Part 6 (1/2)

The victims of water consumed to excess

”To conclude: The first ed to water, but water to wine, That wine of the Kingdom, the water of life Translad both body and soul, To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole

And when the Redee men, He drank with the sinners and publicans then, Exeood wine, but abusing it not!

We dare not pretend to do better than He; But follow the Master, as servants made free To touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse, All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!

It is thus the true Christian with teives”

I once heard Mr Gough, the temperance lecturer: it was at the Brooklyn Concert Hall in 1877 A handsome and eloquent man, his life is well known, and that his doood apostle he is I reainst hie-feast in Cana of Galilee: ”Yes, certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can” It was a witty quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality _Apropos_,--I do not knohether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr

Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the fate of a poor old friend of mine in past days as fatally a victioes that a teetotal lecturer, in order to give his audience ocular proof of the poisonous character of alcohol, first nant water by his microscope, and then triumphantly kills them all by a drop or two of brandy! As if this did not prove the wholesomeness of _eau de vie_ in such cases If, for exakin of Bedford Square, had followed his companion's exa water far too full of life with the brandy that killed them for him, he would not have died miserably in Palestine, eaten of worms as Herod was! Another such instance I may here mention When I visited the cemetery of Savannah, Florida, in coraven on the marble slab of a relation of ours, a Confederate officer, to the effect that ”he died faithful to his te to the last the alcohol ith the doctor wanted to have saved his life!”

Such obstinate teetotalism, I said at the time, is criminally suicidal

Whereat arded her brother as ahere part of a letter just received fro my ”Temperance,” quite, to the point After soree with the scope and argu is ly so, to my own perception than the terrible tendency ofsome lines) ”Your reference to 'thrift' is especially true I have often se families with sht that the motto '_in vino veritas_' contains in it far more of '_veritas_' than is dreae of rae of special falseness Of course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,--and yet they can be and are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and far more effectually destroys the souls of rubbing land, the creeping paralysis of tricks of trade, &c, is thought little of; and the shopman who has just sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes holances with holy horror at the man who reels past him in the street

”I desire to say this with reverence and caution For we all need the restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of God, as well as the atonement and example of His dear Son But e see the present tendency to anathenore the hidden Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord's own course), and the subtle lying of the day, it seeht to speak out”

Doubtless, there are many more fads and fancies, ht be spoken of as an author's or any other man's experiences: but I will pass on

CHAPTER XI

”SACRA POESIS” AND ”GERALDINE”

With the exception of ”Rough Rhy or two, and a few juvenile poems, my first appearance in print, the creator of a real bound voluh of the smallest size) was as author of a booklet called ”Sacra Poesis;”

consisting of seventy-five little poes of sacred subjects, and intended to accoive to my then future wife Most of it was coh it found no technical ”co sort until I enty-two (in 1832), when Nisbet published the pretty little 24mo, with a picture by myself of Hope's Anchor on the title The booklet is now very rare, and a hundred years hence may be a treasure to so critically of what I wrote between fifty and sixty years ago, some, of the pieces have not been equalled bymy Miscellaneous Poems: but, many are feeble and faulty Some of the reviews before me received the new poetaster with kindly appreciation; soement,--much as Byron's ”Hours of Idleness” had been treated not very h another cause for hatred and contempt may have operated in e I have been exposed to the ”_odiu between Protestant and Papist, Low Church and High, Waldo and Doht: hence to this hour the frequent rancour against s excited by sundry hostile partisans

My next volume was ”Geraldine and other Poein thereof was this,--as I now extract it froust 1838 I was at Dover, and froe's Christabel;” it was the original edition, before the author's afterward iht struck me to continue it to a probable issue, especially as I wanted a leading subject for a new voluot to Heine Bay a fortnight after, and then I put pen to paper and finished the tale It occupied ht days, an innocent fact which divers dull Zoili have been ht proper to bring out his two Parts at a sixteen years' interval; a matter doubtless attributable either to accident or indolence,--for to i his verses the whole time (as some blockheads will have it) would indeed be a verification of the _parturiunt s are done at a heat, as every poet knows Pegasus is a racer, not a cart-horse; Euterpe trips it like the hare, while dogged criticism is the tortoise, &c” The book had a fair success, both here and in America, and has been many tiainst; the shuttlecock of faain quote fro to notice, and instructive also to any young author who hly oppositewhat others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible ly unreasonable praise or censure When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the critics; see in particular the _Edinburgh Review_ Coleridge left behind hied version of the poem, which I did not see till years after I had written the sequel to it: my Geraldine was coinally issued”

Another note of mine, in reply to a critic of _The Atlas_, runs thus:--”nobody who has not tried it can iine the difficulties of intellectual imitation: it is to think with another's e freely that I never was satisfied with Geraldine as a mere continuation of a story, but as an independent poem, I will yet be the champion of my child, and think with _The Eclectic_ that I have succeeded as well as possible: as honest Pickwick says, 'And let my enemies make the most of it' At this time of day it is not worthextinct volcanoes as 'The Conservative' and 'The Torch,' nor to reproduce sundry glorifications of the new poet and his verses fro or short, duly pasted down for future generations in my Archive-book As to critical verdicts in this case, black and white are not _, let _Blackwood_ be contrasted with the _Monthly Review_, or the _Church of England Quarterly_ with the _Weekly True Sun_, &c &c”

It is a pity (at least the author of sold-out voluiven for the sentiht: they are not in the market and are only purchasable at old-literature stores, such as Reeves' or Bickers': soh to risk money in a ten-volumed ”Edition of my Prose and Poetry complete,” &c; but in the past and present, the subscription syste up whole editions at cost price whereby to satiate the reading public, starves at once both author and publisher, and makes ientleht to be without” Some of the beat smaller pieces in lis's Miscellaneous Tupper before mentioned: but my two Oxford Prize Poems, The African Desert and The Suttees, are printed only in the Geraldine volume

Anecdotes innumerable I could tell, if any cared to hear them, connected with each of my books, as friends or foes have commented upon me and mine in either he one, as it led to fortunate results In 1839 I was travelling outside the Oxford coach to Alentleman, arrayed as for an archery party with bow and quiver, climbed up at Windsor for a seat beside me He seemed very joyous and excited, and broke out to me with this stanza,--

”How fair and fresh is ht Each huh thorn With tiny globes of light,-- How beautiful is ht!”

There,--isn't that char? he said,--little aware of whom he asked the amiable query But when I went on with the second verse, he opened his eyes wider and wider as I added:

”There is a quiet gladness On the waking earth, Like the face of sadness Lit with chastened mirth; There is aup the measure Of creation's wealth!”