and kicking at first was frightful; but Paterfamilias dragged the younger children out into the road, and other help was nigh at hand, and the providential calm that comes over fallen horses after their initiatory struggle was at hand too, and in due time matters were righted: that those two fiery stallions did not kick everything to pieces, and that all four steeds did not gallop us to destruction, was due, under Providence, to the skill and courage of our good Pierre and the patient Muscatelli."--Railways have since superseded all this peril, and cost, and care: and trains now go _through_ the Simplon, instead of "good horses, six to the heavy carriage, four to the light one," pulling us steadily and slowly _over_ it: thus losing the splendid scenery climaxed by the Devil's Bridge: but let moderns be thankful. "Paterfamilias's Diary" has long been out of print, and its author is glad that he made at the time a full record of the happy past, and recommends its perusal to any one who can find a copy anywhere. My friend, the late Major Hely, who claimed an Irish peerage, was very fond of this "Diary," and thought it "the best book of travels he had ever read."

Guernsey.

Guernsey is another of the spots where your author has lived and written, though neither long nor much. He comes, as is well known, of an ancient Sarnian family, as mentioned before. As to any writings of mine about insular matters while sojourning there occasionally, they are confined to some druidical verses about certain cromlechs, a few other poems, as one given below--"A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney,"--and in chief that in which I "Raised the Haro," which saved the most picturesque part of Castle Cornet from destruction by some artillery engineer. Here is the poem, supposing some may wish to see it: especially as it does not appear in my only extant volume of poems, Gall & Inglis. It occurs (I think solely) in Hall & Virtue's extinct edition of my Ballads and Poems, 1853, and is there headed "'The Clameur de Haro,' an old Norman appeal to the Sovereign, 1850":--

"Haro, Haro! a l'aide, mon Prince!

A loyal people calls; Bring out Duke Rollo's Norman lance To stay destruction's fell advance Against the Castle walls: Haro, Haro! a l'aide, ma Reine!

Thy duteous children not in vain Plead for old Cornet yet again, To spare it, ere it falls!