My Life as an Author Part 28

As to that essay of mine published in the first number of Ainsworth's Magazine, August 1842, long before the Patent Aerial Company started their projects, and very much noticed at the time,--Mr. Claude Hamilton ingrafted it in his work on Flying; the Duke of Argyll in a note before me commends this principle of copying nature as the true one; a Signor Ign.a.z.io of Milan in 1877 adopted almost exactly my Flying Man,--which was for the lecture enlarged from Cruikshank's etching of my own sketch: an aerial flapping machine, a sort of flying wheelbarrow, was some twenty years ago exhibited at Kensington: whilst in the _Daily Telegraph_ for July 10, 1874, you will find recorded the untimely death of one M. de Groof, the Flying Man, who unhappily perished at Cremorne after a successful flight of 5000 feet. All these are on record.

Extract from Proverbial Philosophy (Series iv. p. 375).

_Of Change and Travel._

"All of us have within us the wandering Crusoe spirit; We come of Norse sea-rovers, and adventurers full of hope: And man was bade to tame his earth, to rule it and subdue it,-- Whereby our feet-soles tingle at an untrod Alpine peak-- But shall we not fly anon with wings, to shame these creeping paces, Even as steam hath worked all speed on land and sea before?

Is not this firmament of air part of the human heritage, Which man must conquer duteously, as first his Maker willed?

There needeth but a lighter gas, well-tutored to our skill, The springing spirit to some shape of delicate steel and silk,-- A bird-like frame of Daedalus, and gummed Icarian plumes, Ancient inventions, long forgotten, to be found anew!

When shall the chemist mix aright this rarer lifting essence To make the lord of earth but equal to his many sparrows?

When will discovery help us to such conquest of the air, And teach us swifter travel than our creeps by land and water?"

And finally from my "Three Hundred Sonnets" hear Sonnet No. 189--

"_Spirit._"

"Throw me from this tall cliff,--my wings are strong, The hurricane is raging fierce and high, My spirit pants, and all in heat I long To fly right upward to a purer sky, And spurn the clouds beneath me rolling by; Lo thus, into the buoyant air I leap Confident and exulting, at a bound Swifter than whirlwinds happily to sweep On fiery wing the reeling world around: Off with my fetters!--who shall hold me back?

My path lies there,--the lightning's sudden track O'er the blue concave of the fathomless deep,-- O that I thus could conquer s.p.a.ce and time, Soaring above this world in strength sublime!"

CHAPTER XLVIII.

LUTHER.

I gave a second lecture, one on Luther, at the same place, and on the like solicitation of Mr. Le Fevre, President of the Balloon Society; the date being November 9, 1883.

Of this lecture, not to be tedious, I will here give only the peroration.

"And now, in conclusion, let us answer these reasonable questions: What has Martin Luther done and suffered that we at this distant interval of four centuries should reverence his memory with grat.i.tude and admiration? What was the lifework he was raised up to do, and how did he do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which we live?--We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and superst.i.tion: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,--freeing to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France, and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China: without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition, still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still both spiritually and politically the mean va.s.sals of an Italian priest instead of brave freemen under our English Queen. Luther relit the well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it s.h.i.+nes for him all the more gloriously to this hour: Luther refreshed the gospel salt that had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener of good: Luther, under G.o.d's good grace and providence, has rescued the conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superst.i.tious fears of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in this: Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,--for he has cleansed the real Augaean stable,--more than any mythical William Tell,--for he has ensured the boon of everlasting liberty, more to us than a whole army of so-called heroes in conquest, patriotism, or even local philanthropy,--for the enemies he fought and vanquished were our spiritual foes,--the country he opened to us is the heavenly one,--the good-doing, he inaugurated is wide as the world, and s.h.i.+nes an electric universal threefold light of faith, hope, and charity."

_Luther._

_Written by request, for the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth._

"Martin Luther! deathless name, n.o.blest on the scroll of Fame, Solitary monk,--that shook All the world by G.o.d's own book; Antichrist's Davidian foe, Strong to lay Goliath low, Thee, in thy four-hundredth year, Gladly we remember here.

"How, without thy forceful mind, Now had fared all human kind,-- Curst and scorch'd and chain'd by Rome, In each heart of hearth and home?

But for thee, and thy grand hour, German light, and British power, With Columbia's faith and hope, All were crush'd beneath the Pope!

"G.o.d be thank'd for this bright morn, When Eisleben's babe was born!

For the pious peasant's son, Liberty's great fight hath won,-- When at Wittenberg he stood All alone for G.o.d and good, And his Bible flew unfurl'd, Flag of freedom to the world!"

The Reverend E. Bullinger set this to excellent music; and it was translated for Continental use into German, French, Swedish, and Hungarian in the same metre.

As quite a cognate subject here shall be added my ballad on Wycliffe, also written by request:--

_Wycliffe._

"Distant beacon on the night Full five centuries ago,-- Harbinger of Luther's light, Now four hundred years aglow,-- Priest of Lutterworth we see All of Luther-worth in thee!

"Lo, the wondrous parallel,-- Both gave Bibles to their land; While, the rage of Rome to quell, Princes stood on either hand, John of Gaunt, and Saxon John, Cheered each bold confessor on.

"Both are rescuers of souls, Cleansing those Augaean styes-- Superst.i.tion's hiding holes, Nunneries and monkeries; Both gave liberty to men, Bearding lions in their den!

"Wycliffe, Luther! glorious pair, Great Twin Brethren of mankind; Conscience was your guide and care, Purifying heart and mind; Both before your judges stood, 'Here I stand, for G.o.d and good.'

"Each had liv'd a martyr's life, Still protesting for the faith; Yet amid that fiery strife, Each escap'd the martyr's death; Rescued from the fangs of Rome, Both died peacefully at home."

CHAPTER XLIX.

FINAL.

A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and chances to the gates of death in a marvellously predestined manner; if we pray about everything, we shall see and know that, as Pope says,

"In spite of wrong, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;"

and the trustful a.s.surance that the highest wisdom and mercy and power orders all things will give us comfort under whatever circ.u.mstances. I believe in prayer as the universal panacea, philosophically as well as devoutly; and that "walking with G.o.d" is our highest wisdom as well as our deepest comfort.

Let no man think that a sick-bed is the best place to repent in. When the brain is clouded by bodily ailment there is neither capacity nor even will to mend matters; a man is at the best then tired, lazy, and dull, but if there is pain too all is worse. Listen to one of my old sonnets, and take its good advice:--

"Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain To seek repentance: pain is absolute, Exacting all the body, all the brain, Humanity's stern king from head to foot: How canst thou pray, while fever'd arrows shoot Through this torn targe,--while every bone doth ache, And the soared mind raves up and down her cell Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake?

Add not to death the bitter fear of h.e.l.l; Take pity on thy future self, poor man, While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can; Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife Of meeting all its terrors in the van Just at the ebbing agony of life."

I have great faith in first impressions of intuitive liking or disliking. Second thoughts are by no means best always nor even often.

Charity sometimes tries to induce, one to think better of such a person or such a situation than a first feeling shrinks from,--but it won't do for long: the man or the place will continue to be distasteful. My spirit apprehends instinctively the right and the true; and through life I have relied on intuitions; which some have called a rashness, recommending colder cautions; but these latter have seldom paid their way. A country parson was right in his diagnosis of Iscariot's character as that of "a low mean fellow;" and he judged reasonably that all the patient kindliness of One who strove to make such His "own familiar friend" was so much charity almost thrown away, except indeed as to spiritual improvement of the charitable.

It is right that in a book of self-revelations, like this genuine autobiography, some special recognition should be made before its close of grat.i.tude to the Great Giver of all good, and of the spiritual longings of His penitent. These feelings I prefer to show after the author's poetic custom in verse. Let the first be a trilogy of unpublished sonnets lately written on

_What We Shall Be._

I.

"We--all and each--have faculties and powers Here undeveloped, lying deep within, Crush'd by the weight of circ.u.mstance and sin; Latent, as germs conceal their hidden flowers, Till some new clime, with genial suns and showers Give them the force consummate life to win: Even so we, poor prisoners of Time, Victims of others' evil and our own, Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime, But full of excellences in us sown, Must wait that better life, and there, full blown, In spiritual perfectness sublime The prizes of our nature we shall gain, Which now we struggle for in vain--in vain!"

II.

"Who does not feel within him he could be Anything, everything, of great and good?

That, give him but the chance, he could and would Soar on the wings of triumph strong and free?

And think not this is vanity, for he, If one of Glory's heirs, is of the band 'I said that ye are G.o.ds!'--on this we stand Through the eternal ages infinite, Growing like Christ in hope and love and light As grafted into Him: there shall we see, And know as we are known; no hindrance then Shall bind our wings, or shut our eyes or ears; Led upward, onward, through ten million years, We shall expand in spirit,--but still be Men."