The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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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.