I have left England twice since my visit to Rome: once in 1878, to stay
at Ballenstedt, near the Harz, for a summer; once more to Stassfurt,
for a prolonged sojourn. In my own country, Bath has been my favourite
place, where I have been for several seasons. Brighton, too, I have often
visited, having my brother there. Neither have I neglected the Isle of
Wight, my favourite spot being on the unfashionable West, at Totland’s
Bay.
There is, however, little left to say about England, by a native,
therefore little to record; but I have found plenty to do at home.
Among other sights, while at Ballenstedt—it was in 1878—we went to the
Duke of Brunswick’s castle of Blankenburg; not going over its four
hundred chambers, but confining ourselves very much to the billiard-room
and chapel. In that apartment the walls were decorated with engravings of
race-horses, and of British sports of every kind—fox-hunting, cricket,
and other games—all that are ever seen in shop-windows or elsewhere. A
billiard-table occupied a corner of the room, with the rules of the game
hung near it. The ducal family were Anglicized by the war, and the black
dress of the troops is still worn. The chairs in the room were all backed
by the arms of England and the Order of the Garter.
In the chapel there is an ivory crucifix attributed to Michael Angelo.
The floor is, in one place, ostentatiously unboarded, to show the
foundation to be rock.
Ballenstedt is a pleasant summer town. There is a fine avenue leading to
the castle, and to the public gardens; the forest is close at hand, and a
chain of trout streams and lakes descends from the neighbouring hills.
The Affenthaler valley, too, abuts on the place, leading to Falconstein,
in whose castle are some of the noblest stag-antlers ever seen.
All that is written, all that comes to pass, has its concluding chapter;
I am fast approaching mine.
In writing these memoirs, a love of my fellows has dominated my pen, as
it does, always, in what I compose, for serious perusal. I am sometimes
surprised at finding how this feeling keeps the upper hand, as, in the
ordinary sense, it is not always deserved, nor always quite felt at
starting: but it warms. As I began by saying, so I repeat, that, in a
certain way, I am my own posterity; and, perhaps, I revive in myself the
better feelings that a dead man would assuredly experience if he came
suddenly to life.
I may end by saying yet a few more words about myself in concluding. As
a sort of posterity I may allude even to the circumstance that my memory
serves me as well as ever, as this memoir shows, and that, but for my
disaster, I could give myself a certificate of health that would satisfy
the most prying of life insurance companies.
I have all the buoyancy of youth! As a sort of posterity I have almost
a disposition, in some things, to appreciate myself; but at this point
decency forbids. I have quite recently written, 1st, a volume of
“Epigrams,” from an experience quite deserving the attention of every
innocent novice who looks up to mankind; 2nd, a volume of “Sonnets”; 3rd,
my “Memoirs”; 4th, “Miscellaneous Essays and Verse.”
My mind holds out; it has increased in accuracy up to the present time,
now that my 84th year has set in with a rush. But I find that my eyesight
deteriorates, though slowly, and that, like everything else that is
inevitable, I can bear it, though I should like to have my observers
back, so lovely is the clear light of day!
I would altogether cease from work, but that time would hang so heavily.
I shall be as idle as I can, and so end mine as Byron began his “Hours.”
In writing my memoirs the years have shrunk into days, but they
fairly depict my part of Nature’s message of which she made me a
_commissionaire_. She has told through me, in the fragmentary form of
opinion, what her purpose is after being filtered through my brain, not
what it is prior to the process of filtration, which leaves behind the
insoluble matters, which, try as one will, are not to be got at. All
things are comical in the process of production—the furnaces, the looms,
the raw material, now a fibre, now a thread dipped in dye, now in mad
haste rolling into a texture, now snipped with scissors into a man’s or
woman’s shape, now on their backs as they make each other a bow, or kiss
hands across a street, the bricks of which a year before were in a clay
field growing wheat.
The epigrams that I have ready for the press, whenever the public may be
disposed for a fresh _jeu d’esprit_, are three hundred and sixty-six in
number, to correspond with leap-year.
They more or less pourtray the laughing side of life, but are not
without their earnest moments, and they have references of ludicrous
applicability.
It may be remarked that while that species of humour is liked and largely
pervades our best authors, epigram has never been made a specialty by any
one of them. There exists, therefore, a blank under this heading; and my
attempt is to fill this vacancy in our literature, strange as it is that
such should still be left among its crowded pages.
A poem, of whatever length, should start vividly, so as to wind up the
ear and set the mind ticking. I have known poems with much latent beauty
in them, set aside as rubbish, from failing to wake up the thoughts at
starting. I remember a sonnet which an admirer pronounced the finest in
the language (with about as much sense as George No. IV. called himself
the first gentleman in Europe), and which had a clear-cut symmetry and
depth, being called trashy by one who had critical power, but who did not
warm his wax before taking its impression. Short poems have value to the
author of them as being written on passing occasions, and thus becoming
biographic. I possess a volume of this sort, called “Many Moods,” some of
which have had publication.
Life is a comedy during this filtration, by means of which it receives
its mysterious consciousness through a vulgar brain; death would be a
comedy but that the joke is stale.
Nature seems as opinionated as she is universal. She uses millions of
millions of brain-filters, all different, and all at the same time, in
her thought-factory; the results some of us refilter to render them
purer! The proceeding is ludicrous in the extreme at first sight, but it
is amusing; and, strange to say, like the uproar of a mob, or sounds from
a thousand blacksmiths’ forges, they unite into final harmoniousness.
Of my latter works above named, “The New Day” only has passed from
darkness through man’s cerebral filter into the light. They have all been
written during the mental cheerfulness of much bodily suffering, of which
I have a pretty good twinge as I now scribble. A cracked hip never ceases
to reproach me for having fallen on it, and cracked dreams pursue me
through the night; but I can still smile, though I have no teeth to add
grace to that labial twist which is so expressive of contentment.
All is for the best, devils on ticket-of-leave notwithstanding. Apparent
evil generates and brings about good. Could we only obtain one glimpse
of the invisible, which is so vast in comparison with all we dream of,
how amazingly concurrent in this my view would men become. All would be
judges; as on the delivery of a judgment from a full bench, all would
say, “I concur.”
Evil has no place in the _ultimatum_, as will be found when that great
diplomatic document is pronounced.
I reverence Nature, though she is wholly unaware of the homage I pay her.
She is president of the abeternal, adeternal commonwealth, in which every
atom exercises its vote, and yields her the beneficent despotism over
all, that can be never shaken.
Those who can climb, in mental sight, their pleasant little knoll, and
survey the surroundings, are burdened not with reverence for their
fellow-men. They are conscious of no inferiority in the presence of their
betters, so slight is the difference between the great and small; and
they are conscious of no superiority in the presence of their inferiors.
All are so alike in actual importance among the so mighty things around,
that were all who have lived, or are yet existing, to be arranged in
a line, beginning with Shakespeare and Newton, Homer and Pythagoras,
Phidias and Aristotle, Bacon, John Hunter and Goethe, followed by
professors and students, labourers and mendicants, and ending with those
who slobber while they talk,—and were the best made to stand forward
in advance of the others in a degree proportioned to their excellence,
the line of human beings, viewed at no great distance, would appear as
straight as a ray of light.