[Illustration: THOMAS COOPER]
Thomas Cooper,
"THE SELF-EDUCATED SHOEMAKER" WHO "REARED HIS OWN MONUMENT."[58]
"I consuming fire
Felt daily in my veins to see my race
Emerge from out the foul defiling mire
Of animal enjoyments that debase
Their nature, and well-nigh its lineaments efface.
I burned to see my species proudly count
Themselves for more than brutes; and toiled to draw
Them on to drink at Virtue's living fount,
Whence purest pleasures flow....
Canst thou blame
My course? I tell thee, thirst for human laud
Impelled me not: 'twas my sole-thoughted aim
To render Man, my brother, worthy his high name!"
--_Empedocles, in "The Purgatory of Suicides,"
Stanzas_ 35-37.
"Few shrewder, kindlier men have fought the battle of life."--_London
Quarterly Review._
"He is a man of vast reading, and indomitable courage. His Autobiography
is a remarkable book, well worth reading."--_Editor of "Charles
Kingsley's Life and Letters_."
[58] See closing sentences of preface to "Purgatory of
Suicides," by Thomas Cooper, early editions.
THOMAS COOPER.
"The Lord's will be done! I don't think He intends thee to spend thy
life at shoemaking. I have kept thee at school, and worked hard to get
thee bread, and to let thee have thy own wish in learning, and never
imagined that thou wast to be a shoemaker. But the Lord's will be done!
He'll bring it all right in time." Such were the words with which the
worthy and excellent mother of Thomas Cooper gave her consent to her
boy's proposal that he should go and learn "the art, craft, and mystery
of shoemaking." He had no particular love for the craft, but he was
anxious to do something for a livelihood, and desirous of helping his
widowed mother; and, above all, he was ashamed of being pointed at by
his neighbors as "an idle good-for-nothing." That never was true of
Thomas Cooper either in school or out, at work or recreation; and now
that he had left school and was turned of fifteen years of age, he could
not brook the insinuation that he was unwilling to work; so, good
scholar as he was, and zealous for learning, and not without ambition,
he resolved on doing _something_, however humble, to earn his bread, in
order to shut the mouths of tattling neighbors. His mother had tried to
get him apprenticed as a painter or a merchant's clerk, and failed for
want of a premium; and he had made a brief experiment at sailoring down
at Hull, and had come home again utterly loathing the cruelty and abuse
to which a sailor-boy of those days was subjected; so there was nothing
for him now but to take the first chance of learning any trade that came
in his way. He was an only child, and his mother had been a widow eleven
years, getting her living as a dyer, in which occupation she had
assisted her husband during his lifetime. In the pursuit of his trade as
a dyer he had moved about from town to town, and had met with his wife
at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. Not long after their marriage Mr. and
Mrs. Cooper removed to Leicester, and took a house in Soar Lane,
conveniently situated by the river Soar. Here Thomas, their only child,
was born on the 20th of March, 1805. Twelve months afterward they went
to live at Exeter, where the father died when his little boy was but
four years old. After this his mother at once went back to old
Gainsborough, where she would be near her relatives. Here she remained
for the rest of her life, and here the first twenty-nine years of Thomas
Cooper's life were spent.
The signs her boy had given of mental powers above the average were
quite enough to warrant Mrs. Cooper's pathetic speech when he sought
permission to become a shoemaker. His memory was remarkably retentive,
and dated from a period which must be regarded as exceptionally early.
On the day that he was two years old he fell into a stream that ran in
front of his father's house, and was nearly drowned. He declares that he
distinctly remembers being led by his father's hand over St. Thomas's
Bridge on the afternoon of that same day, and how the neighbors "chucked
him under the chin, and said, How did you like it? How did you fall in?
Where have you been to?" Writing in 1871 he says, "The circumstances are
as vivid to my mind as if they only occurred yesterday." Reading came to
him almost by instinct, and at three years of age his schoolmistress set
him on a stool to teach a boy more than twice his own age the letters of
the alphabet. At the same age he could repeat several of Æsop's fables.
On their removal to Gainsborough he was seized with small-pox, which
fearful complaint marred his visage for life. This was followed by other
complaints which kept him an invalid for a year. On his recovery he had
to bear the annoyance, so bitterly painful to a child, of being either
scouted or pitied for his altered looks. But the kindness he failed to
find out-of-doors was more than doubled at home. The heart of a true
mother and a right noble woman warmed toward the child in his weakness
and sad disfigurement. Never had needy child a more devoted parent. It
was hard work for the solitary woman to make a living and pay her way,
yet she bore up bravely and did the best she could for her child. The
picture which is given by Thomas Cooper in his Autobiography of his home
at this time, and of his own and his mother's position, has a
pre-Raphaelite simplicity about it, and well deserves a moment's
attention. "Within doors there was no longer a handsome room, the
cheerful look of my father, and his little songs and stories. We had now
but one chamber and one lower room, and the last-named at once parlor,
kitchen, and dye-house: two large coppers were set in one part of it;
and my mother was at work amid steam and sweat all the day long for half
of the week, and on the other half she was fully employed in "framing,"
ironing, and finishing her work. Yet for me she had ever words of
tenderness. My altered face had not unendeared me to her. In the midst
of her heavy toil, she could listen to my feeble repetitions of the
fables, or spare a look, at my entreaty, for the figures I was drawing
with chalk upon the hearthstone."[59] Returning to school again, he was,
at five years of age, his teacher's favorite pupil, for he could "read
the tenth chapter of Nehemiah, with all its hard names, like the parson
in the church, as she used to say, and spell wondrously." Wandering
through the woods with his mother, or going with her on her country
business rounds when the weather was fine; poring over Baskerville's
quarto Bible with its fine engravings from the old masters, when
compelled on wet Sundays to stop indoors, the sensitive mind of the
eager child received its first impressions of the beautiful in nature
and art. When he was eight years of age his mother succeeded in getting
him admitted to a new Free School, recently opened in the town, and
little Tom was placed upon the foundation as a "Bluecoat" scholar. The
course of instruction at this school was neither varied nor profound,
consisting entirely of Scripture reading, writing, and the first four
rules of arithmetic; but its frequent repetitions of spelling and
ciphering lessons were good as a beginning, and laid a fair basis for
future learning. Obliged to attend the parish church with the rest of
the "Bluecoats," he became enamoured with the stately service of the
Church of England, the superior singing, and the grand old organ; and
great was his delight when he was chosen, on account of his good voice
and musical ear, to sit with six other boys in the choir by the organ up
in the gallery of the church. During these three years, from the age of
eight to eleven, he began to read for pleasure or profit such books as
the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," or Baines's "History of the War,"
"Pamela," and the "Earl of Moreland," and to revel in such ballads as
"Chevy Chase," which were committed to memory and repeated when alone,
and served to stir up in his young heart the poetic or the warlike
spirit. But these were years of severe trial too, for the great wars
were then raging on the Continent; taxes pressed with terrible weight on
all classes, but especially on the poor; and, added to these troubles,
were the evils of bad harvests and winters unusually severe. It was hard
indeed for his mother to make a living in such times, and to provide
the barest subsistence for herself and child. "At one time," he says,
"wheaten flour rose to six shillings per stone, and we tried to live on
barley-cakes, which brought on a burning, gnawing pain at the stomach.
For two seasons the corn was spoiled in the fields with wet; and when
the winter came, we could scoop out the middle of the soft distasteful
loaf, and to eat it brought on sickness. Meat was so dear that my mother
could not buy it, and often our dinner consisted of potatoes alone." In
three years the little Bluecoat boy had grown weary of the monotonous
round of teaching at the Free School, and got his mother's consent to
attend a better class of school for boys, kept by a man who was known
among his pupils and the neighbors as "Daddy Briggs." Here there was
talk of such abstruse subjects as _mensuration_ and _algebra_;
"Enfield's Speaker" was used for reading, and the scholars went deeply
into the histories of Greece and Rome and England, led on by that
profound and original historian, Goldsmith! However, the school was an
immense advance on the one just left, and offered certain opportunities
of intercourse with boys of better position and culture than Tom had
known before.
[59] "The Life of Thomas Cooper, Written by Himself."
Hodder & Stoughton, 1872; p. 7.
The boy must have made good use of his time at the Free School, for, it
seems, he went to Daddy Briggs' academy as much in the character of a
teacher as that of a pupil; and he says of this good-natured but not
very accomplished master: "He took no school-fees of my mother, but
employed me as an assistant, for about an hour each day, in teaching the
younger children. He treated me less as a pupil than as a companion, and
I became much attached to him. Yet he was never really a teacher to me.
I made my way easily without help through Walkinghame, part of
Bonnycastle, and got a little way into algebra before I left school." By
this time he had acquired an intense thirst for reading, and eagerly
sought out every book within reach. Now he borrowed the school-books of
his companions and read them through, and now he resorted to the
"circulating library," at the shop of an old lady who supplied him with
writing materials, and, as a great favor, was allowed to read such books
as were not immediately required for circulation; or, again, he seized
upon the cheap issues of educational works which were beginning to make
their appearance about this time, and were sold at the doors of the good
Gainsborough folk by that important personage "the number man." At
twelve years of age he had thus made the acquaintance of the classic
English poets, had read "Cook's Voyages," the "Arabian Nights," the
"Old English Baron," besides "a heap of other romances and novels it
would require pages even to name."
At thirteen years of age the poetry of Byron made a deep impression on
his mind. Nothing in poetry but "Chevy Chase" had ever moved his heart
before. Of "Childe Harold" and "Manfred" he says, "They seemed to create
almost a new sense within me." Poetry was henceforth a passion with him;
but few subjects came amiss: he read everything he could lay hold of.
About this time, too, he showed tendencies in two directions, which were
strongly developed subsequently, and, in fact, formed the main features
of his character in after-years. The conversation of certain working-men
politicians in a neighboring brush manufactory, and the loan of "Hone's
Caricatures" and "The News," set him off in the direction of _politics_,
and made him, of course, a disciple of Radicalism. But the other change
in the current of his thoughts, which came a little later on, was more
important, if not more profound and lasting. Deeply emotional and
imaginative as a child, having also a strong sense of moral right and
wrong, he was easily moved by religious appeals. A band of Primitive
Methodists having come to the town, he was caught up by their enthusiasm
and zeal, and resolved to join them. After much religious emotion,
ending in no very settled state of mind, he left them and united with
the Wesleyan Methodists, whose services and preaching were more to his
mind. This brings us up to the time of his leaving school at the age of
fifteen, and his entrance on the sterner work of life as a shoemaker.
True, he had not done anything very marvellous at present, but he had
fine abilities, a warm emotional nature, a rare poetic taste, a thorough
craving for books, and no little perseverance and industry. Good Mrs.
Cooper, therefore, showed something more than a mother's fond fancy when
she said, "The Lord's will be done; I don't think He intends thee to
spend thy life at shoemaking."
The society in John Clarke's garret, where young Cooper sat down to
learn his trade, was, like that of many similar places, rather literary.
This man Clarke, true to the reputation of the followers of St. Crispin,
was thoughtful and fond of reading. The conversation ran on the poetry
of Shakespeare and Byron, and the acting of Kemble and Young and Mrs.
Siddons--the stars of that day in the theatrical world. One of the
fruits of this new poetic impulse was Cooper's first poem, made one
spring morning in his fifteenth year, as he walked in the fields near
Gainsborough. Quoting this short piece in his Autobiography, he says: "I
give it here, be it remembered, as the first literary feat of a
self-educated boy of fifteen. I say self-educated, so far as I was
educated. Mine has been almost entirely self-education all the way
through life." Great merit or promise is not claimed for these lines,
yet they are worth quoting, if only for the sake of comparing them with
the first attempt of another young shoemaker, Bloomfield.[60]
[60] See above, p. 96.
A MORNING IN SPRING.
"See with splendor Phoebus rise,
And with beauty tinge the skies.
See the clouds of darkness fly
Far beyond the Western sky;
While the lark upsoaring sings,
And the air with music rings;
While the blackbird, linnet, thrush,
Perched on yonder thorny bush,
All unite in tuneful choir,
And raise the happy music higher.
While the murmuring busy bee,
Pattern of wakeful industry,
Flies from flower to flower to drain
The choicest juice from sweetest vein;
While the lowly cottage youth,
His mind well stored with sacred truth,
Rises, devout, his thanks to pay,
And hails the welcome dawn of day.
Oh, that 'twere mine, the happy lot,
To dwell within the peaceful cot--
There rise, each morn, my thanks to pay,
And hail the welcome dawn of day!"
Cooper stayed with Clarke for a year and a half, and, after a brief
interval, went to work with a "first-rate hand," who was known in the
shoemaking fraternity as _Don_ Cundell. Here the youth, more expert at
his craft than many of his companions, learned before the age of
nineteen to make "a really good woman's shoe."[61] During this period he
seems to have settled in good earnest alike to his daily occupation and
the work of self-culture. Under the guidance of a friend named
Macdonald, who lent him books, he read such works as Robertson's
"Histories of Scotland," "America," and "Charles the Fifth," Neale's
"History of the Puritans," and a little theology. Like multitudes of
youths in a position similar to his, Thomas Cooper derived much benefit
from a Mutual Improvement Society which was started in Gainsborough
about this time by a friend of his, a draper's assistant named Joseph
Foulkes Winks. In this society papers were read and discussions held on
all imaginable subjects, literary, historical, and religious. "This
weekly essay-writing," he says, "was an employment which absorbed a good
deal of my thought, and was a good induction into the writing of prose,
and into a mode of expressing one's thoughts." On one occasion a prize
was offered for the best essay on "The Worst King of England." The tug
of war lay between Winks, who chose as his subject James II., and
Cooper, who eventually was adjudged the victor, and had taken William
the Conqueror as his ideal of a bad king. The friendship thus commenced
in amicable rivalry lasted, as we shall see, through life. Not content
with self-improvement, these youths, with Macdonald and Wood, banded
themselves together in a resolve to instruct others less favored than
themselves, and an "Adult School" was formed. This was one of the first
if not the first school of the kind in Lincolnshire, and must have
proved a great benefit to the illiterate poor of the town, for by the
end of the following year, when this branch was admitted into "The Adult
Schools Society," the numbers on the books were 324. Friendships with
two other young men brought such books in his way as Sibley's famous
illustrated work on astrology, over which he wasted much valuable time,
Volney's "Ruins of Empires" and Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary,"
over which his time was worse than wasted. But the best piece of good
fortune in the way of reading came to him in the discovery that one
"Nathaniel Robinson, mercer," "had left his library for the use of the
inhabitants of the town." It seems that this boon had been neglected or
forgotten by the good folk of Gainsborough. Once known to the ardent
young shoemaker, it was not neglected nor forgotten, at all events as
far as he was concerned. He pounced upon it with the avidity and excited
joy of a naturalist who lights upon a new or rare specimen. We must let
him speak for himself in the matter, and describe this precious "find"
in his own words. He says: "I was in ecstasies to find the dusty,
cobwebbed shelves loaded with Hooker, and Bacon, and Cudworth, and
Stillingfleet, and Locke, and Jeremy Taylor, and Tillotson, and Bates,
and Bishop Hall, and Samuel Clarke, and Warburton, and Bull, and
Waterland, and Bentley, and Bayle, and Ray, and Derham, and a score of
other philosophers and divines, mingled with Stanley's 'History of
Philosophers,' and its large full-length portraits; Ogilvy's 'Embassies
to Japan and China,' with their large curious engravings; Speed's and
Rapin's folio Histories of England, Collier's 'Church History,' Fuller's
'Holy War,' Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' the first edition, in black
letter, with its odd rude plates, and countless other curiosities and
valuables."
[61] This seems to be a test of proficiency in the
trade. Bloomfield's brother says, "Robert is a _ladies'_
shoemaker;" and stories are told of his receiving, after he
became famous as a poet, many orders from the nobility for
ladies' boots.
Cooper now settled to reading in desperate earnest, and with something
like a fixed purpose to become a scholar, and perhaps a writer, or a
great political or religious orator, or, more probable than all things
else--for the poetic fervor was very strong just now--a _poet_! Yet he
had no very definite notions of what he was to be. All he was certain
about was that he must and would study, and fit himself for some higher
walk in life when the time came to enter on it. Let the reader keep this
fact in mind while reading the story we have to tell of close
application to study, lofty aspirations, and great attainments as a
scholar. _Thomas Cooper during his shoemaker's life, in which he laid
the foundation of rare scholarship, never earned more than ten shillings
a week_--scarcely enough to buy food and clothes. He had not become an
apprentice, and therefore the laws of the trade prevented the best
masters employing him. One "Widow Hoyle, who sold her goods in the
market cheap," was his only employer, so long as he remained at the
trade. If he was not, in these days of lowly toil and lofty thoughts,
"Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,"
he well knew what it was to feel the restraint of
"Poverty's unconquerable bar."
Yet he had _courage_, an indispensable quality in a youth so situated,
and it was the courage that "mounteth with the occasion," and all these
bars to self-culture only acted as a stimulus to more resolute toil.
Strange to say, one of his greatest incentives to study at this time was
an account of the life of Dr. Samuel Lee, Professor of Hebrew in the
University of Cambridge, which the young student had read in the
_Imperial Magazine_, then edited by another of our illustrious
shoemakers, Samuel Drew. Lee had been a carpenter, ignorant of English
grammar, had bought Ruddiman's Latin Rudiments, and having mastered the
book, had learned to read Cæsar and Virgil, and had taught himself
Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac by the time he was six-and-twenty years of
age! Cooper said within himself, "If one man can teach himself a
language, another can." So he went to work, following in Lee's steps so
far as to take Ruddiman's book and commit "the entire volume to
memory--notes and all!" Then came the study of _Hebrew_ with the help of
Lyon's small grammar, bought for a shilling at an old bookstall; and a
year after he was busy at _Greek_, and created for himself a pleasing
diversion by the comparatively easy task of mastering _French_. All this
time his general reading was not neglected. By the advice of a valued
friend, John Hough, he fortified his mind against the sceptical thoughts
which previous reading had awakened by going carefully through the chief
works on Christian evidences. Few divinity students at the end of their
course have read more carefully or extensively than this occupant of a
cobbler's stall had done by the time he was twenty-three years old.
Paley's "Horæ Paulinæ," "Natural Theology," and "Evidences," Bishop
Watson's "Apologies," Soame Jenyns' "Internal Evidences," Lord
Lyttleton's "Conversion of St. Paul," Sherlock's "Trial of the
Witnesses," besides profounder works like Butler's "Analogy," Bentley's
"Folly of Atheism," Dr. Samuel Clarke's "Being and Attributes of God,"
Stillingfleet's "Origines Sacræ," and Warburton's "Divine Legation of
Moses," were as familiar to him as the "Paradise Lost" and most of the
plays of Shakespeare were to his companion Thomas Miller.[62] The labors
of this period, from 1824 to 1828, were tremendous, or, as one of Sir
Walter Scott's characters was wont to say, "prodigious." Cooper had left
Don Cundell's, and now worked at home, so that he could arrange his time
for study and work as he pleased. Like Drew, he had learned to do a fair
day's work and not to neglect the means of earning his daily bread for
the more fascinating occupations of reading and study. But if ordinary
work was not neglected, it must be confessed that the work of the
scholar was overdone. No one can live as Cooper lived from the age of
nineteen to twenty-three without incurring fearful risk to body and
mind. Rising at three, or four at the latest, he read history, or the
grammar of some language, or engaged in translation till seven, when he
sat down to his stall. At meal-times he attempted the double task of
taking in food for the body and the mind at the same time, cutting up
his food and eating it with a spoon that he might not have occasion to
take his eyes off the book he held in his hand; at work till eight or
nine, he was all the while committing to memory and reciting aloud
passages from the poets, or declensions and conjugations, or rules of
syntax; and when he rose from his stool, it was only to pace the room,
while he still went on with his studies, until at last he dropped into
bed utterly exhausted. This was his method in spring and summer, but
even in winter his hours were just as long, and study in the early
morning was not accompanied by the invigorating influence of walking
exercise and fresh air; for he says, "When in the coldness of winter we
could not afford to have a fire till my mother rose, I used to put a
lamp on a stool, which I placed on a little round table, and standing
before it wrapped up in my mother's old red cloak, I read on till seven,
or studied a grammar or my Euclid, and frequently kept my feet moving to
secure warmth or prevent myself from falling asleep."[63] In this way
Latin was so far mastered that Cæsar's "De Bello Gallico" could be read
"page after page with scarcely more than a glance at the dictionary,"
and the "Eneid" of Virgil became an intellectual love that lasted for
life. We have no space to describe the vast amount of historical and
miscellaneous reading done at this time. It was surely no small feat for
a shoemaker, working hard for twelve or thirteen hours in the day, to go
in a few years through Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," Sale's "Preliminary
Discourse to his Translation of the Koran," Mosheim's "Church History,"
all the principal English poets from Shakespeare to Scott and Keats; to
read the "Curiosities of Literature," "Calamities" and "Quarrels of
Authors," Wharton's "History of Poetry" and Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets," Boswell's "Life of Johnson" and Landor's "Imaginary
Conversations," Southey's "Book of the Church," and Lingard's
"Anglo-Saxon Antiquities," besides a host of books of travel, and
quarterly and monthly magazines innumerable.
[62] Thomas Miller, afterward known as a poet and
novelist, and for his charming descriptions of rural scenery,
was an intimate friend of Cooper from childhood to old age.
[63] "Life of Thomas Cooper," pp. 60, 61.
We have said that Cooper _overdid_ the work of study. Like Kirke-White,
he was so completely absorbed with the passion for learning, that he set
all the laws of health at defiance, and had to pay the penalty. Having a
stronger constitution than the Nottingham youth, Cooper managed to
escape with his life, and, after a period of bodily and mental
prostration, with all his old vigor restored to him; but it was a narrow
escape. These excessive labors, coupled with the effects of scanty fare,
brought him to a state of extreme weakness. He says, "I not unfrequently
swooned away and fell all along the floor when I tried to take my cup of
oatmeal gruel at the end of my day's labor. Next morning, of course, I
was not able to rise at an early hour; and then very likely the next
day's study had to be stinted. I needed better food than we could afford
to buy, and often had to contend with the sense of faintness, while I
still plodded on with my double task of mind and body."[64] At length,
after many premonitory symptoms, came a crisis. One night he had to be
carried to bed in a dead faint, and for nine weeks he left his bed but
for a short time each day. The greatest fears were felt for his safety;
the doctor had little hope, and once he was so prostrate, that a friend
who was called in sadly told his mother that the pulse had ceased to
beat, and _he was dead_! This was at the end of 1827; by the spring of
the following year he had recovered sufficiently to begin to think of
going to work again. A brief spell at his old occupation was enough to
satisfy him that it would not suit him in his altered state of health;
and, after a short rest and more complete recovery, he took the welcome
advice of two friends and agreed to _open a school_. He had now done
forever with the trade of a shoemaker, after giving to it eight years of
the best part of his early life. These he confesses to have been, on the
whole, most happy years, and of the last four he says with enthusiasm,
"What glorious years were those years of self-denial and earnest mental
toil, from the age of nearly nineteen to nearly three-and-twenty, that I
sat and worked in that corner of my poor mother's lowly home!" He had
certainly made wondrous progress as a self-taught scholar, and now he
was prepared to enter the world and make his own way in it, with such a
stock of learning and culture as few young men in England, in his
position, could boast of. We scarcely dare venture to estimate his
acquirements at this time. The reader can easily judge from our account
of his studies how considerable they must have been. In English
literature, from Spenser and Shakespeare to the essayists and poets,
such as De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb, or Byron, Campbell, and
Moore, he was well versed. He had read extensively in history,
philosophy, theology, and Christian evidences. As to mathematics, he had
gone pretty deeply into algebra and geometry; and in the languages,
besides his "easy" French, he had done something in Hebrew, could read
his Greek Testament, and found delight in the Latin authors, such as
Cæsar, Virgil, Tacitus, and Lactantius. This is no mean story to tell of
the accomplishments of a self-taught shoemaker, who has never earned
more than ten shillings per week.
[64] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 67.
School-teaching was a congenial employment for one so fond of study and
so apt to teach as Thomas Cooper. He threw his whole soul into the work,
and succeeded in establishing a first-rate school of its class; and
_that_ class of school was certainly a vast improvement on the Free
School of his own early days. Everybody in Gainsborough knew the
studious shoemaker who had learned four languages at the cobbler's
stall, read as much, or more, than any one in the town of his own age,
had a marvellous memory, and could repeat the whole of _Hamlet_ and the
first four books of the "Paradise Lost!" Besides all this, he was known
and esteemed for a steady young man, who, though he might incur a little
suspicion among the strictly religious folk by his neglect of public
worship, was guilty of no waste of time or money in vicious company and
riotous living. And so pupils flocked in; a hundred names were entered
on his books by the end of the first year, and the school prospered to
his heart's content. Nor was the confidence of parents misplaced; never,
surely, did a teacher give himself more completely to his work. He gave
even more than was bargained for, drilling all the boys in Latin
grammar, and carrying them on as far as possible in the higher branches
of arithmetic. Five years were thus spent most usefully and happily at
Gainsborough, after which he removed from the old town and settled in
the cathedral city of Lincoln.
But before quitting Gainsborough a vital change had taken place in his
thoughts and mode of life. Brought face to face with death in his recent
illness, the most serious thoughts had been aroused within his mind, and
on his recovery he was not the man to abandon or drown such thoughts
because the immediate fear of death had passed away. The earnest
conversations he held with the young curate of the parish, "the pious
and laborious Charles Hensley," and his two former friends, Hough and
Kelvey, strengthened his resolve to seek for peace of mind in the belief
of gospel truth and entire devotion to a religious life. In January,
1829, he joined the Methodist Society. The perusal of Sigston's "Life of
William Bramwell" fired his soul with a passion for holiness, and such
was his intensity of religious fervor for a time, that he is constrained
to say in his Autobiography: "If throughout eternity in heaven I be as
happy as I often was for whole days during that short period of my
religious life, it will be heaven indeed. Often for several days
together I felt close to the Almighty--felt I was His own and His
entirely. I felt no wandering of the will and inclination to yield to
sin; and when temptation came, my whole soul wrestled for victory till
the temptation fled." Entered on the local preachers' plan, he turned
his rare gifts to good account in ministering to the congregations which
formed the Gainsborough "circuit," and developed that faculty of
eloquent speech which in later years has delighted the thousands who
gathered to hear his political orations as an advocate of the "People's
Charter" or his grand lectures on the evidences of the Christian
religion. Driven away from his old home by unhappy disturbances in the
Wesleyan Society, he went, as we have said, in November, 1833, to live
at Lincoln, where once more he occupied himself as a schoolmaster.
Just before leaving Gainsborough he was constrained to gather a few
pieces of his poetry together and publish them by subscription in a
small volume, with the title, taken from the first piece, "The Wesleyan
Chiefs." The book fell flat on the market, and seems to have had very
little merit. Its publication was chiefly remarkable for bringing the
author into the company of James Montgomery, who kindly undertook to
read the proof sheets. Only one of these selections seems to have called
forth a word of commendation from the veteran poet. Against the lines
addressed to "Lincoln Cathedral" he wrote: "These are very noble lines,
and the versification is truly worthy of them."[65] Montgomery was then
over sixty years of age, and had published all the poems by which his
name is known to fame.
[65] These lines stand first among the minor pieces in
"Cooper's Poetical Works." London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1877.
Soon after going to reside in Lincoln, Cooper married Miss Jobson,
sister of Frederic James Jobson, afterward well known as Dr. Jobson
among the Wesleyan Methodists, and at one time their honored President
of the Conference. The religious troubles at Gainsborough followed the
local preacher to Lincoln, for the superintendent with whom he had
disagreed at the former place would not suffer him to rest in his new
home; and at length, soured and wearied by what he could not but deem
ill-usage, he threw up his appointment on the plan, and finally cut
himself off from the Methodist connection. Free to devote his energies
to other pursuits, he now flung himself very zealously into the new
Mechanics' Institute movement, took a class in Latin, sought to perfect
himself in French pronunciation, and to acquire a knowledge of Italian
under the tutorship of Signor D'Albrione, "a very noble-looking Italian
gentleman, a native of Turin, who had been a cavalry officer in the
armies of Napoleon, had endured the retreat from Moscow, was at the
defeat of Leipzig," etc., and had become "a refugee in England on
account of his participation in the conspiracy of the Carbonari."
German, also, was studied for a time; but very soon a new attraction
arose in the formation of a Choral Society, of which the zealous
schoolmaster became the secretary and chief manager, collecting its
funds, enlisting by his persuasive powers the best singers in the city,
and arranging for its meetings and public performances. His attendance
at the lectures of the Institute incidentally led to a new employment,
in which undoubtedly Thomas Cooper might have excelled and gained no
mean emolument and renown had he chosen to devote himself exclusively to
it. Having sent a paragraph report of one of the lectures on chemistry
to the _Lincoln_, _Rutland_, and _Stamford Mercury_, he was waited upon
by the editor, Richard Newcomb, and requested to supply intelligence
weekly of any affairs of importance in the city, and promised £20 a year
for his trouble. This was in 1834. In two years he gave up his
connection with the Choral Society, cultivated the newspaper
correspondent business to such an extent that he was advanced to £100
per year, and so gave up his school. Having put his hand to the work of
newspaper correspondence, he did not do it by halves. He exposed the
abuses, as he deemed them, then rife in the city, wrote sketches of the
"Lincoln Preachers," and created such a stir by his lively and racy
articles on municipal and political matters, that the paper rapidly rose
in circulation, and he found himself for a time the most notorious man
in the city, feared by many, hated by not a few, and courted by those
who had favors to win or help to secure from the lively correspondent.
In 1838, at the urgent request of Mr. Newcomb, he removed to Stamford,
under a verbal promise that when the editor retired, which he intimated
would be very soon, Cooper should have the sole management. After
remaining for a few months in the position of clerk to Mr. Newcomb, and
finding to his chagrin that the old editor gave no sign of keeping to
his agreement, he very rashly threw down his pen and gave notice to
leave. A little patience might have sufficed to gain his end, but his
mortification was extreme, and so a good situation, worth, in all, £300
a year, was sacrificed. "On the 1st of June, 1839," he writes, "we got
on the stage-coach, with our boxes of books, at Stamford, and away I
went to make my first venture in London."
The six years spent at Lincoln had been a time of literary activity in
more ways than that of newspaper correspondence. Many minor pieces, such
as are found at the end of the collected poems, were written, and the
title and plan of his best poetical work, "The Purgatory of Suicides,"
was decided upon. But he had done more in the way of prose. The first
volume of a historical romance was finished ere he left Lincoln, and now
that he had come to London, he hoped to make his way with this as an
introduction to the publishers and the reading world. But he very soon
discovered, as thousands besides have done, that he had little to hope
from patrons, even though, like Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, they might be
men to whom he had rendered some political service in days gone by, and
that his unlucky manuscript was a poor broken reed to lean upon. After
nine months' bitter experience of fruitless attempts to find employment,
and when all his stock of five hundred books, the dear companions of the
last ten years of earnest study, had been sold, and even his father's
old silver watch and articles of clothing had been carried to the
pawnshop, he was fortunate enough to make an engagement, at £3 per week,
as editor of the _Kentish Mercury_, _Gravesend Journal_, and _Greenwich
Gazette_, of which Mr. William Dougal Christie was the proprietor. He
had held this office but a short time when disagreement as to the
management of the paper led him to give notice of retirement from his
awkward position. Strangely enough, at this very juncture a letter
reached him from a friend in Lincoln enclosing another from the manager
of a paper in Leicester, asking to be informed of "the whereabouts of
Thomas Cooper, who wrote the articles entitled 'Lincoln Preachers' in
the _Stamford Mercury_." Dropping the letter, he exclaimed to his wife,
"The message has come at last--the message of Destiny! We are going to
live at Leicester," thus expressing a thought he had secretly cherished
for years, "that he had something to do of a stirring and important
nature at Leicester." And so it proved, but that "something" was very
different from what he had ever anticipated. Answering the inquiry in
person, he agreed with the manager of the _Leicestershire Mercury_ to
accept a reporter's place at a small remuneration, and in November,
1840, he went to reside in his native town and prepare himself for his
"destiny." In London he had met with his old friend Thomas Miller, who
was then writing "Lady Jane Grey;" and here at Leicester he discovered
another Gainsborough youth, Joseph Winks, who had been his companion and
rival in the Improvement Society, and was now "a printer and bookseller,
a busy politician, Baptist preacher, and editor of three or four small
religious periodicals."[66]
[66] The _Children's Magazine_ (next to the _Teacher's
Offering_ the first magazine for children published in this
country), the _Christian Pioneer_, the _Child's Magazine_. He
was also editor of the _Baptist Reporter_ for many years.
Sent one night by the manager of the _Mercury_ to attend and report a
Chartist lecture, he was introduced for the first time to those poor but
desperately earnest politicians who were at that time making their
pathetic and passionate voices heard throughout the Midland and Northern
Counties. From that night Thomas Cooper was a Chartist; and for the next
three years his best powers were devoted to the cause of the suffering
operatives and his life-interests bound up in the Chartist movement.
Nothing could be more pitiable than the condition of the Leicester
"stockingers" at this time. The average weekly wages of a man who worked
hard were four-and-sixpence! Ground down to the point of starvation by
"frame-rent," payment for "standing," for "giving-out," and for the
"seamer," and, worst of all, obliged to pay the full week's rent when
working on half-time, it is no wonder that his spirit was galled to
madness, and that he looked to something like a political revolution for
a redress of his wrongs. Lord Byron, in the only speech he ever
delivered in the House of Lords, had spoken eloquently and generously in
behalf of these suffering operatives of the Midland Counties.
One cannot wonder that a man like Cooper, who had known the pinchings of
poverty, should have felt his soul stirred within him. His sympathies
and views soon drew him into writing and speaking for the Chartists.
This was an offence in the eyes of his employers of the _Mercury_, and
led to his severance from them. He now, at the request of the factory
hands of Leicester, became their political leader, and the editor of
their paper, the _Midland Counties Illuminator_, which fell into his own
hands after a few weeks, and was changed in style and title, and made a
new appearance as the _Chartist Rushlight_, and afterward as the
_Extinguisher_. In the midst of the dispute between Whigs and Tories,
Cooper was "nominated" by the Chartists as their candidate, not with any
hope of being carried at the poll, but rather as a means of spiting the
Whigs, against whom the working-men were intensely bitter, on account of
their unwillingness to support "The People's _Charter_." Endeavoring to
turn his leadership of the Chartists to some account apart from
politics, he added to the task of regular addresses in the open air the
conduct of a Sunday adult school and Sunday-evening meetings; and, when
the winter came on, gathered his friends together, and sought to lift
their thoughts above their daily care, and awaken in their minds a
desire for reading, by a course of lectures on literature and science.
But the bad times of 1842 put a stop to all this. The condition of the
stockingers grew worse and worse, and Cooper took to supplying bread on
sale or loan, to meet the wants of the poor starving creatures, and ran
into debt by so doing. The poorhouse, or _Bastile_, as the working-men
always called it, was crowded to excess, and riots broke out now and
again; but with these neither Cooper nor the Chartist Association had
anything to do. In August of the same year he was appointed by this body
as a delegate to the Chartists' Convention at Manchester. On the way
thither he lectured or spoke in the open air at Birmingham, Wednesbury,
Bilston, Wolverhampton, and at length came to Hanley, where he addressed
a vast crowd of men at "the _Crown Bank_." His subject was the sixth
commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder," in which he spoke of the
violations of this law by conquerors and legislators, and by masters who
oppressed the hireling in his wages. The men were now out on strike, and
the excitement produced by this and another address on the following
night was intense. He counselled perpetually "peace, law, and order,"
and bade the men hold out in their strike until the People's Charter
became the law of the land. Riot and incendiarism broke out in a short
time, for which Cooper was in no way directly responsible, but had, on
the other hand, distinctly endeavored to dissuade them from. He was
taken prisoner on his return from Manchester, and having been tried for
the crime of arson, was acquitted, having pleaded his own case so
eloquently that the judge was evidently affected, and the ladies present
at the trial were even moved to tears. Tried again at the Spring Assizes
on the charge of sedition, he cross-examined the witnesses from Monday
to Saturday at noon, and then proceeded to sum up his defence in a
speech which altogether (Sunday intervening) lasted ten hours. "I do not
think," he remarks, "I ever spoke so powerfully in my life as during the
last hour of that defence. The peroration, the Stafford papers said,
would never be forgotten; and I remember as I sat down, panting for
breath and utterly exhausted, how Talfourd and Erskine and the jury sat
transfixed, gazing at me in silence, and the whole crowded place was
breathless, as it seemed, for a minute." The case being removed by a
"writ of _certiorari_" to the Court of Queen's Bench, was tried on the
5th of May, 1843. In his defence Thomas Cooper again delivered an
eloquent speech, five and a half hours long, and was again acquitted of
the charge of felony. Judge Erskine's notes of the trial had "_mistake_"
written alongside the evidence on that part of the charge. But the
eloquent Chartist orator was convicted on the charge of _sedition_ and
_conspiracy_, and sent to Stafford jail for two years.
There are few chapters in the Autobiography so full of interest and so
graphically written as those which describe Thomas Cooper's prison
experience. Galled to the quick by the treatment he received--for he was
kept on low, miserable fare and denied "literary privileges"--he
determined to break down "the system of restraint in Stafford jail, and
win the privilege of reading and writing, or die in the attempt." After
many manoeuvres he managed to get pen, ink, and paper, and write a
petition to the House of Commons, which was handed in at the bar of the
House by Mr. Duncombe, M.P. for Finsbury. All that he could reasonably
expect was now granted in answer to his appeal, and the remainder of his
time was filled up with literary work. He revelled in the English poets
from Shakespeare to Shelley; read again the "Decline and Fall,"
Prideaux's "Connexion," White's "Selborne," etc., etc.; fell
passionately in love with the study of Hebrew, and almost raved about
the glories of the sacred language of the Old Testament; and read two
thirds of the Hebrew Bible, copying out verbs and nouns as he went
along. One day he was visited by Lord Sandon, afterward Earl of
Harrowby, who fell into conversation with the learned prisoner about the
poetical books of the Bible in the old German edition which lay open
before him on the table. A short time before his release the chaplain
told him that the way was open for him to go to Cambridge if he would;
but the conditions were such as did not suit the independent mind of the
political martyr. Cooper had a shrewd suspicion that the visit of the
nobleman had some connection with this generous offer.
Cooper's best work in Stafford jail was the composition of the
well-known poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides." This poem, he tells us,
was the working out of a thought which occurred to him ten years before,
when he was sitting as a reporter in the assize court at Lincoln. The
historical romance, the first part of which he had carried to London in
1839, was also completed during his imprisonment, and he wrote during
the same period a volume of tales, afterward published under the title,
"Wise Saws and Modern Instances." "These," he says, "I took out of
prison with me as my keys for unlocking the gates of fortune."
On his liberation, May 4th, 1845, he went up to London, shedding tears
of gladness and gratitude on the way as he looked once more on the green
fields and hedgerows of the Midland Counties. His first care was to find
a publisher for his prison rhyme and tales. As soon as he was able he
sought out Mr. Duncombe, to thank him for his generous help in the
matter of the petition to the House of Commons, and to ask for counsel
in seeking a publisher. Duncombe sent him to Mr. D'Israeli, with the
following note:
"MY DEAR D'ISRAELI,--I send you Mr. Cooper, a Chartist, red-hot
from Stafford jail. But don't be frightened; he won't bite you.
He has written a poem and a romance, and thinks he can cut out
'Coningsby' and 'Sybil.' Help him if you can, and oblige yours,
T. S. DUNCOMBE."
It is gratifying to read of the kindness with which the shrewd
statesman, then a Tory of the Tories, received the "red-hot radical." "I
wish I had seen you before I finished my last novel," said he; "my
heroine Sybil is a Chartist." With the kindly help of Douglas Jerrold
the "Purgatory" was at length published by Jeremiah How, Fleet Street,
who undertook to bear the cost and risk of printing. It came out in
September, 1845, and the five hundred copies of the first edition were
sold off before Christmas. Cooper now began to write for Douglas
Jerrold's "Shilling Magazine." The volume of tales called "Wise Saws,"
etc., and a short poem, "The Baron's Yule Feast," were issued about the
same time. The "Purgatory of Suicides" had been dedicated, without leave
asked, to Thomas Carlyle, to whom the author sent a copy, and from whom
he received in acknowledgment a characteristic letter, in which, among
other kind and wise things, that greatest of all the literary men of his
age said, "I have looked into your poem, and find indisputable traces of
genius in it--a dark Titanic energy struggling there, for which we hope
there will be clearer daylight by and by;" and along with the letter
came a copy of "Past and Present," with Carlyle's autograph. In 1846
Cooper was at work on Douglas Jerrold's weekly paper, visiting the
Midland and Northern Counties as a sort of commissioner, and writing
articles on the "Condition of the People of England." Passing through
the Lake District, he called on Wordsworth, and was most kindly received
by the "majestic old man." Great, however, was the Chartist's amazement
to hear the "Tory" Wordsworth say with reference to the Chartist
movement, "You were right; I have always said the people were right in
what they asked; but you went the wrong way to get it." On his return to
London, Cooper engaged to lecture on Sunday evenings at South Place,
Finsbury Square, and continued the work of public lecturer for the next
eight years. During this time he lectured through the winter for various
political and socialist societies in several large halls in London, such
as the John Street Institution and the "Hall of Science," City Road, and
filled up the time during the summer by lecturing tours throughout the
kingdom. He had now become a _sceptic_, _i.e._ _doubter_, and confined
himself in his lectures exclusively to secular topics, political or
literary. The misery he had witnessed in Leicester and the Potteries,
the failure of all his efforts to benefit the suffering poor, and the
long imprisonment he had endured as a disinterested champion of their
cause, had sorely shaken his faith in Divine Providence and driven him
to the verge of downright atheism, but only to the verge: he declares
that he was never an atheist, nor ever "proclaimed blank atheism in his
public teaching."[67] Yet it must be confessed he went far in this
direction. The worst period of his life in this respect was the winter
of 1848-49, when, having become a disciple of Strauss, he engaged to
give a series of lectures on Sunday evenings in the "Hall of Science" on
the teachings of the "Leben Jesu." He says: "There is no part of my
teaching as a public lecturer that I regret so deeply as this. It would
rejoice my heart indeed if I could obliterate those lectures from the
realm of fact."[68] But for the most part his addresses were on purely
literary or historical subjects, and marvellous indeed was the
versatility and extent of learning they displayed. The enumeration of
topics alone would occupy several pages. Every one of the chief English
poets and their poems, the history of every European country, the lives
of great reformers, statesmen, generals, inventors, discoverers, men of
science, musicians, ancient philosophers and modern philanthropists,
negro slavery, taxation, national debt, the age of chivalry, the Middle
Ages, wrongs of Poland, the Gypsies, ancient Egypt, astronomy, geology,
natural history, the vegetable kingdom--these and scores of other topics
were treated during these years of lecturing life in London and the
provinces. In addition to these duties he had other cares and toils. In
1848-49 he edited a weekly paper called the _Plain Speaker_, and in the
following year _Cooper's Journal_. His "Triumph of Perseverance"
appeared in 1849, "Alderman Ralph" and "The Family Feud," two novels, in
1853 and 1855 respectively.
[67] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 262, also pp.
356-367.
[68] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 316.
Returning from a lecturing tour at the end of 1855, he was conscious of
a great and vital change which had for some time been going on within
his mind, and when he attempted to recommence his work at the City Hall
in January, 1856, he found it impossible to go on along the old lines.
On a certain memorable night, when announced to speak on "Sweden and the
Swedes," he could not utter a word. He turned pale as death, and as the
audience sat gazing and wondering what could have come to the bold and
fluent speaker, whose tongue was ready on every theme, his pent-up
feelings at length found vent. He told the people he could lecture on
Sweden, but must relieve his conscience, for he could suppress
conviction no longer. He then declared that he had been insisting on the
duty of morality for years, but there had been this radical defect in
his teachings, that he had "neglected to teach the right foundation for
morals--the existence of a Divine moral Governor."[69] In the storm
which followed he challenged them to bring the best sceptics they could
muster in the metropolis, and he would meet them in debate on the being
of God and the argument for a future state. He kept his promise, and for
four nights maintained his ground against _Robert_ Cooper[70] and others
in the City Hall and the John Street Institute.
[69] Ibid p. 335.
[70] The charges of atheism and atheistic advocacy
made against _Thomas_ Cooper have often arisen from confounding
_Thomas_ Cooper the _sceptic_ with _Robert_ Cooper the
_infidel_. See "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 357.
But though the battle was fought out bravely in public, he had yet
another conflict to wage and win ere his mind enjoyed rest and peace in
the faith of a true _Christian_. In this conflict he received valuable
aid from the Rev. Charles Kingsley,[71] and his old friend and relative,
Dr. Jobson. Through the kind interest of the Rev. F. D. Maurice, W. E.
Foster, M.P., and W. F. Cowper, President of the Board of Health, Cooper
obtained employment for two years under Government as a copyist of
letters. Returning to the City Hall, he now began a series of
Sunday-evening lectures on Theism, and advancing stage by stage, he took
up such themes as the Moral Government of God, Man's Moral Nature, the
Soul and a Future State, Evidences of Christianity, Atonement, Faith,
Repentance, etc. But his return to the truth of Christ and Christianity
was gradual, though sure. As he says, "I had been twelve years a
sceptic; and it was not until fully two years had been devoted to hard
reading and thinking that I could conscientiously and truly say, I am
again a Christian, even nominally." Saved in an extraordinary manner
from death by a railway accident as he was travelling to Bradford on the
10th May, 1858, he finally and fully resolved to dedicate his powers to
the service of God, saying within himself as he stood looking on the
mournful sight of the ruined train and the dead and wounded lying
around, "Oh, take my life, which Thou hast graciously kept, and let it
be devoted to Thee. I have again entered Thy service; let me never more
leave it, but live only to spread Thy truth!"
[71] See letters to Thomas Cooper in "Kingsley's Life
and Letters." London: Henry King & Co., 1877, pp. 183 and 221,
etc.
He began at once not only to lecture on the evidences of Christianity,
but to preach, and received many solicitations to join different
religious societies. Dr. Hook of Leeds generously offered him an
appointment as head of a band of Scripture-readers, with freedom to go
out on his own mission as a speaker when he pleased. This offer he
declined, with grateful thanks to the worthy vicar. In the spring of the
following year he decided to join the Baptist denomination, and writes,
"Reflection made me a Baptist in conviction, and on Whitsunday, 1859, my
old and dear friend, Joseph Foulkes Winks, immersed me in baptism in
Friar Lane Chapel, Leicester."
From that time to the present--twenty-two years--Thomas Cooper has
devoted his great powers to the work of preaching and lecturing on the
evidences of the Christian religion. The energy and ability displayed in
this noble work by the veteran orator have been remarkable. For months
together he has been known to travel long distances by rail, and lecture
four or five times in the week, and preach three times on Sunday. After
a two hours' lecture he was wont, during the first few years of this
period, to recite the first two or three books of Milton's "Paradise
Lost." Few, if any, that ever heard his preaching can forget its rich
spirituality of tone and delightful purity and simplicity of style. The
lectures it is hard to describe without seeming to exaggerate their rare
merits. The best testimony to their worth has been given by the hundreds
of thousands who have come together to listen to them as delivered in
all the chief towns of England, Scotland, and Wales for more than twenty
years, and by their rapid and extensive sale when published. Crowded
with facts of history or science which are clearly arranged and pressed
into the service of logical argument, delivered extemporaneously in
language of the truest and homeliest Saxon type, and often marked by
passages of great eloquence, these lectures may be taken as ideals of
what popular lectures on religious evidences should be. Of his present
employment, Thomas Cooper, writing in 1872, says, in his own simple
fashion: "My work is indeed a happy work. Sunday is now a day of heaven
to me. I feel that to preach 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' is the
most exalted and ennobling work in which a human creature can be
engaged. And believing that I am performing the work of duty--_that I am
right_--my employment of lecturing on the 'Evidences of Natural and
Revealed Religion,' from week to week, fills me with the consoling
reflection that my life is not being spent in vain, much less spent in
evil." Happy close of a strangely eventful and checkered life! May the
stalwart old laborer of _seventy-five_ be spared to scatter many a
handful of the seeds of truth before he hears the summons which shall
end his labors.
We have spoken, in the title of this chapter, of Thomas Cooper as "The
self-educated shoemaker who reared his own monument." This sketch cannot
be closed more appropriately than by giving the titles of the works
published during the last eight years--the stones which form the chief
part of that monument:
The Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time (1872), twentieth
thousand.
Plain Pulpit-Talk (1872), third edition.
The Life of Thomas Cooper, written by Himself (1872), twelfth
thousand.
The Paradise of Martyrs, or Faith Rhyme (1873).
God, the Soul, and a Future State (1873), eight thousand.
Old-Fashioned Stories (1874), third edition.
The Verity of Christ's Resurrection from the Dead (1875), fifth
thousand.
The Verity and Value of the Miracles of Christ (1876), fourth
thousand.
The Poetical Works--Purgatory of Suicides, Paradise of Martyrs,
Minor Poems (1877), Evolution, the Stone Book, and the Mosaic
Record of Creation (1878), third thousand.
The Atonement and other Discourses (1880).