My Life as an Author Part 8

There were also two others afterward, in the jubilate vein; but I spare my reader, albeit they are curiously prophetic of the wide good-doing since accomplished.

To the above numerous commendations which indeed might be indefinitely extended, it is only fair to add that "Proverbial Philosophy" has run the gauntlet of both hemispheres also in the way of parody, ridicule, plagiaristic imitation, and in some instances of envious and malignant condemnation. It has won on each side both praise from the good and censure from the bad: our comic papers have amused us with its travesties--as Church Liturgies and Holy Writ have been similarly parodied,--and some of the modern writers who are unfriendly to Christian influences have done their small endeavour to damage both the book and its author through adverse criticism. But their efforts are vain. They have availed only to advance--from first to last now for some forty-five years--the world-wide success of "Proverbial Philosophy."

If it is expected, as a matter of impartiality, that I should here print adverse criticisms as well as those which are favourable, I simply decline to be so foolish: a caricature impresses where a portrait is forgotten: the _litera scripta_ in printer's ink remains and is quotable for ever, and I do not think it worth while deliberately to traduce myself and my book children by adopting the opinions of dyspeptic scribes who will find how well I think of them in my Proverbial Essay "Zoilism;" which, by the way, I read at St. Andrews, before some chiefs of that university, with A.K.H.B. in the chair.

Accordingly, I prefer now to appear one-sided, as a piece of common sense; quite indifferent to the charge of vain-gloriousness; all the good verdicts quoted are genuine, absolutely unpaid and unrewarded, and are matters of sincere and skilled opinion; so being such I prize them: the opposing judgments--much fewer, and far less hearty, as "willing to wound and yet afraid to strike"--may as well perish out of memory by being ignored and neglected. Here is a social anecdote to ill.u.s.trate what I mean. I once knew a foolish young n.o.bleman of the highest rank who--to spite his younger brother as he fancied--posted him up in his club for having called him "a maggot;" and all he got for his pains in this exposure was that the name stuck to himself for life! so it is not necessary to borrow fame's trumpet to proclaim one's few dispraises.

Moreover, I have thought it only just to the many unseen lovers of "Proverbial Philosophy" to show them how heartily their good opinions have been countersigned and sanctioned all over the English-speaking world by critics of many schools and almost all denominations. It is not then from personal vanity that so much laudation is exhibited [G.o.d wot, I have reason to denounce and renounce self-seeking]--but rather to gratify and corroborate innumerable book friends.

If there had been International Copyright in the more halcyon days of my "Proverbial" popularity, when, as reported (see the _New York World_ on p. 124), a million and a half copies of my book were consumed in America, I should have been materially rewarded by a royalty of something like a hundred thousand pounds: but the bare fact is that all I have ever received from my Transatlantic booksellers in the way of money has been some 80 (three thousand dollars) which Herman Hooker of Philadelphia gave me for the exclusive privilege--so far as I could grant it--of being my publisher. For aught else, I have nothing to complain of in the way of praise, however profitless, of kindliness, however well appreciated, and of boundless hospitality, however fairly reimbursed at the time by the valuable presence of a foreign celebrity.

No doubt the public are benefited by the cheapness of books unprotected by copyright, and the author, if he wins no royalty, gains by fame and pleasure; but the absence of a copyright law is a great mistake,--as well as an injustice to the authorship of both nations, by starving the literature of each other, American publishers will not sufficiently pay their own native bookwrights when they can appropriate their neighbours' works for nothing; and ours in England probably enriched themselves as vastly and cheaply by Mrs. Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as many among the thirty-three States by "Proverbial Philosophy."

As my handsome quarto "Proverbial" has been for two generations a common gift-book for weddings, and has more than once appeared among the gifts at royal marriages, it is small wonder that I have often been greeted by old--and young--married couples as having been a sort of spiritual Cupid on such occasions. Frequently at my readings and elsewhere ladies thitherto unknown have claimed me as their unseen friend, and some have feelingly acknowledged that my Love and Marriage (both written in my teens) were the turning-points of their lives and causes of their happiness. These lines will meet the eyes of some who will acknowledge their truth, and possibly if they like it may write and tell me so: some of my warmest friendships have originated in grateful letters of a similar character.

It may also be worthy of mention that on this side of the Atlantic as well as on the other (see especially the case of N.P. Willis) it has often been taken for granted that the author of "Proverbial Philosophy"

has been dead for generations. No doubt this is due both to the antique style of the book and to the retiring habits of its author: comparatively few of my readers know me by sight. I could mention many proofs of this belief in my non-existence: here is one; a daughter of mine is asked lately by an eminent person if she is a descendant of the celebrated Elizabethan author? and when that individual in pa.s.sing round the room came near to the Professor, and was introduced to him as her father, the man could scarcely be brought to believe that his long-departed book friend was positively alive before him. The Professor looked as if he had seen a ghost.

Throughout this volume I wish my courteous readers to bear in mind that the writer excludes from it as much as possible the strictly private and personal element; it is intended to be mainly authorial or on matters therewith connected. Moreover, if they will considerately take into account that as a youth and until middle age I was, from the speech-impediment since overcome, isolated from the gaieties of society, as also that I religiously abstained from theatricals at a time before Macready, who has since purified them into a very fair school of morals,--to say less of having been engaged in marriage from seventeen to twenty-five,--I can have (for example) no love adventures to offer for amus.e.m.e.nt, nor any dramatic anecdotes such as Ruskin might supply.

The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini is full of entertaining and highly coloured incidents which could not be possible to one rather of the Huguenot stamp than that of the Cavalier, and so I cannot compete therewith as to any of the spicier records of hot youth: for which indeed let me be thankful.

If then my reader finds me less lively than he had--shall I say uncharitably?--hoped for, let him take into account that, to quote the splendid but sensuous phrase of Swinburne, I have always been stupidly p.r.o.ne to prefer "the lilies and languors of virtue" to "the roses and raptures of vice."

I will now proceed with the self-imposed duty of recording my authorial performances.

CHAPTER XIII.

A MODERN PYRAMID.

In 1839, Rickerby was again my publisher; the new book being "A Modern Pyramid; to Commemorate a Septuagint of Worthies." In this volume, commencing with Abel, and ending with Felix Neff, I have greeted both in verse and prose threescore and ten of the Excellent of the earth.

Probably the best thing in it is the "Vision Introductory;" and, as the book has been long out of print, I will produce it here as an interesting flight of fancy, albeit somewhat of a long one. If an author can be accounted a fair judge of his own writings, this is my best effort in the imaginative line; and as it is no new brain-child (we always love the last baby best), but was written little short of fifty years ago, the impartial opinion of an old judge is probably a correct one. The sun-dial is still in my garden,--and as I stood by it half a century since, there grew up to my mind's eye this Vision:--

"I was walking in my garden at noon: and I came to the sun-dial, where, shutting my book, I leaned upon the pedestal, musing; so the thin shadow pointed to twelve.

"Of a sudden, I felt a warm sweet breath upon my cheek, and, starting up, in much wonder beheld a face of the most bewitching beauty close beside me, gazing on the dial: it was only a face; and with earnest fear I leaned, steadfastly watching its strange loveliness. Soon, it looked into me with its fascinating eyes, and said mournfully, 'Dost thou not know me?'--but I was speechless with astonishment: then it said, 'Consider:'--with that, my mind rushed into me like a flood, and I looked, and considered, and speedily vague outlines shaped about, mingled with floating gossamers of colour, until I was aware that a glorious living Creature was growing to my knowledge.

"So I looked resolutely on her (for she wore the garb of woman), gazing still as she grew: and again she said mildly, 'Consider:'--then I noted that from her jewelled girdle upwards, all was gorgeous, glistening, and most beautiful; her white vest was rarely worked with living flowers, but brighter and sweeter than those of earth; flowing tresses, blacker than the shadows cast by the bursting of a meteor, and, like them, brilliantly interwoven with strings of light, fell in cl.u.s.ters on her fair bosom; her lips were curled with the expression of majestic triumph, yet wreathed winningly with flickering smiles; and the l.u.s.tre of her terrible eyes, like suns flashing darkness, did bewilder me and blind my reason:--Then I veiled mine eyes with my clasped hands; but again she said, 'Consider:'--and bending all my mind to the hazard, I encountered with calmness their steady radiance, although they burned into my brain. Bound about her sable locks was as it were a chaplet of fire; her right hand held a double-edged sword of most strange workmanship, for the one edge was of keen steel, and the other as it were the strip of a peac.o.c.k's feather; on the face of the air about her were phantoms of winged horses, and of racking-wheels: and from her glossy shoulders waved and quivered large dazzling wings of iridescent colours, most glorious to look upon.

"So grew she slowly to my knowledge; and as I stood gazing in a rapture, again she muttered sternly,--'Consider!'--Then I looked below the girdle upon her flowing robes: and behold they were of dismal hue, and on the changing surface fluttered fearful visions: I discerned blood-spots on them, and ghastly eyes glaring from the darker folds, and, when these rustled, were heard stifled meanings, and smothered shrieks as of horror: and I noted that she stood upon a wreath of lightnings, that darted about like a nest of young snakes in the midst of a sullen cloud, black, palpable, and rolling inwards as thick smoke from a furnace.

"Then said she again to me, 'Dost thou not know me?'--and I answered her,--'O Wonder, terrible in thy beauty, thy fairness have I seen in dreams, and have guessed with a trembling spirit that thou walkest among fears; are thou not that dread Power, whom the children of men have named Imagination?'--And she smiled sweetly upon me, saying, 'Yea, my son:' and her smile fell upon my heart like the sun on roses, till I grew bold in my love and said, 'O Wonder, I would learn of thee; show me some strange sight, that I may worship thy fair majesty in secret.'

"Then she stood like a G.o.ddess and a queen, and stretching forth her arm, white as the snow and glittering with circlets, slowly beckoned with her sword to the points of the dial. There was a distant rushing sound, and I saw white clouds afar off dropping suddenly and together from the blue firmament all round me in a circle: and they fell to the earth, and rolled onwards, fearfully converging to where I stood; and they came on, on, on, like the galloping cavalry of heaven; pouring in on all sides as huge cataracts of foam; and shutting me out from the green social world with the awful curtains of the skies.--Then, as my heart was failing me for fear, and for looking at those inevitable strange oncomings, and the fixt eyes of my queenlike mistress, I sent reason from his throne on my brow to speak with it calmly, and took courage.

"So stood I alone with that dread beauty by the dial, and the white rolling wall of cloud came on slowly around with suppressed thunderings, and the island of earth on which I stood grew smaller and smaller every moment, and the garden-flowers faded away, and the familiar shrubs disappeared, until the moving bases of those cold mist-mountains were fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious Power, standing in stature as a giant,--'Come! why tarriest thou? Come!'--and instantly there rushed up to us a huge golden throne of light filigree-work, borne upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged above with feathers fair and white, but underneath they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with black down: and all around fluttered beautiful winged faces, mingled and disporting with grotesque figures and hideous imps. Then she mounted in her pomp the steps of the throne, and sat therein proudly. Again she said to me, 'Come!'--and I feared her, for her voice was terrible; so I threw myself down on the lowest of the seven golden steps, and the border of her dark robe touched me. Then was I full of dread, hemmed about with horrors, and the pinions rustled together, and we rushed upward like a flame, and the hurricane hastened after us: my heart was as a frozen autumn-leaf quivering in my bosom, and I looked up for help and pity from the mighty Power on her throne; but she spurned me with her black-sandalled foot, and I was thrust from my dizzy seat, and in falling clutched at the silver net-work that lay upon the steps as a carpet,--and so I hung; my hands were stiffly crooked in the meshes like eagle's talons, my wrists were bursting, the bones of my body ached, and I heard the chill whisper of Death (who came flitting up to me as a sheeted ghost) bidding my poor heart be still: yet I would live on, I would cling on, though swinging fearfully from that up-rushing throne; for my mind was unsubdued, and my reason would not die, but rebelled against his mandate. And so the pinions flapped away, the dreadful cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the waterspout, raced the whirlwind, hunted the thunder to his caverns, rushed through the light and wind-tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the thick sea of ice, that like a globe of hollow gla.s.s separates earth and its atmosphere from superambient s.p.a.ce, and flying forward through the airless void, lighted on another world.

"Then triumphed my reason, for I stood on that silent sh.o.r.e, fearless though alone, and boldly upbraided the dread Power that had brought me thither,--'Traitress, thou hast not conquered; my mind is still thy master, and if the weaker body failed me, it hath been filled with new energies in these quickening skies: I am immortal as thou art; yet shalt thou fear me, and heed my biddings: wherefore hast thou dared--?' but my wrathful eye looked on her bewitching beauty, and I had no tongue to chide, as she said in the sobriety of loveliness,--'My son, have I not answered thy prayer? yet but in part; behold, I have good store of precious things to show thee:' with that, she kissed my brow, and I fell into an ecstasy.

"I perceived that I was come to the kingdom of disembodied spirits, and they crowded around me as around some strange creature, cl.u.s.tering with earnest looks, perchance to inquire of me somewhat from the world I had just left. Although impalpable, and moving through each other, transparent and half-invisible, each wore the outward shape and seeming garments he had mostly been known by upon earth: and my reason whispered me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had imprisoned it.--Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and spake to me soothingly, saying, 'Knowest thou any of these?'--and I answered, 'Millions upon millions, a widespread inundation of shadowy forms, from martyred Abel to the still-born babe of this hour I behold the gathered dead; millions upon millions, like the leaves of the western forests, like the blades of gra.s.s upon the prairie, they are here crowding innumerable: yet should my spirit know some among them, as having held sweet converse with their minds in books; only this boon, sweet mistress, from yonder mingled harvest of the dead, in grace cull me mine intimates, that I may see them even with my bodily eyes.' So she smiled, and waved her fair hand: and at once, a few, a very few, not all worthiest, not all best, came nearer to me with looks of love; and I knew them each one, for I had met and somewhile walked with each of them in the paths of meditation; and some appeared less beatified than others, and some even meanly clad as in garments all of earth, yet I loved them more than the remainder of that crowded world, though not equally, nor yet all for merit, but in that I had sympathy with these as my friends. And each spake kindly to me in his tongue, so that I stood entranced by the language of the spirits. Then said my bright-winged guide, 'Hast thou no word for each of these? they love thy greeting, and would hear thee.' But I answered, 'Alas, beautiful Power, I know but the language of earth, and my heart is cold, and I am slow of tongue: how should I worthily address these great ones?'--So with her finger she touched my lips, and in an inspiration I spake the language of spirits, where the thoughts are as incense to the mind, and the words winged music to the ear, and the heart is dissolved into streams of joy, as hail that hath wandered to the tropics: in sweetness I communed with them all, and paid my debt of thanks.

"And behold, a strange thing, changing the aspect of my vision. It appeared to me, in that dreamy dimness, whereof the judgment inquireth not and reason hath no power to rebuke it, that while I was still speaking unto those great ones, the several greetings I had poured forth in my fervour,--being as it were flowing lava from the volcano of my heart,--became embodied into mighty cubes of crystal; and in the midst of each one severally flickered its spiritual song, like a soul, in characters of fire. So I looked in admiration on that fashioning of thoughts, and while I looked, behold, the shining ma.s.ses did shape up, growing of themselves into a fair pyramid: and I saw that its eastern foot was shrouded in a mist, and the hither western foot stood out clear and well defined, and the topstone in the middle was more glorious than the rest, and inscribed with a name that might not be uttered; for whereas all the remainder had seemed to be earthborn, mounting step by step as the self-built pile grew wondrously, this only had appeared to drop from above, neither had I welcomed the name it bore in that land of spirits; nevertheless, I had perceived the footmarks of Him, with whose name it was engraved, even on the golden sands of that bright world, and had worshipped them in silence with a welcome.

"Thus then stood before me the majestic pyramid of crystal, full of characters flashing heavenly praise; and I gloried in it as mine own building, hailing the architect proudly, and I grew familiar with those high things, for my mind in its folly was lifted up, and looking on my guide, I said, 'O Lady; were it not ill, I would tell my brethren on earth of these strange matters, and of thy favour, and of the love all these have shown me; yea, and I would recount their greetings and mine in that sweet language of the spirits.'--But the glorious Wonder drew back majestic with a frown, saying, 'Not so, presumptuous child of man; the things I have shown thee, and the greetings thou hast heard, and the songs wherewith I filled thee, cannot worthily be told in other than the language of spirits: and where is the alphabet of men that can fix that unearthly tongue,--or how shouldst thou from henceforth, or thy fellows upon earth, attain to its delicate conceptions? behold, all these thine intimates are wroth with thee; they discern evil upon thy soul: the place of their sojourn is too pure for thee.'

"Then was there a peal of thunder, like the bursting of a world, whereupon all that restless sea of shadows, and their bright abode, vanished suddenly; and there ensued a flood of darkness, peopled with shoaling fears, and I heard the approach of hurrying sounds, with demoniac laughter, and shouts coming as for me, nearer and louder, saying, 'Cast out! Cast out!' and it rushed up to me like an unseen army, and I fled for life before it, until I came to the extreme edge of that spiritual world, where, as I ran looking backwards for terror at those viewless hunters, I leaped horribly over the unguarded cliff, and fell whirling, whirling, whirling, until my senses failed me--

"When I came to myself, I was by the sun-dial in my garden, leaning upon the pedestal, and the thin shadow still pointed to twelve.

"In astonishment, I ran hastily to my chamber, and strove to remember the strains I had heard. But, alas! they had all pa.s.sed away: scarcely one disjointed note of that rare music lingered in my memory: I was awakened from a vivid dream, whereof the morning remembered nothing.

Nevertheless, I toiled on, a rebel against that fearful Power, and deprived of her wonted aid: my songs, invita Minerva, are but bald translations of those heavenly welcomings: my humble pyramid, far from being the visioned apotheosis of that of a Cephren, bears an unambitious likeness to the meaner Asychian, the characteristic of which, barring its presumptuous motto, must be veiled in one word from Herodotus (2-136),--alas! for the bathos of translation, the cabalistic--[Greek: phelikos], 'built up of mud.'

"Was not Rome lutea as well as marmorea? and is not beautiful Paris anciently Lutetia, with its tile-sheds for Tuileries, and a Bourbe-bonne for its Sovereign?"

All these sonnets, with others, were published by me elsewhere, as I state further on. The volume also contains some of my less faulty translations, as from Sappho, aeschylus, Pythagoras, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Petrarch, &c. And here I will give a chance specimen out of my "Septuagint of Worthies," to each one of whom I have appropriated a page or two of explanatory prose besides his fourteen lines of poetry. Take my sonnet on "Sylva" Evelyn:--

"Wotton, fair Wotton, thine ancestral hall, Thy green fresh meadows, coursed by ductile streams, That ripple joyous in the noonday beams, Leaping adown the frequent waterfall, Thy princely forest, and calm slumbering lake Are hallowed spots and cla.s.sic precincts all; For in thy terraced walks and beechen grove The gentle, generous Evelyn wont to rove, Peace-lover, who of nature's garden spake From cedars to the hyssop on the wall!

O righteous spirit, fall'n on evil times, Thy loyal zeal and learned piety Blest all around thee, wept thy country's crimes, And taught the world how Christians live and die."

The sonnet is a form of metrical composition which has been habitual with me, as my volume "Three Hundred Sonnets" will go to prove; and I have written quite a hundred more. The best always come at a burst, spontaneously and as it were inspirationally. A laboured sonnet is a dull piece of artificial rhyming, and as it springs not from the heart of the writer, fails to reach the heart of the reader. If the metal does not flow out quick and hot, there never can be a sharp casting. Good sonnets are crystals of the heart and mind, perfect from beginning to end, and are only unpopular where poetasters make a carnal toil of them instead of finding them a spiritual pleasure. But one who knows his theme may write reams about sonneteering; for instance, see that striking article on Shakespeare's sonnets in a recent _Fortnightly_ (or was it a _Contemporary_?) by Charles Mackay, himself one of our literary worthiest, who has so well worked through a long life for his country and his kind: my best regards to him.

His discovery, or rather ingenious hypothesis, quite new to me, is, that some of the one hundred and fifty-four in that collection are by other writers than Shakespeare, though falsely printed under his name, and that some more (though by him) were written impersonately in the characters of Ess.e.x and Elizabeth; which would account for an awkward confusion of the s.e.xes. .h.i.therto inexplicable. Mackay thinks that the publisher included any sonnets by others which he thought worthy of the great bard, as if they were his, and so caused the injurious and wrong appropriation; most of them are exquisite, and many undoubtedly Shakespeare's; some I have said probably by another hand. Critically speaking too, not one of all the one hundred and fifty-four is of the conventional and elaborate fourteen-liner sort, with complicated rhymes; but each is a lyrical gem of three four-line stanzas closed by a distich. Milton's eighteen are all of the more artificial Petrarchian sort; which Wordsworth has diligently made his model in more than four hundred instances of very various degrees in merit.

As I am writing a short memoir of my books, I may state that my own small quarto of sonnets grew out of the "Modern Pyramid."

CHAPTER XIV.

AN AUTHOR'S MIND: PROBABILITIES.

My next book, published by Bentley in 1841, is in some sort a psychological curiosity,--its t.i.tle being "An Author's Mind, the Book of t.i.tle-pages;" and when I add that it contains in succession sketches of thirty-four new brain-children, all struggling together for exit from my occiput, it may be imagined how impelled I was to write them all down (fixt, however briefly, in black and white) in order to get rid of them.

The book is printed as "edited" by me; whereas I wrote every word of it, but had not then the courage to say so, as certain things therein might well have offended some folks, and I did not wish that. I think I will give here a bit of the prefatory "Ramble," to show how the emptying out of my thought-box must have been a most wholesome, a most necessary relief:--