My Life as an Author

sured for years and showed to many friends something in the nature of an elegy which a broken-hearted little brother wrote on the death of an infant

I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this small poetaster of having "cribbed" his metri

original for a small boy of twelve to thirteen. Here then, as a specimen of one of my early bits of literature, is a genuine and

s eye of f

y Melite,

ly pure a

inerva's

y hand I k

and lil

can such ch

et lips of b

ry boso

nimble foo

ly o'er he

soft foot

iness thy

ng on a lo

happy t

hy soul-sub

blest, to

rms of

ather of Bernal Osborne patting my curly locks and scoldi

emple of Jerusalem, and the Tower of London, whereof I have schoolboy copies not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, ?schylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for yo

the voice

ing upon the

t remember

lings so joy

was holiday work, and barely worth a recor

d I jotted down in verse our daily adventures in the rumble. The whole journal, entitled "Rough Rhymes," in divers metres, grave and gay, was published by the "Literary Chronicle" in 1826, and the editor thereof, Mr. Jerdan, says, after some compl

must versify

y ransack the E

plunder the Nor

stomach and zes

tews, and such

(at Calais) such

trange they disg

or never, know wh

aux, fricasse

ires, and such b

le nothings which

able your plate

eatables! and

ale, but-wha

Bourdeaux, real

at a draught, ne

r the taste wit

shoe can mak

f it is that wh

as famish'd as

orsel, take the clos

athedral, age

ons lived thei

deluged with her

their country

ope has been ch

ime in changele

hy glories of

onument of

ch'd thee too; th

ars, and thou

bend beneath

ery ruins wi

however before, this, my earliest piece printed, I find among my papers a very faded copy of my first MS. in verse, being part of an attempted prize poem at Charterhouse

d temples once a

s meet the moon

p once shone wi

sive held their

priest his sa

rs their warm l

rivers once ha

lleys down the

erness now me

Memory can tr

f the pedestrian order: but so also, the critics sai

ions of English poems into Latin Sapphics and Alcaics still among my archives, should not have been shrined-as they were offered at the time-in Dr. Haig Brown's Carthusian Anthology. However somehow these have escaped printer's ink,-the only true elixir

ivial humoristics: here is one, not seen in print till now; "Sapphics to my Umbrella,-written on a very rainy day," in 1827. N.B. If

anion of my

nd my street

ore deserving

my um

ample cover

aille' tumult

eams and patters f

nd maj

ng unwetted,

clouds, as if

ll the nubi

s cat

on in piteou

tion painted

flood descends

ing up

if some cunn

circle magic

wretched vic

ey's a

liquor ever co

ou, disinter

ainy weather

y umb

and 'upper Bens,

ed duckings has

ne-but must be

umbr

ut an umbrella, a stolen one. On the occasion of my loss

ce, in the course

honesty: 'No

e lost in sweet

honest;-ay-bey

eld I rent; ben

ck in the mid

ot of golden

it, without fa

his good int

Bob,' we soon sha

ft with me un

ouch it; which

s I've heard,' s

ter, would that al

highest pitc

umbrella and-r

I attended, had the words "Stolen from Dr. Buckland" engraved

through the factories of Birmingham and the potteries of Staffordshire, down an iron mine and a salt mine, &c. &c., thus teaching us all we could learn energetically and intelligently; it details also how we were hospitably entertained for a week in each place by the magnate hosts of Holkar Hall and Inveraray Castle; and how we did all touristic devoirs by lake, mountain, ruin, and palace: in fact, a short volume in MS., whereof quite at random here is a specimen page. "Melrose looks at a distance very little ruinous, but more like a perfect cathedral. While the horses were being changed we walked to see this Abbey, a splendid ruin, with two very light and beautiful oriel windows to the east and south, besides many smaller ones; the architecture being florid Gothic. The tracery round the capitals of pillars is in wonderful pres

which have already met your view. In this we took the usual tour of those days, via Brussels and the Rhine to Switzerland, and I

urnips, and vegetals of every description. Most of the women seem to be troubled with goitres, and we observed that all who have them wear rows of garnets strung tight on the part affected, whether with the idea of hiding the deformity, or of rendering the beauty of the swelling more conspicuous, or of charming it away, I cannot tell. Th

f a serpent? Such things have been, as these bones testify; they are called Pterodactyls, and are as big as ravens. Thus, you see, a dragon is no chimera, but attested by a science founded on observation, Geology. As their bones (known by their hollo

t now has no rocking properties; though most perilously poised on the side of a slope, and certainly, if in part a work of nature, it must have been helped by art, seeing the mere action of the atmosphere never could have so exactly chiselled away all but the centre of gravity. The secret of the Druids, in this instance at least, was in leaving a large mass behind, which as a lever counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the spot two exact

spout oblong concentric areas of stone walls! Perhaps the best explanation is that the Celts cemented these hilltops of strongholds by means of coarse glass, a sort of red-hot mortar, using sea-sand and seaweed as a flux. This is Professor Whewell's idea, and with him we had some interesting conversation on that and other subjects." Of this Scotch tour, full of interest, thus very curtly. Turn we now to Ireland in 1835. My record of just fifty years ago is much what it might be now, starvation, beggary, and human wretchedness of all sorts in the midst of a rich land, through indolence relapsed into a jungle of thorns and briars, quaking bogs, and sterile mountains; whisky, and the idle uncertain potato, combining with ignorance and priestcraft, to demoralise the excitable unreasoning race of modern Celts. Let us turn from the sad scenes of which my said diary is full, to my day at the spar caverns of Kingston. "At the bottom of a stone quarry, we clad ourselves in sack garments that mud wouldn't spoil, and with lit candles descended into the abyss, hands, knees, and elbows being of as much service as our feet. Now, I am not going to map my way after the manner of guide-books, nor to nickname the gorgeous architecture of nature according to the caprice of a rude peasant on the spot or the fancy of a passing stranger. I might fill a page with accounts of Turks' tents, beehives, judges' wigs, harps, handkerchiefs, and flitches of bacon, but I rather choose to spe

way of rough and ready illustration. The whole letter is printed in its integrity as desired, and tells its own arch?ological tale, though rather voluminously; but in the prehistoric era before Rowland Hill arose, to give us cheap s

ish Exp

wall 8th and 9th

, and all good

gger than field gateposts. It is evidently the consecrated portion of a battlefield, for there are several single stones dotted about the neighbourhood, to mark where heroes fell; like those at Inveraray, but smaller. The habit all through Cornwall of setting up a stone in every field, for cattle to scratch themselves withal, seems to be a sly satire against other rubbing-stones for A. S. Ses. A few dreary miles further brought me to the "voonder of voonders," the Logan-Rock, which on the map is near Boskenna. The cliff and coast scenery is superb; immense masses of granite of all shapes and sizes tumbled about in all directions; what wonder that in such a heap of giant pebbles one should be found ricketty? or more, what wonder that the very decomposing nature of coarse granite should have caused the atmosphere to eat away, gradually, all but the actual centre of gravity? both at the Logan, and Land's End, and Mount St. Michael, I am sure I have seen a hundred rocks wasted very nearly to the moving point, and I could mention specifically six, which in 20 years will rock, or in half an hour of chiselling would. In part proof of what I say, the Land-End people, jealous of Logan customers, have just found out a great rock in their parts, which two men can make to move; I recommended a long-handled chisel, and have little doubt that my hint will be acted on; by next season, the Cornish antiquaries will be puzzling their musty brains over marks of "druidical" tools; essays will appear, to demonstrate that the chippings were accomplished by the consecrated golden sickle; the rock will be proved to have been quarried at Normandy, and ferried over; facsimiles of the cuts will be lithographed; and the Innkeeper of the "First and Last house in England" will gratefully present a piece of plate (a Druid "spanning" [consider Ezekiel's "putting the branch to the nose" as a sign of contempt]!) to the author of "Hints for a Chisel," "Proverbial Phil.," &c. &c. &c. But-revenous à nos moutons: to the Logan: until it was scrupulously pointed out, by so tangible a manner as my boy-guide getting on it, I could scarcely distinguish it from the fine hurlyburly of rocks around. That it moves there is no question; but when I tell you that it is now obliged to be artificially kept from falling, by a chain fixing it behind, and a beam to rest on before, I think you will agree with me in muttering "the humbug!" Artists have so diligently falsified the view, ad captandum, that you will have some difficulty in recognising so old a friend as the Logan: it is commonly drawn as if isolated, thus, and would so, no doubt, be very astonishing; but, when my memory puts it as above, stapled, and obliged to remain for Cockneys to log it, surrounded by a much more imposing brotherhood, my wonder only is that it keeps its lion character, and that, considering the easy explication of its natural cause or accident, it should ever have been conceived to be man's doing; perhaps the Druids availed themselves of so lucky a chance for miracle-mongering, but as to having contrived it, you might as well say that they built the cliffs. It strikes me, moreover, that Cornwall could never have been the headquarters of Druidism, inasmuch as the soil is too scanty for oaks: there isn't a tree of any size, much less an oak tree in all West Cornwall: they must have cut samphire from the rocks, instead of misletoe from oaks, and the old gentlemen must have been pretty tolerable climbers, victim and all, to have got near enough to touch the Logan: to be sure it was a frosty day, and iron-shod shoes on icy granite are not over coalescible, but I did not dare scramble to it, as a tumble would have insured a particularly uncomfortable death; and although the interesting "Leaper from the Logan, or Martin Martyr" would have had his name enshrined in young lady sonnets, and azure albums, such immortality had little charms for me. I contented myself with being able to swear that I have seen 90 tons of stone moved by a child of ten years old. Near it is another, called the logging lady, a block, upright like its neighbours, about 12 feet high, and which the boy told me could only be made to log by two men with poles; in fact, one end is worn with levers: well, I told him to try and move it; no use, says he; try, said I; he did try, and couldn't; well, I took a sight of where I thought he could do it, and set him to push; forthwith, my lady tottered, and I told the boy, if he would only keep to himself where he pushed it would be a banknote to him. I mention this to illustrate what I verily believe, to wit, that, if a man only took the breakneck trouble to clamber and try, he would discover several rocking-stones; but the fact is, this would diminish the wonder, and Cockneys wouldn't come to see what is easily explained: your Druids, with imaginary dynamics, invest nature's freaks with mysterious interest. But away to Tol Peden Penwith, where there is another curiosity; in the smooth green middle of a narrow promontory, surrounded and terminated by the boldest rock-scenery, strangely drops down for a perpendicular hundred feet, a circular chasm, not ill named the Funnel, and which not even a stolid Borlase can pretend was dug by the Druids: at the bottom there is communication with the sea by means of a cavern, and in stormy weather the rush up this gigantic earth's chimney-must be something terrible: will this convey a rough idea? the scenery all round is really magnificent, and the looking down this black smooth stone-pit is quite fearful; it slopes away so deceitfully, and looks like a huge lion-ant's nest. Few people see this, because you can only get at it by a walk of a mile, but I think it quite as worth seeing as the logan-rock. My next object was the Land's End, where, as elsewhere, I did signalise myself by not scribbling my autograph on a rock, or carving M. F. T. on the sod: the rocky coast is of the same grand character; granite bits, as big as houses, floundering over each other like whales at play; the cliffs, cavernous, castellated, mossgrown, and weatherbeaten; it looks like a Land's end, a regular break up of the world's then useless ribs: an outlier of rocks in the sea, surmounted by a lighthouse: looks like the end of the struggle between conquering man, and sturdy desolation. One place, where I tremble to think I have been, struck me as quite awful: helped by an iron-handed sailor, who comforts you in the dizzy scramble with "Never fear, sir, you shan't fall, unless I fall too," you fearfully pick your way to the extreme end, where it goes slick down, and lying prostrate on the slippery granite (which looks disjoint

F