The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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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.