Part 9 (1/2)
”Now, reader, one little preliinneth the trouble of authorshi+p, but it is a trouble causing ease; ease frohts, which never cease to make one's head ache till they are fixed on paper; ease fro up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant ar for birth, a separate existence, a definite life,--ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hu to be recorded O happy uniinable vacancy of ht! O mental holiday, now as impossible to me as to take a true schoolboy's interest in rounders and prisoner's base! An author's mind,--and ree not as egotistic vanityof my _role_,--such a ic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions,--no e--it is a painful pressure, constraining to write for co to be satisfied, as well as a power to be exerted,--an iet away, rather than a dormant dynamic--thrice have I (letvolume as an author, a real author, real, because, for very peace of mind, involuntary,--but still the vessel fills,--still the indigenous crop springs up, choking a better harvest, seeds of foreign growth,--still these Lernaean necks sprout again, claiest, and controvert, to publish invention, and proscribe error Truly it were enviable to be less apprehensive, less retentive,--to be fitted with a colander-ht not keep fro; to be, sometimes at least, suffered for a holiday to raination, zeal, perceptions of s, equally with rank and riches, have often cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of a man, fret, wear, worry him,--to be irritable is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal iery makes him hasty, quick, nervous, as a haunted, hunted man--minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn rends one of so delicate a texture,--they cannot estiher scabbard,--the river, not content with channel and restraining banks, overflows perpetually,--the extortionate exacting armies of the ideal and the causal persecute MY spirit, and I would make a patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of s only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd increase,--I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and Elijah with the priests of Baal; I feel Malthusian as; a dire resolve has filled me to effect a pre in my brain,--plays, novels, essays, tales, homilies, and rhythmicals; for ethics and poetics, politics and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of maltreated Aristotle I will exhibit thes, and the chicken shall not chirp,--I will reveal, and secrets shall not waste hts shall not batten on me”
The whole volume, as before-mentioned, is an epitome or quintessence of”The Prior of Marrick,”
a story of idolatry; ”Anti-Xurion,” a crusade against razors; and ”The Author's Tribunal,” an oration; but I confess, not having looked at the book sincethat I wrote it forty-five years ago, I a is my old Author's Mind It may some day attain a resurrection: possibly even, in more than the skeleton for added, in a detailed filling up and finishi+ng of these iven to edy of Nero must remain unwritten, as alsoHandbook of the Marvellous; not to mention my abortive Epic of Home, and sundry essays, satires, and other lucubrations which, alas! s In a last word, I soloriously claim for authorshi+p, as thus:--
_The Cathedral Mind_
”Tehts veil'd round ords of power, The Author's Mind in all its hallowed riches Stands a Cathedral; full of precious things-- Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken, Cloister and aisle, dark crypt and aery tower; Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches And secret stores, and heaped-up offerings, Art's noblest wealth with Nature's fruit and flower
Paintings and Sculpture, Su's, Its plenitude of pride and praise betoken; An ever-burning lamp shi+nes in its soul; Deep reat Presence consecrates the whole!”
Probabilities
In this our day, Agnosticisreat way, and destroying the happiness of thousands It h partly an unpleasant one, that ”he has no faith who never had a doubt,” even as ”he has no hope who never had a fear” Well, in my short day and in , and there was a time when I was much worried with uninvited difficulties and involuntary unbeliefs Such troublesohts seemed to co with ht them down, and clearedmy ”Probabilities, an Aid to Faith;” a s that has happened, which didit, and has (to htened and cobeen out of print; however, certainly I still wish it was in the hands of ood The sche the antecedent probability of the being of a God, then of His attributes, and by inference fro a Creator: then that the created being inferior to His perfection ht fall, in which event His benevolence would find a remedy But what remedy? That Himself should pay the penalty, and effect a full rede up the race to Hienerous a condescension I show that it was antecedently probable that the Divinity should colories,--that He uess of Socrates: and that for the trial of our faith there are likely to be perain personal strength by co theestive little treatise, whereanent a few critiques are available; as thus, ”The author has done good service to religion by this publication: it will shake the doubts of the sceptical, strengthen the trust of the wavering, and delight the faith of the confirmed As its character becoh place in the estimation of the Christian world”--_Britannia_ And silish journals, while the Americans were equally favourable Take this characteristic instance, one of le_ e; he turns up thoughts as with a plough on the sward of azine_, New York, co that if they consider probabilities siht reasonably be expected”
An extract from the book itself, as out of print, may be acceptable, the more so that it takes a new and true view (as I apprehend) of Job and his restored prosperity:--
”One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial That he should at last give as only probable: he was, in short, another Adam, and had another fall, albeit he wrestled nobly Worthy was he to be na God's chosen three, 'Noah, Daniel, and Job,' and worthy that the Lord should bless his latter end This word brings reat coarded as other than individualities, and notwithstanding Eastern feelings about increase in quantity, its quality is, after all, the question for the heart I mean that many children to be born is but an inadequate return forIf a father loses a well-beloved son, it is sets another For this reason of the affections, and because I suppose that thinkers have sympathised with me in the difficulty, I wish to say a word about Job's children lost and found It will clear ahat is to some minds a moral and affectionate objection Now this is the state of the case
”The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels and oxen, and so forth, and ten children All these are represented to him by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead; and he ly Would not a merchant feel to all intents and purposes a ruined ence from different parts of the world at once that all his shi+ps and warehouses had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience follows: and the trial is morally the sah, after the calaood man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double of everything once lost--his children remain the same in number, ten It seems to me quite possible that neither caht have ers believed it all, as also did the well-enduring Job But the scriptural word does not go to say that these things happened; but that certain emissaries said they happened I think the devil ers were scared by some abortive diabolic efforts; and that (with a natural increase of camels, &c, meanwhile) the patriarch's paternal heart was more than compensated at the last by the restoration of his own dear children They were dead, and are alive again; they were lost, and are found Like Abraha froure
”If to this view objection is made, that, because the boils of Job were real, therefore similarly real must be all his other evils; I reply, that in the one te was to be mental; in the other, bodily In the latter case, positive personal pain was the gist of the ht be pierced, and the mind be overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction as the children's deaths amount to God's mercy may well have allowed the evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how double was the joy of Job over these ten dear children!
”Again, if any one will urge that, in the common view of the case, Job at the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he has ten old ones in heaven, and ten new ones on earth,--I must, in answer, think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us as the verity of it would have been to Job Affection, human affection, is not so numerically nor vicariously consoled--and it is, perhaps, worth while here to have thrown out (what I suppose to be) a ne of the case, if only to rescue such wealth as children fro confounded with such wealth as camels Moreover, such a paternal reas anteriorly more probable”
CHAPTER XV
THE CROCK OF GOLD, ETC
The origin of the ”Crock of Gold” is so well given in a preface, written by Mr Butler of Philadelphia, for his American edition of my works in 1851, that I choose here to reproduce it, as below Our cousins over the water were characteristically very fond of the ”Crock of Gold,” and some editions of ”Proverbial Philosophy” were published by thee, whereof I have a copy
Moreover, it was dramatised and acted at ”the Boston Museu the twenty-first representation, November 1, 1845; the writer sent it to land it has been issued five times in various forms, and a printed play thereof as adapted by Fitzball, rote for Astley's and the like, was acted (without ranted) in November 1847, at the City of London Theatre in the East End: I did not stop it, as on a certain private scrutiny I saw that the influence of the play upon its crowded audiences seeood one Unseen and unknown in a private box I noted the touching effect of Grace's Psalm (ch viii) and the sobs and tears all over the theatre that accompanied it; so it was a wisdom not to interfere with such wholeso It was a fairthe Gospel to the poor, for that croas of the humblest
The ”Crock of Gold” has been translated complete as a _feuilleton_ both in French and German by newspapers; and I have copies somewhere,--but I know not rote the French, the Gererstrom
What Mr Butler says in his preface, no doubt after speech with me, for I was his visitor at the tiood fortune tohis visit here have been struck with his characteristic impulsiveness In accordance with this feature of his mind, nearly all of hisaltogether incidental and unpremeditated--the result of an impulse accidentally--shall we not say, providentially?--imparted It was so with the first work in this series (four voluiven to o he purchased a house at Brighton While laying out the garden, he had occasion to have several drainsin one of the trenches wet and wearied with toil, Mr Tupper said to hi up there a crock full of gold?'--'If I did,'
said theit would not make it mine'--'But suppose you could not only find such a treasure, but ht honestly keep it, wouldn't you think yourself lucky?'--'Oh yes, sir, I suppose I should--but,' after a pause, 'but I a that could happen to me
I think, on the whole, I would rather have steady work and fair wages all the season than find a crock of gold'
”Here isdoer at once set in ht in the e letters on a sheet of paper these words, 'The Crock of Gold, a Tale of Covetousness,' and in less than a week that remarkable story ritten By the advice of his wife, however, he spent another week in rewriting it, and then gave it to the world in its finished state”