THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 INTERLUDES
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YOKK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • RAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 INTERLUDES 
 
 (FIFTH SERIES) 
 
 BEING 
 
 THREE ESSAYS AND SOME VERSES 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE SMITH 
 
 "The little of myself that pleases myself I could wish to 
 be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive 
 so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, 
 knowing as I do what a treasure is the possession of a 
 friend's mind when he is no more." 
 
 Leigh Hunt, My Books 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1910
 
 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 BY ROBERT MACI.EHOSE AND CO. LTD.
 
 c 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 If my readers can find as much pleasure in reading 
 what I have written, as I have found in the writing 
 thereof, they will be happy enough. If they should 
 be disappointed I am truly sorry ; but can scarcely 
 attribute my want of success to old age after what I 
 have here written upon that subject. 
 
 I am not without hope that my kind critics may 
 discover that this fifth series is in no way inferior to 
 those which have preceded it. 
 
 Ivy Bank, 
 November, 1910.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 essays- 
 old Men and Boys. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Characteristics of Old Age and Youth - - i 
 
 II. Upon Growing Old - - - - - 14 
 
 An Autobiographical Sketch - 23 
 
 Selfishness 58 
 
 A FARRAGO OF VERSES— 
 
 Hymn for the New Year ... - 75 
 
 Hymn lor Sunday ------- 76 
 
 Old England - - 76 
 
 Christmas is Coming • 78 
 
 The Tom-Tit's Reply 79 
 
 The Toad's Protest - - 80 
 
 To the Right Hon. Lord Alverston, L.C.J. 80 
 
 Just as you like it - 81 
 
 English as she is spoke - 82
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 A Farrago of Verses (continued) — 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Duck and her Brood - 83 
 
 A Street Row - - 84 
 
 Lays of Literary Lunatics — 
 
 Ode to a Beetle found Drowning in a Treacle Jar 85 
 
 The Meeting ..... 86 
 
 The Love-Lorn ... 87 
 
 The Mystery - ... 88 
 
 Limericks .... 88 
 
 An Embarrassed Supporter of Female Suffrage - 89
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. 
 
 I. CHARACTERISTICS OF OLD AGE AND YOUTH. 
 
 "The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and 
 
 gradual progression : the youth expects to force his way 
 
 by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays 
 
 regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. 1 The 
 
 old man deifies prudence : the youth commits himself to 
 
 magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends 
 
 no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore 
 
 acts with openness and candour ; but his father, having 
 
 suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and 
 
 too often allured to practise it. Age looks with anger 
 
 on the temerity of youth ; and youth with contempt 
 
 upon the scrupulosity of age." So speaks the pedantic 
 
 Princess in Rasselas, not without some insight into 
 
 human nature ; but all young men are not rash, and all 
 
 old men are not prudent. 
 
 " The errors of young men," writes Lord Bacon, 
 
 " are the ruin of business ; but the errors of aged men 
 
 1 Meaning, I suppose, virtus or valour. 
 A
 
 2 ESS A YS. 
 
 amount but to this, that more might have been done or 
 sooner. . . . Men of age object too much, consult too 
 long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom 
 drive business home to the full period ; but content 
 themselves with a mediocrity of success." 
 
 "When I was young? — Ah, woeful When! 
 Ah ! for the change 'twixt Now and Then ! 
 
 Nought cared this body for wind or weather, 
 When Youth and I lived in't together. 
 Ere I was old ? Ah, woeful Ere, 
 Which tells me, Youth's no longer here. 
 
 Life is but thought : so think I will 
 That Youth and I are housemates still." 
 
 But one has need to become a Christian Scientist 
 before one can entirely forget "old age," when it has 
 arrived in fact ; and I doubt if even the charm of the 
 poet can delude us into believing that Youth is ever- 
 present. 
 
 We do well to remember that Youth has its troubles 
 as well as Age. In one of his letters the poet Cowper 
 writes : " There are few perhaps in this world who have 
 not cause to look back with regret on the days of 
 infancy ; yet, to say truth, I suspect some deception in 
 this. For infancy itself has its cares ; and though we 
 cannot now conceive how trifles could affect us so much, 
 it is certain that they did. Trifles they appear now, but 
 such they were not then." Whatever the trials of children 
 may be, they have generally a marvellous power of 
 rallying ; and smiles follow tears in happy succession. 
 But, upon the other hand, the older people have the 
 advantage of "years that bring the philosophic mind,"
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. 3 
 
 and though their troubles may be heavier than those of 
 childhood, yet they have (or ought to have) strength to 
 bear them manfully. 
 
 If it be true, as Juliet says, that "old folks" are 
 
 "Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead," 
 
 or, as Hamlet's book said, that "old men have grey 
 beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging 
 thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a 
 plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams," 
 theirs is no doubt a somewhat sad case ; but they may 
 have their compensations nevertheless. 
 
 " Last scene of all . . . 
 Is second childishness and mere oblivion ; 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 
 
 Such a state is truly sad, and we can only hope for all 
 that arrive at it a speedy delivery to another and a better 
 world. It is a living death. Let us draw the curtain on 
 this scene, and remember that we have been told by 
 another poet 
 
 "Old age hath yet his honour and his toil," 
 
 and it is wiser to dwell upon this aspect of the case. 
 
 I suppose there are very few men past the middle age 
 who like to be told that they look older than they really 
 are ; and it is perhaps still more annoying to be actually 
 taken for somebody else considerably older than oneself. 
 
 One day, as I was leaving Victoria Station, I heard a 
 loud call behind me. " Lord Asterisk ! Lord Asterisk ! " 
 I turned and saw a gentleman approaching, who said, 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon, I took you for the Earl of 
 Asterisk." "Don't mention it," I exclaimed; "I am
 
 4 ESS A VS. 
 
 much flattered." I pursued my way, elated at being 
 taken for an earl, and had the curiosity to " look him 
 up " in Debrett. Alas, he was eighty-two ! On the 
 other hand, I much doubt if it is in a man's favour 
 to be what is called a " well-preserved man." An active 
 and useful life must mark the outward appearance with 
 some scars or wrinkles. 
 
 Old men resent being told that their hair is growing 
 thin on the top. " A fine head of 'air, sir," said a 
 coiffeur, "for a gentleman at your time of life, sir." No 
 response. "Very odd, sir, but I never knew a clever 
 man have much 'air, sir." Still no answer. "It's very 
 odd indeed, sir, but I have never met with an idiot who 
 was quite bald, sir ! " How to compliment an old gentle- 
 man's tendency to have his hair thin on the top seems 
 to be beset with difficulty. A little girl of four or five 
 years of age was sitting on the knee of the present writer 
 when she exclaimed : " Why do you wear all your hair 
 upon your chin. I wear mine on the top of my head," 
 shaking a mass of lovely golden locks in my face. 
 
 On another occasion I was travelling by train, and a 
 lady and her little child about four years old sat opposite 
 to me. The child was very pretty, and I observed that 
 she was staring at me intently with wide-open blue eyes. 
 At length she pointed at me with her little forefinger and 
 exclaimed, " Mother, what's that ? " The poor mother 
 was horror-stricken ! 
 
 It is also true, upon the other hand, that young men 
 do not like to be told that they are young. A young 
 man felt much irritated when a lady congratulated him 
 upon his becoming a member of the Juvenile Carlton 
 Club.
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. 
 
 5 
 
 The poet suggests that we may "learn from the 
 wisdom of age " or be " cheered by the sallies of 
 youth " ; but that expectation is often disappointed, 
 and we find old men who are anything but wise, and 
 young men who are persistently dull. I suppose that 
 generally old men are not so bumptious as young men 
 are apt to be ; but this is far from being an universal 
 rule, for sometimes old men, who have lived in an 
 atmosphere of flattery and adulation, become intolerably 
 conceited and domineering ; and some young men, who 
 have been too severely snubbed, have become hopelessly 
 shy and nervous. 
 
 A young lady at a dance exclaimed to her partner : 
 " Oh, Mr. Jones, how delightful it must be to be so wise 
 and to know everything." "It is," he replied. On 
 another occasion, at a breakfast party at Camford, a 
 "third-year" man, waving his hand towards his book- 
 cases, said : " Yes, I think I may say that I have mastered 
 the contents of all those volumes." " Dear me, Brown," 
 said a freshman, "what a mind you must have got!" 
 On the whole, I come to the conclusion that conceit is 
 bad in old or young, and is sometimes to be found in 
 both. 
 
 Yonder old man thinks that yonder youth is foolish. 
 The old man says, " what you say or do is what I said or 
 did when I was your age." And yonder youth says to 
 the old man, " when I come to your time of life I hope 
 I shall not say or do as you say or do." But as a matter 
 of fact he will ; nay, he may say or do worse for all he 
 can tell. He must remember what was said by an old 
 "don" at a fellows' meeting that " we are none of us in- 
 fallible, — not even the youngest." The old man, on the
 
 6 £SSA VS. 
 
 other hand, may remember with R. L. Stevenson that 
 "it is as natural and as right for a young man to be im- 
 prudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, 
 and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly 
 captured, as it is for old men to turn grey, or mothers to 
 love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier 
 than their lives." It is difficult, no doubt, for young men 
 seriously to anticipate that they must one day be old ; but 
 it should be easy enough for old men to remember that 
 they once were young. 
 
 King Rehoboam asked the advice of the old councillors 
 of his father, and, of course, did .not take it ; but sent for 
 the young men who, he knew, would give bad advice, 
 which he was quite prepared to follow. " Let him expect 
 disaster who shapes his course on a young man's counsel," 
 said Leonardo da Vinci ; but I think that older men may 
 reasonably consider the suggestions of the young, although 
 it might be worse than useless to argue with them. To 
 the young and headstrong there is nothing so provoking 
 as to be checked by the caution of old men. The river 
 which rushes down a narrow channel frets and foams 
 over the sunken rocks and shoals, and seems to resent 
 their interference with its onward course. It seems 
 to be trying to stop itself, or even to curl and curve 
 back. 
 
 Cicero says : " As petulance and lust belong to the 
 young more than to the old, yet not to all young men, 
 but to those who are not virtuous ; so that senile folly, 
 which is called dotage, belongs to weak old men, and not 
 to all. ... I like a young man in whom there is some- 
 thing of the old, so I like an old man in whom there 
 is something of the young." I suppose Cicero means
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. 7 
 
 that, like Wordsworth, he admires the old man who 
 
 bears 
 
 "A young lamb's heart amid the full grown flocks." 
 
 Cicero also says through the mouth of Cato, supposed to 
 
 be eighty-four years of age, " Old men of regulated minds, 
 
 and neither testy nor ill-natured pass a very tolerable old 
 
 age : but a discontented and ill-natured disposition is 
 
 irksome in every age." 
 
 I will not counsel young men to become old. They 
 will do so only too rapidly. As Meg Dodds says, " folk 
 maun grow old or die." Nor will I counsel the old men 
 to become young. They cannot do so, however much 
 they may affect it. A young man pretending to be old, 
 or an old man affecting to be young offers only a ridicu- 
 lous spectacle. As Ulysses says : " That which we are, 
 we are " ; and we had better be content with that 
 undoubted truism. 
 
 " If," says the Rambler, " dotards will contend with 
 boys in those performances in which boys must always 
 excel them, if they will dress crippled limbs in embroidery, 
 endeavour at gaiety with faultering voices, and darken 
 assemblies of pleasure with the ghastliness of disease, 
 they may well expect those who find their diversions 
 obstructed will hoot them away ; and that if they descend 
 to competition with youth, they must bear the insolence 
 of successful rivals." It is a melancholy spectacle to 
 behold old fools tottering after the gambols of young 
 ones, and to see young fools aping the gravity of old 
 ones. 
 
 It has been a matter for cynical comment that old men 
 incline towards morality and religion, and that the young 
 propose to themselves to follow their example some
 
 8 ESS A YS. 
 
 day, although in the meantime they indulge in worldly 
 pleasures and follies — 
 
 "How many a father have I seen 
 A sober man, among his boys, 
 Whose youth was full of foolish noise, 
 Who wears his manhood hale and green." 
 
 Swift said : " When a man becomes virtuous in old 
 age he is but making a sacrifice to God of the devil's 
 leavings " ; and the wise man has warned us to remember 
 our Creator in the days of our youth. But the young and 
 happy are prone to forget, and yet they must one day 
 remember. 
 
 "And almost everyone when age, 
 Disease and sorrow strike him, 
 Inclines to think there is a God 
 Or something very like Him ! " 
 
 The young are quickly satisfied by a partial investiga- 
 tion of views or facts ; but the old man has had more 
 time to consider and to reconsider, and " yet consider it 
 again " ; and this has led him to discover an order and 
 sequence of things, and a probable First Cause. " It is 
 true," says Lord Bacon, "that a little philosophy inclineth 
 man's mind to Atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth 
 men's minds about to Religion ; for, while the mind of 
 man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may some- 
 times rest in them and go no further; but when it 
 beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked 
 together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." 
 
 It is certain that in many men and women the older 
 they get the more stiffened their characters become, and 
 they are less and less able to adapt themselves to altered
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. 9 
 
 circumstances. "You speak like a boy," returned Mac- 
 Gregor in a low tone that growled like thunder, "like a 
 boy who thinks the old gnarled oak can be twisted as 
 easily as the young sapling. Can I forget that I have 
 been branded as an outlaw, stigmatised as a traitor, 
 etc., etc. ? " 
 
 In old age we escape being plagued by our many and 
 perhaps conflicting passions, and such as may be left are 
 not so violent as they were in our youth. Yet we must 
 not expect that our vices or imperfections will entirely 
 leave us. " The wiser mind," as Wordsworth says, 
 
 •' Mourns less for what age takes away 
 Than what it leaves behind." 
 
 In the drama of Joseph and his Brethren, by Charles 
 Wells, Reuben remarks : 
 
 "And trust me, sirs, our imperfections 
 Will follow age, nor die before the man." 
 
 In old age also our bodily ailments are not of so much 
 importance relatively ; because in any event we have not 
 to bear them much longer. The thief upon the gallows 
 asked for a pot of beer, and when it was brought to him, 
 he blew off the froth, because (he said) he had heard that 
 it was unwholesome; but the balance of his mind had 
 probably been affected by the imminent suspension of 
 his body. It was noted by some rather profane person 
 that Dr. Gumming, whilst he was engaged in announcing 
 that the world would come to an end in the course of a 
 year or two, had nevertheless just taken a ninety-nine 
 years' lease of a house to live in. Both the thief and 
 \)\. Cumming were not really reasoning clearly and 
 consistently. Under the circumstances the froth on the
 
 , ESS A VS. 
 
 beer or the length of the lease was immaterial to the 
 issue. 
 
 One well-known characteristic of old age is forgetful- 
 ness. Old men and women are often laughed at by the 
 young and frivolous for mere forgetfulness, arising 
 generally from preoccupation of mind. Thus an aged 
 father of a family will set the whole household looking 
 for his spectacles, which after much fuss are found upon 
 his forehead. Sometimes an old gentleman may come 
 into a church or a court of justice and forget to remove 
 his hat. Old Lord Chancellor Brougham used to sit in 
 the front row of the Benchers' seats in the Temple 
 Church, and in a loud voice during the sermon could 
 be heard saying, " How does he know that ? Where 
 did he get that from? That's more than he knows, 
 etc., etc." No doubt he was forgetting that he was 
 in a church. There is a story told of Carlyle (the 
 accuracy of which I have not been able to verify) that 
 one evening his nieces asked him to read a portion of 
 Scripture at family prayers. He opened the Book at 
 one of the chapters of Job, and read on and on, 
 chapter after chapter, without pausing. At length a 
 niece approached him and said, " Thank you, we always 
 finish with a prayer." " Finish it your own way," said 
 the sage ; and left the room abruptly. Two young men 
 were walking with an old gentleman, when one of the 
 young ones said "good-bye," and when he had gone 
 out of earshot the old gentleman said, " Ah ! a pleasant 
 enough fellow to talk to, Jones is; but between you 
 and me he is a liar and a hypocrite." Unfortunately 
 it was not Jones who had gone away ! A certain aged 
 nobleman went to dine at a friend's house, and towards
 
 OLD MEN AND BOYS. n 
 
 the end of the repast he turned to his host and said, " I 
 am so sorry to have given you such a bad dinner, but 
 the fact is my cook has just left, and I am dependent 
 upon my kitchen maid." A similar mistake was made 
 by an old gentleman who asked his new nurse, who had 
 just taken up her duties, to read a post-letter from his 
 wife. She read : " Dear Arthur, I am sorry that I have 
 sent you such an ugly nurse." (Tableau !). 
 
 " Old age is the harvest of what a man is ; the reaping 
 of what he has become during the period when life was 
 manifesting itself in action. As he ceases from his labours 
 his works follow him." — The Harvest Within, by A. T. 
 Marian, D.C.L., author of The Influence of Sea Power 
 upon History. 
 
 The beauty of youth is universally acknowledged. Is 
 there anything in nature more lovely than a beautiful 
 child, or a beautiful young woman? Manhood, too, 
 has often so fine and noble an aspect as to merit an 
 award of beauty. And I would wish to point out that 
 even old age is evidently shown to be attractive by the 
 attention which the greatest artists have bestowed on it. 
 The old men and women of Rembrandt, Vandyke, Titian, 
 Watts, Israels, Herkomer, and many others, show that 
 something beautiful can be made of old age ; and I 
 think we can most of us remember some sweet and 
 saintly face which we have often gazed at in wonder 
 and admiration, and felt with the poet 
 
 " The setting sun, and music at the close, 
 As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last." 
 
 It is, I think, the fine moral nature shining through the 
 physical barrier which gives the charm to the picture —
 
 i 2 ESS A VS. 
 
 the purified and sweetened soul triumphing at last over 
 the flesh. 
 
 As Thackeray wrote in his genial manner : 
 
 " And though, good friend, with whom I dine, 
 
 Your honest head is grey ; 
 And, like this grizzled head of mine, 
 
 Has seen its last of May ; 
 Yet, with a heart that's ever kind, 
 
 A gentle spirit gay, 
 You've spring perennial in your mind 
 
 And round you make a May." 
 
 Also I cannot help thinking that the dear old Colonel 
 in The Newcomes was as beautiful and loveable when he 
 was saying " Adsum " as he was when he and Clive 
 strolled into the " Cave of Harmony." 
 
 Has there been in the history of mankind anything 
 more noble or more pathetic than the last days of Sir 
 Walter Scott? — the great genius striving with all his 
 might against old age and infirmity in the hope that he 
 might by his labour pay off all his creditors to the full, 
 and that cheerfully and without any murmur. He writes 
 in his diary : " Looking back to the conclusion of 1826, 
 I observe that the last year ended in trouble and sickness, 
 with pressure for the present and gloomy prospects for 
 the future. The sense of a great privation so lately sus- 
 tained, together with the very doubtful and clouded 
 nature of my private affairs, pressed hard upon my mind. 
 I am now restored in constitution, and though I am still 
 on troubled waters, yet I am rowing with the tide, and 
 less than the continuation of my exertions of 1827 may, 
 with God's blessing, carry me successfully through 1828, 
 when we may gain a more open sea, if not exactly a safe
 
 OLD MEN AND BO VS. I ? 
 
 port. Above all, my children are well. For all these 
 great blessings it becomes me well to be thankful to God, 
 who, in his good time and pleasure, sends us good as well 
 as evil." Such words are beyond all comment ! 
 
 J. R. Green, the historian, was not an old man, though 
 he was beginning to feel what old age must be like when 
 he wrote in a letter in 1869 : 
 
 " What seems to grow fairer to me as life goes by is 
 the love and peace and tenderness of it, not its wit 
 and cleverness and grandeur of knowledge, but just the 
 laughter of little children and the friendship of friends, 
 and the cosy talk by the fireside, and the sight of flowers 
 and the sound of music." 
 
 R. L. Stevenson reminds us in his very best manner : 
 " After the sun is down and the west faded, the heavens 
 begin to fill with shining stars. So, as we grow old, a 
 sort of equable jog trot of feeling is substituted for the 
 ups and downs of passion and disgust ; the same influence 
 that restrains our hopes, quiets our apprehensions ; if the 
 pleasures are less intense, the troubles are milder and 
 more tolerable ; and, in a word, this period for which we 
 are asked to hoard up everything as in a time of famine, 
 is, in its own right, the richest, easiest and happiest of 
 life."
 
 II. UPON GROWING OLD. 
 
 There are two ways of growing old — (i) physically, and 
 (2) mentally and morally. That we should grow physi- 
 cally old as we approach our final decay (if we live long 
 enough) is inevitable. We need not anticipate such decay, 
 but await it patiently, and accept it with content. Yet it 
 is unwise to neglect all health-giving pleasures or exer- 
 cises, because such neglect not only hastens the bodily 
 decay, but in doing so it affects the mental and moral 
 part of our nature. The same certainty of deterioration 
 in our mental and moral faculties does not obtain. Dr. 
 Johnson said : " It is a man's own fault — it is from want 
 of use if his mind grows torpid in old age." Hobbes also 
 remarked that " the dotage seen often in old age is not 
 the effect of time, but sometimes of the excesses of youth, 
 and of not furnishing their minds in their youth, so that 
 they have been children always from beginning of life to 
 the end of it." 
 
 It has been a first childhood all along. Certainly, I 
 think, experience leads us to believe that the more the 
 intellect is used the longer and brighter is its life, so that 
 even in the case of very old men, the brain will retain 
 its health and vigour when the limbs have become 
 enfeebled.
 
 UPON GROWING OLD. 
 
 15 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci gave sage counsel to the young 
 when he wrote : " In youth acquire that which may 
 requite you for the deprivations of old age ; and if you 
 are mindful that old age has wisdom for its food, you 
 will so exert yourself in youth that your old age will not 
 lack sustenance." 
 
 Men who have led a strenuous or exciting life, and 
 have had neither time nor inclination for quiet thoughts 
 or pursuits, have generally been complaining and un- 
 happy in their old age. "To-day, December 20, 187 1," 
 writes Garibaldi, "bending with stiffened limbs over the 
 fire, I recall with emotion those scenes of the past, when 
 life seemed to smile on me in the presence of the most 
 magnificent spectacle I ever beheld (the Pampas in S. 
 America). I, for my part, am old and worn. Where are 
 those splendid horses? Where are the bulls, the ante- 
 lopes, the ostriches, which beautified and enlivened those 
 pleasant hills?" — and so, in his old age, Garibaldi "sat 
 brooding, restless, and discontented." 
 
 Some old persons derive pleasure from a retrospect of 
 their lives, and if their lives have been well spent, they 
 may without pride but with gratitude, employ their 
 thoughts in agreeable remembrances. But I rather doubt 
 the value of retrospects. 
 
 . . . " This is truth the poet sings, 
 That a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering happier things." 
 
 Certainly, if the life has been an empty one, there will 
 be little pleasure in remembrances of it. 
 
 "Pray, my dear child, don't compliment me any more 
 upon my learning," wrote Horace Walpole ; " there is 
 nobody so superficial. Except a little history, a little
 
 1 6 ESS A YS. 
 
 poetry, a little painting, and some divinity, I know 
 nothing. How should I ? I, who have always lived in 
 the big world; who lie abed all the morning, calling it 
 morning as long as you please ; who sup in company ; 
 who have played at Pharaoh half my life, and now at 
 Loo till two or three in the morning ; who have always 
 loved pleasure ; haunted auctions — in short, who don't 
 know so much astronomy as would carry me to Knights- 
 bridge, nor more physic than a physician, nor, in short, 
 anything that is called science. If it were not that I lay 
 up a little provision in Summer, like the ant, I should be 
 as ignorant as all the people I live with. How I have 
 laughed when some of the Magazines have called me the 
 learned gentleman ! Pray don't be like the Magazines." 
 In the above passage I dare say Horace Walpole gives 
 a fairly accurate description of his life, but one cannot 
 believe that the retrospect could afford much solace to 
 his old age. 
 
 A young farmer was urged to plant some apple trees. 
 He refused, saying that they were, too long in growing. 
 His father was asked if he would plant the trees; but the 
 father also said they were slow growers and life was short. 
 Finally, the grandfather was approached, and he at once 
 planted the trees, and lived long enough to drink the 
 cider made from the apples grown thereon. He, at least, 
 had not let old age interfere with his usefulness. 
 
 Swift one day pointed to a tree which was decayed 
 and withered in its upper branches, and exclaimed: "I 
 shall be like that tree ; I shall die at the top." He did 
 so, and a sad and pitiable spectacle he became towards 
 the close of his life. It is not for his fellow mortals to 
 judge him, but that he was torn to pieces by his own
 
 UPON GROWING OLD. I? 
 
 thoughts, his ambitions, his desires, his wilfulness, and 
 his unbridled scorn is obvious to all who read his writings 
 or his Life. The steady and regular exercise of the 
 brain or of the body is healthy, but an extravagant and 
 unruly excitement is harmful ; the inordinate struggle for 
 riches, place, or power, will leave its mark upon mind 
 and body. 
 
 One's attention has been called frequently of late years 
 to the difficulty of finding physical employment for men 
 over forty years of age, and it is even suggested that a 
 man's mental qualities become impaired after the age of 
 fifty — or that, at all events, the nerve or will-power has 
 deteriorated. Hasty generalisations of this sort are apt 
 to be misleading. The exceptions to the rule (if it be 
 one) are often found to be so numerous as to make it of 
 little value. When Mr. Justice Field had become deaf 
 and practically unfit to perform his judicial duties, 
 although his mind was as vigorous as ever, one of his 
 brother judges advised him seriously to retire. "Well," 
 said Field, " I may be no longer fit to be a judge, but 
 you never were fit." At the age of eighty-seven John 
 Wesley began to feel that he could not preach more than 
 two sermons in the day, and he was forced to give up his 
 habit of preaching a sermon every day at five o'clock in 
 the morning. He complained that he could not read 
 small print except in a strong light. In April, 1908, a 
 nonconformist minister at the age of 10 r preached 
 a sermon of thirty-four minutes' duration in a full and 
 sonorous voice, and was congratulated by His Most 
 Gracious Majesty upon his longevity. Whether his con- 
 gregation thought the sermon lasted too long, I never 
 heard. Verdi wrote his best opera (perhaps) after he 
 
 13
 
 1 8 ESSAYS. 
 
 was seventy, and Titian at ninety-nine said that he was 
 only just beginning to know how to paint ! Sir Isaac 
 Newton, the Duke of Wellington, Dr. Johnson, Words- 
 worth, Tennyson, are strong instances of men whose 
 vigour of mind remained unimpaired to a great age. 
 Count Moltke was seventy years of age when he con- 
 ducted the Franco-German War; and at the age of 
 seventy Gladstone's brain had so greatly expanded that 
 he had to have his hat enlarged, so that it would 
 seem 
 
 " Peace hath her victories no less renown'd than War." 
 
 Upon the whole there seems to be no reason why we 
 should grow prematurely old. However anxious we may 
 be to have a long life, I suppose none of us would desire 
 to live on when all that makes life enjoyable and worthy 
 has departed from us. An immortality of decrepitude 
 can hardly be desired. The " Struldbruggs " who dwelt 
 in Luggnagg were, according to Gulliver, immortal, but 
 they became old like other folk, and had a bad time of 
 it. They had "a perpetual life under all the usual dis- 
 advantages which old age brings along with it. . . . The 
 least miserable among them appear to be those who turn 
 to dotage, and certainly lose their memories. These meet 
 with more pity and assistance because they want many 
 bad qualities which abound in others. ... At ninety 
 they lose their teeth and hair. . . . They eat and drink 
 whatever they can get without relish and appetite. The 
 diseases they were subject to still continue without in- 
 creasing or diminishing. . . . They never can amuse 
 themselves with reading, because their memory will not 
 serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to
 
 UPON GROWING OLD. 
 
 l 9 
 
 the end, and by this defect they are deprived of the 
 only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be 
 capable ! " Certainly this kind of longevity seems un- 
 desirable. 
 
 One great failing in old age is the tendency to become 
 a bore, but surely it is not a necessary evil, and we may 
 grow old without it. It arises, I think, from some feeling 
 of jealousy. We are afraid we are being neglected. We 
 insist upon being attended to, to be waited upon, to be 
 listened to ; and we have lost much of our sympathy 
 for others and think only of ourselves. After a father 
 had been lecturing his son upon his conduct at an 
 immoderate length, the son at last lost all patience. 
 " All you have said, father, may be very right,; but I 
 must warn you that if you talk like that you will get 
 yourself very much disliked." The Scythians, according 
 to Sydney Smith, as soon as their parents began to get 
 old and tell long stories resorted to the severe measure 
 of killing and eating them — but I imagine nothing could 
 be more tough and indigestible than an old bore. 
 Neither is it necessary to be crabbed and ill-natured 
 as one grows older. On the contrary, a really good 
 man will become more tolerant. Dr. Johnson, when 
 he was more than seventy-two years old, said, "As I 
 know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am 
 ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms 
 than I was formerly." A long experience of the diffi- 
 culties and dangers of life, both physical and moral, 
 leads us to modify our youthful judgments of the conduct 
 of others. It is so easy when we are young to believe 
 that there are no difficulties or dangers, either for our- 
 selves or for others ; but it is borne in upon us as we
 
 20 ESSAYS. 
 
 grow old that no man is safe ; and as a result we only 
 feel sorrow and not anger when a man fails. Having 
 lost the sense of impatience and irritation with which 
 we were accustomed to regard the failings of our fellows, 
 we are more able to see their good qualities and to give 
 credit for them. Toleration is or ought to be a charac- 
 teristic of old age — but the toleration should be of the 
 sinner, and not of the sin. 1 think it was Goethe who 
 said that he grew more tolerant of faults as he grew 
 older because he found he had them all himself at some 
 time or other ; but that seems to me to be entirely the 
 wrong view to take. A man should bewail his own 
 faults even more when he sees them in others as well 
 as in himself. He ought to look with lenient eye upon 
 the wrong-doer, but not excuse himself on the ground 
 that errare est humanum, for it is certain that two blacks 
 will not make a white. 
 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table writes : " If the 
 time comes when you must lay down the fiddle and the 
 bow, because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten- 
 foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after 
 dallying awhile with the eye-glasses, come at last to the 
 undisguised reality of spectacles — if the time comes when 
 that fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that, 
 where its flames reverberated, there is only the sombre 
 stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, only the 
 white ashes that cover the embers of memory, don't 
 let your heart grow cold, and you may carry cheerfulness 
 and love with you into the teens of your second century, 
 if you can last so long." And I would add you may be 
 useful and valuable, even when you arrive at twice forty 
 years.
 
 UPON GROWING OLD. 21 
 
 It is to be in a sad plight, if when a man is old he can 
 only say with Macbeth : 
 
 " I have lived long enough : my way of life 
 Is fall'n into the sear and yellow leaf — 
 And that which should accompany old age 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 I must not look to have." 
 
 It is a sad thing for a man to fall under the curse of 
 Prospero : 
 
 " And as, with age, his body uglier grows 
 So his mind cankers." 
 
 But if we have kept ourselves bright and clear in our 
 youth and manhood — if we have not marred and blurred 
 our faculties by indulging in evil passions and depraved 
 tastes, we may continue bright and clear in our old age, 
 which may be "as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly"; 
 and we need not fear the bogey of " senile decay." 
 
 " Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die 
 Nor leave thee, when grey hairs are nigh 
 
 A melancholy slave ; 
 But an old age serene and bright 
 And lovely as a Lapland night 
 
 Shall lead thee to thy grave." 
 
 And lastly we come to the spiritual part of us — to the 
 individual soul. Does it, too, fall into its second child- 
 hood, and so fade away for ever? Surely if it has 
 retained anything of the love and purity which should 
 be in it and with which it was endowed when " trailing 
 clouds of glory " it came into the world, it will towards 
 the end of life be freed from much that has interfered 
 with and obscured its perfect brightness. There must
 
 22 ESSAYS. 
 
 still remain things from which the soul cannot get free 
 and yet there may be enough of light and love " left 
 behind " to enable it to enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven as a little child either here or hereafter. How- 
 ever that may be, there are those who have passed 
 through a long life of many disappointments and sorrows, 
 as well as many joys and consolations ; and through it all 
 have learnt in their old age to be heartily and unfeignedly 
 thankful : 
 
 " And so the shadows fall apart 
 And so the west winds play : 
 And all the windows of my heart 
 I open to the day."
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 I was born on November the 18th, 1836, at 28 
 Tavistock Square, London. Our nursery window looked 
 over the fields to Hampstead, but very soon the London 
 and North Western Railway, and its various accessories 
 obscured the view. I think the neighbourhood was 
 pleasant at that time, and was fairly fashionable, for I 
 remember Mr. Baron Piatt lived close by, and we children 
 regarded him with great awe, and wondered why he did 
 not walk about in a full-bottomed wig. From Tavistock 
 Square the family removed to a large house and grounds 
 at Stamford Hill, greatly to the delight of all. I remem- 
 ber the wild joy with which I first saw the avenue of 
 chestnuts leading up to the front entrance, the stables, 
 the back lawn with fine evergreen oak in the centre, and 
 the many flower beds. At the back of the house a long 
 narrow path surrounding two small paddocks led on one 
 side through the kitchen garden and fruit trees ; and on 
 the other side through a wild belt of overcrowded trees 
 beneath which grew periwinkles and primroses. At the 
 far end was the fish pond where I used to seat myself for 
 hours upon a recumbent willow stump, and catch 
 quantities of roach, to the horror of our cook, who 
 declared they were quite unfit for food.
 
 24 ESS A VS. 
 
 My father kept a carriage, and horse for driving, but I 
 do not think he kept a horse for riding until a later period. 
 We had a pony to ride, whose great delight was to kick 
 us off his back in the paddock, and then rush wildly to 
 the stables. I have never since liked riding. 
 
 From Stamford Hill, then (but not now) in the wild of 
 the country, the family migrated to Porchester Terrace, 
 where we had only a small garden which did not afford 
 us much gratification, though my eldest brother grew very 
 fair strawberries there. Here on Sunday we used to go 
 to the Lock Chapel where the Rev. Capel Molyneux was 
 the popular minister. He was a man of undoubted 
 natural eloquence, and a really fine delivery, but his 
 doctrine was after the strictest sect of the Calvinists. 
 His preaching I think affected me very strongly at first, 
 but I happily became emancipated at a later date. From 
 Porchester Terrace we moved to 6 Westbourne Terrace, 
 a large corner house with absolutely no back door what- 
 ever. Here my father died : and my mother and my two 
 sisters and I moved to Sussex Gardens, where I remained 
 until 1870, when I married. 
 
 Whilst we were at Porchester Terrace my youngest 
 brother Ernest, four years of age, died of scarlet fever. 
 I have his portrait by Baxter, and it is evident that he 
 must have been a very beautiful child. Whilst we were 
 in Westbourne Terrace, my brother Arthur, who was 
 an officer in the East India Company's Service, died at 
 Allahabad. I think my father never recovered from the 
 shock of his loss. He had every reason to be proud of 
 him. My father was a wholesale tea dealer in Laurence 
 Poultney Lane in the city. On one or two rare occasions 
 he took me to the warehouse, and I saw with wonder the
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKE TCH. 2 ^ 
 
 huge tea chests, and the way in which the carman dealt 
 with them ; as well as the solemnity with which my father 
 and my eldest brother, who was in the business, tasted 
 decoctions of tea out of little white tea-cups with an 
 inhaling succulent sound, which I had always been taught 
 was bad manners. My mother was a daughter of John 
 Boden of Ednaston, Derbyshire, and my father's family 
 also came from that county, so that I ought to be and 
 probably am 
 
 " Derbyshire born and Derbyshire bred, 
 Strong in the arm and thick in the head," 
 
 as the old rhyme has it. 
 
 My father retired from the tea business, and with his 
 two sons joined the business of Boden and Co., lace 
 manufacturers of Derby, and died worth about ,£60,000, 
 this had to be divided amongst three sons and two 
 daughters. My two brothers became wealthy men, and 
 all of us had a sufficiency. My father's death occurred 
 just after I had left the University and before I was called 
 to the Bar. I felt his loss most severely. He did not 
 take much notice of us when we were chifdren, but in the 
 last few years of his life he and I became great friends, 
 and in his last illness he took great pains to have me 
 constantly near him. My Song of the Sea, which is 
 autobiographical, was a great favourite of my mother's. 
 
 I must now turn more closely to my own self and my 
 own doings. 
 
 I was sent to a dame's school at Woodford, kept by 
 three ladies who, I believe, were kind-hearted people, but 
 they would not allow the boys to go near any fire in 
 winter, and the playroom had no fireplace at all. I was 
 simply frozen to such an extent that the doctor feared I
 
 2 6 ESSAYS. 
 
 should lose my toes (like the Pobble). The school 
 caught fire one day (probably as a judgment) ; and one 
 boy was going to jump out of an open window when I 
 caught him by the leg. We all went off to a house at 
 some distance, and danced and played games. That 
 night I slept in one of the rooms which had been charred 
 by the flames and smelt horribly. I was in great terror, 
 but slept at last. At this school I learnt to cut out animals 
 in paper, an art which has often amused my children 
 when they were small, and my grand-children later. From 
 this school I went to another at Redlands, near Clifton, 
 where the master was a Wesleyan, an able man, but 
 peculiar in his ways of teaching. He taught Greek before 
 Latin, and both of them in a sort of conversational 
 fashion. His instructions in Euclid and Algebra were 
 excellent. He made one understand. The result was 
 that when I went to Highgate Grammar School, I found 
 that I could translate Greek more freely than the first 
 form, and certainly could do better in Euclid or Algebra ; 
 but I knew nothing at all about Latin grammar, or how 
 to add or subtract ordinary figures, and the multiplication 
 table was as hateful to me as it was to Marjorie Fleming. 
 At the school at Redlands we constantly had boiled beef 
 and very heavy suet pudding for dinner, and there is no 
 doubt that the food was very indifferent, and the doctors 
 whom my parents consulted thought that the illness from 
 which I suffered was due to this cause. Certain it is that 
 I became ill just before I went to Highgate Grammar 
 School, and continued ill during the time I was there. I 
 do not think I stayed a whole year. Although my house- 
 master and the headmaster, Dr. Dyne, were very kind and 
 indulgent to me in every way, yet I was very miserable.
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 27 
 
 I could neither play, nor learn. The doctors said I 
 suffered from liver complaint, and dosed me with endless 
 blue pill. My own belief is that my complaint was 
 mental, and that the disorder was nervous. I will en- 
 deavour to explain why I believe this to be the case, 
 though I am aware how dangerous it is to try to render 
 a true account of one's own thoughts and feelings, 
 especially as to the long past. 
 
 As a child I was ugly, and I became very early aware 
 of the fact. My sister, Isabel, was a very beautiful child. 
 I remember that a nurse, talking to our nurse in Tavistock 
 Square, compared us to " Beauty and the Beast." I felt it 
 very keenly. An uncle of mine was standing on the 
 hearthrug at home, and, with great deliberation, taking a 
 pinch of snuff. " Well," he said, regarding me steadfastly, 
 "you are the ugliest little beggar I ever saw." Worse 
 than this happened ; for I remember a lady friend saying 
 to my mother in my presence that " it was quite a shame 
 to call me ugly, and that I had a rich complexion, and 
 was like Murillo's Laughing Boy." I knew the picture 
 well, and did not think it any compliment. Now the 
 reason of all this anxiety about my personal appearance 
 was because I was born with a club foot. A marvellously 
 skilful operation had been performed when I was quite 
 small by a distinguished surgeon named Babbington — a 
 cousin, I believe, of Lord Macaulay ; but still the defor- 
 mity was perceptible, and I regret to say that boys used 
 sometimes to taunt me with my defect. I hope and 
 believe that boys are braver and better behaved now-a- 
 days. I was firmly convinced that I was deformed, ugly, 
 and generally despised. 
 
 I was taken by my father to see the play of Richard
 
 28 • ESSAYS. 
 
 the Third. He always declared that seeing that play had 
 upset my liver. Probably that was the last straw which 
 broke the camel's back. I was alarmingly excited by the 
 play, and was said to be delirious. On the occasion of a 
 cricket match (Stamford Hill against All England), I was 
 only an onlooker ; but my three brothers were playing. 
 I well remember my second brother, William, jumping 
 some iron railings to save a sixer. That night I was 
 delirious ; and I suffered for a long time from a dread 
 of something approaching me in the nature of a railway 
 train, — that being the particular horror I experienced 
 when delirious. I was subject to very violent headaches, 
 and used, when alone, to stamp about and talk wildly, 
 complaining of all sorts of things to myself. I used to 
 write a great quantity of poetry. When I was about 
 twelve years of age I wrote for a manuscript magazine 
 at the Redlands School the following hymn : 
 
 " God is a spirit ; and he keeps 
 A strict watch o'er us still : 
 Yea, not a single sparrow falls 
 Without his holy will. 
 
 "God is a spirit; and 'tis vain 
 To try to shun his sight. 
 His eyes can pierce the darkest gloom ; 
 He sees us in the night. 
 
 " God the great spirit bids us live 
 Religiously below, 
 And choose on earth eternal bliss, 
 Or everlasting woe." 
 
 This is, of course, doggrel ; but I quote it as showing 
 a sensitive and over-anxious temperament. So also of 
 other poems, long since happily committed to the flames.
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 
 
 One I remember described a fearful murder in an Alpine 
 pass, and the last verse told the terrified reader that : 
 
 "A flash of lightning rent the sky, — 
 It split an oak tree standing by, — 
 And then was heard a piercing cry, — 
 The murderer was dead ! " 
 
 So, too, the end of a miser was truly weird : 
 
 "And, while the miser trembling fears, 
 A clock, which had not struck for years, 
 Ticks with harsh grating on his ears, 
 And strikes the hour of one ! " 
 
 The fiends then rush in upon him, and tear his flesh 
 
 from his bones. On another occasion, after describing a 
 
 restless night, I wrote : 
 
 "When the gates of Night on their hinges 
 Swing back to admit the light, 
 I praise my God for the morning 
 But I bless him for the night." 
 
 Also I wrote several stories, mostly imitative of Dickens's 
 sentimental style, and of Longfellow's Hyperion, and 
 some of Scott. The curious thing was that I was the 
 only member of the family whose tastes lay in this direc- 
 tion. Added to this I could very easily play any tune 
 from ear on the piano, and I used to make wild attempts 
 at oil painting. What strikes me about this early part 
 of my life is that I wanted some "guide, philosopher, 
 and friend " to help me to understand myself, and what 
 I was doing. The only person in the family circle who 
 seemed to me to sympathize with me in some degree was 
 my mother's sister. My mother I feel sure spoilt me, 
 and was anxious and careful and loving beyond measure. 
 She was a woman of strong will and ample intelligence.
 
 3° 
 
 ESS A YS. 
 
 She could sing and play the piano with great taste and 
 considerable execution. This, of course, delighted me. 
 She has told me that when I was a small infant I used 
 to insist upon her singing the whole of Chevy Chase, 
 and if she tried to skip a verse I would prevent her 
 doing so. But she was not poetical, or imaginative, or 
 philosophical, or mystic. Her sister, Mrs. Webb, had 
 taste and knowledge in literature, but she could see no 
 beauty in Wordsworth or Tennyson, though she most 
 kindly allowed me to try and convert her. She was a 
 devout evangelical Christian, but had a keen sense of 
 humour, and a most charming voice and manner. I am 
 sure I must owe a great deal to her kindness and 
 sympathy, which was in some degree supplied in later 
 life by her daughter, Miss Lucinda Webb, whose steady 
 affection and sympathy have lasted to the present 
 date. 
 
 In consequence of my continued ill-health I was kept 
 at home and had a tutor for some time, and I have no 
 definite idea as to what I did. I must have had three 
 or four different tutors. One I remember used to box 
 my ears, but I don't know why. I fancy it was because 
 of his own native stupidity. It was he or another who 
 taught me to name all the towns in England with the 
 rivers on which they stood from a blank map. Could 
 anything be more wearisome ? At last after, as I have 
 before narrated, I went to Redlands, near Clifton, and 
 then to the school at Highgate, I was sent to a sort 
 of private tutor, the Rev. J. B. Reade, of Stone Vicarage, 
 near Aylesbury. My three brothers had been there 
 before me. I do not know if they learnt anything 
 there ; but when I was there we learnt absolutely
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKE TCH. 3 1 
 
 nothing. However, I spent a very happy three years 
 in that lovely vale, fishing in the stream, shooting small 
 birds with the vicar's gun, playing a little cricket, hockey, 
 high jumping, bird's nesting, looking through the vicar's 
 splendid telescopes at the moon and stars, etc., and in 
 the end getting rid of all liver complaints, nervousness, 
 and other vanities. I should add that Mr. Reade was 
 well known in the scientific world, and was a man of 
 great personal charm. He never even attempted to 
 teach us anything, and I, being about fifteen years old, 
 used to smoke with him in his private study or out on 
 the lawn. A funny sight I should think ! 
 
 It was here that I had the very great delight of 
 looking at sun, moon and stars through two excellent 
 telescopes. One large one revolved inside a large dome- 
 shaped observatory, and there was a revolving set of 
 stairs running on a sort of tram close to the wall. One 
 night, in order to get a better view of the moon, I 
 dragged the stair away from the wall; but after examining 
 the moon I forgot to reinstate the stair, and went back 
 into the Vicarage. Suddenly I heard a bang and a 
 shout, and guessed what had happened ! I shall never 
 forget that sensation ! Luckily the good vicar was not 
 much hurt, but I was forbidden ever to go into the 
 observatory again. As a matter of fact, I was soon 
 forgiven, and my shocking carelessness was forgotten. 
 
 When I left Stone I went to King's College, London, 
 daily for three years. Here I made many friends of my 
 fellow-scholars — men of like tastes and sentiments, and 
 all my superiors in knowledge and probably in ability. 
 Chiefest of these was my dear old friend, Alfred Ainger, 
 the late Master of the Temple and Canon of Bristol.
 
 3- 
 
 ESSA VS. 
 
 Here, too, Professor Brewer's Lectures on English Litera- 
 ture fired my mind, and gave me food to live upon. I 
 was a bad attendant at all other lectures, but for him 
 I would work day and night. Here I began to write 
 verses, serious or comic, with some degree of success — 
 or at least my fellow-students would "endure my lays." 
 There was a comic magazine, to which I was a constant 
 contributor, and there was a "Debating Society" and 
 a " Shakespearian Society." These were something of 
 novelties in those days. 
 
 I suppose some of the verses I wrote at this time 
 interested my fellow-students, one of whom wrote : 
 
 " I think an ancient legend saith 
 That swans sing just before their death ; 
 If so, I wish our Horace might, 
 Like Whiskerandos, die all night." 
 
 I wrote a skit upon all the Professors — a parody upon 
 Hiawatha, which had just then appeared and was, as 
 it deserved to be, most popular, and especially lent 
 itself to parody. I hope I was not ill-natured, and I 
 endeavoured to qualify my parody by a preface in which 
 I said : 
 
 "Deem not that with evil feelings, 
 
 Vicious as the caw of ravens, 
 
 Vicious as the talk of magpies, 
 
 Slandering the birds their neighbours, 
 
 Personal to all around them ; 
 
 No, but with the kindest feelings 
 
 Sing we of the whims and oddness 
 
 Of the persons herein pictured ; 
 
 And we laugh but as the squirrels — 
 
 Laughing, frisking in the pine trees, 
 
 Agidomo, king of squirrels, 
 
 Laughing in the gloomy pine trees:
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33 
 
 All these jokes and harmless nonsense 
 Are not meant to be offensive, 
 Have indeed no sense of meaning, 
 But, mayhap, may pass the moments, 
 Dreary moments of our life-time, 
 As the sunshine through the branches, 
 Glancing, playing through the shadows, 
 Chequering the tedious pathway, 
 Where we wander, oft-times weary, 
 To the land of the Hereafter." 
 
 In 1857 Ainger and I went up to Trinity Hall, Cam- 
 bridge. It is not possible I should suppose for any man 
 to enjoy more absolute content and happiness than I did 
 during my three and a half years at the University. I had 
 a private mathematical coach, dear old Walton. He 
 used to say : " I think, Smith, you are the most agreeable 
 analyst I have ever known." I am afraid I did not work 
 as much as I ought, but I did work at times, and W^alton, 
 who never placed a man too high, promised me a safe 
 Senior Op. In my last College exam. I was bracketed 
 with a man who was a high Senior Op. and was above 
 one who was a wrangler. As it happened, about a fort- 
 night before the examination I was skating on " The 
 Backs," and performing some tricks in the dusk, when 
 I tripped up, and, after a struggle, fell with a crash and 
 dislocated my leg. The fat old butler carried me up into 
 the College, and his noble nose bled profusely all over 
 me, so that everybody thought at first that I must have 
 been stabbed. Of course I was put to bed and strapped 
 up. The question then arose as to " degrading " for a 
 year, or taking an "aegrotat." I was dead against the 
 latter, having known such a degree to be sometimes a 
 fraud, and the head tutor, backed I believe by the Vice- 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 ESS A VS. 
 
 Chancellor, would not allow me to degrade. At last the 
 authorities (influenced I believe by the exertions of Leslie 
 Stephen) allowed me to be examined in bed, and an M.A. 
 came to sit with me to see that I did not crib. These 
 kind dons were all very much shocked at the cruelty of 
 my parents, who they supposed were compelling me to 
 this ordeal, but they did not know me or my parents who 
 were begging me to take an '■'■aegrotat" I got through 
 the " three days " fairly well till the last day, when, after 
 a terrible time in the morning, I broke down, and the 
 doctor came, and had the blinds drawn down and no 
 noise to be made. The examiners very kindly sent to 
 tell me I had passed, but alas, I was low down in the 
 Junior Ops. when the list came out. When I went up 
 to take my degree in the Senate House there was another 
 man on crutches from a similar accident. This was in 
 i860, and some wag called for "three cheers for the 
 Crimean heroes," which was given. Of course I could 
 not kneel before the Vice-Chancellor, but I had to hold 
 out my hands for his blessing, and had not the good old 
 man held me up I should have precipitated myself into 
 his stomach. 
 
 Ainger and I used often to amuse ourselves and others 
 at Trinity Hall by singing comic songs, sometimes in 
 alternate verses. One specimen may suffice to show 
 how very frivolous we could be. The great eclipse of 
 the sun gave occasion to the following as far as I can 
 remember it. 
 
 Self : " I've turned the matter in my mind, 
 
 And this is the result I find 
 That sun and fog and cloud combined 
 Make Hoop de oodem doo !
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 
 
 AlNGER : " I've looked through glasses red and green 
 And in the Court for hours I've been 
 But all that there was to be seen 
 Was Hoop de oodem doo ! 
 
 Self : " When eclipses happen in Australia, 
 
 Why then your Greenwich won't avail yer 
 But if this ain't an awful failure — 
 Hoop de oodem doo ! 
 
 AlNGER : "To Peterborough some make trips; 
 
 But I don't think much of this eclipse ; 
 But as Boadicea said to Colonel Phipps — 
 Hoop de oodem doo ! " 
 
 I remember we young men used to complain, I believe 
 not altogether without reason, of the food provided in 
 Hall, and we started a club in College which we called 
 the " Blow-out Club," to the great scandal of the Dons, 
 and we used to have a grand supper once a week, and 
 recite verses and sing songs about our woes. One of 
 mine subsequently appeared in the pages of Punch : 
 
 A DISMAL ECHO SONG 
 
 In the Michaelmas Term, 1857. 
 
 Trinity Hall, Nov. 21. 
 
 "The gyps they sprawl about the Hall 
 And galleries where freshmen huddle ! 
 Propitious fates, protect the plates ! — 
 In such a wild and glorious muddle ! 
 O, students, O, — the cause is past divining, 
 But lately we have come to grief in point of dining — dining. 
 
 " O Lord, O dear, how thin and queer 
 The pea-soup is, — and getting thinner ! 
 The beef is raw and tries the jaw ! 
 
 The mutton's hard, as heart of sinner ! 
 O, students, O, — it is no use repining, 
 O students, do not mention — dining, — dining, — dining!
 
 ^»6 ESSAYS. 
 
 " friends, we dine like filthy swine ! — 
 It tells on stomach and on liver ! — 
 To mend the fare, our course is clear — 
 Let's chuck the cook into the river ! 
 O, Fuller, O, the Cam is sweetly shining, 
 And we will surely pitch you in in lieu of dining — dining." 
 
 There was a prize given at Trinity Hall for English 
 Essay for second and third year men, and on both 
 occasions I carried off the prize ; but what makes me 
 really proud of the performance is that on both occasions 
 Alfred Ainger was one of the competitors. From the 
 time I first knew him at King's College I always regarded 
 him as a master of clear and graceful English. I believe 
 there were three judges, but Leslie Stephen, I suspect, 
 was the leader, and that is another flattering unction 
 which I lay upon my soul. I was in common with most 
 Trinity Hall men an ardent oar, and a good deal excited 
 about all sports and pastimes. "Athletic Sports" were 
 born in my time at Trinity Hall, 1 and from thence spread 
 to Trinity, finally over the whole University, and to Oxford 
 and to England at large. We used some of us to meet 
 on Saturday evening in the large room belonging to 
 Harry Hughes (the brother of Tom Hughes), where 
 boxing, jumping, lifting weights, etc., etc., used to take 
 place. Then we took to running races on Parker's Piece, 
 and lastly on Fenner's Cricket Ground. There were no 
 prizes, and no one to look on, but the fun of the thing 
 was enough. During this period I devoured a great 
 quantity of books, novels without end, and a good deal 
 of poetry and general literature. Maurice and Kingsley 
 
 1 As I believe, but some doubt has been thrown upon this by 
 Professor Maitland in his Life of Sir L. Stephen.
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 17 
 
 were my guides on religious matters, and I used fre- 
 quently to attend Lincoln's Inn Chapel and the church 
 in Vere Street to hear Maurice preach. What a wonder- 
 ful thing it was ! And how few people cared to attend ! 
 The earnestness — the pathos — was what I never heard 
 before or since. To hear him read the Lord's Prayer 
 was not to hear reading, but to feel prayer. I also used 
 frequently to go to the Parish Church in Mary-le-bone to 
 hear Llewelyn Davis ; and, at Cambridge, I often went 
 on Sunday evening, in cap and gown, and stood in the 
 aisle of the little church to hear Harvey Goodwin. My 
 religious views were very much influenced by Tennyson's 
 poetry. I should suppose that the new generation can 
 hardly understand how deeply the religious doubts and 
 difficulties of their fathers were affected by such a poem 
 as In Memoriam. I remember that I was regarded by 
 people, who were classed as " religious," as a heretic 
 beyond the pale of salvation because I loved Tennyson's 
 poetry. All my life I have been a great lover of books. 
 Poetry has been my chief delight. My taste in poetry 
 was catholic. I did not much care for Chaucer, how- 
 ever. After Shakespeare I have always put Spenser as 
 first favourite, and Wordsworth and Tennyson bracketed 
 second, and Coleridge next. Pope was a great friend 
 of mine, and for me eclipsed Dryden. My daughter 
 Dorothy says I am always quoting Pope, and she believes 
 I know no other poetry ; but this is an exaggeration. As 
 for Milton, I love Lycidas, and Comus and V Allegro also, 
 and Paradise Lost and // Penseroso, sometimes. Byron 
 and Shelley I never cared for very much, and am now 
 quite unable to read them, excepting one or two lyrics. 
 Scott is always delightful in verse or prose, and in this
 
 33 
 
 ESS A YS. 
 
 faith I have never wavered. Burns I loved when I was 
 
 in love and young and foolish, and good reason why. 
 
 I still can recognize the master-hand, but he does not 
 
 grow upon one in old age. Besides these I knew a 
 
 quantity of poetry of all sorts and descriptions, a great 
 
 quantity by heart from constant reading of it, and my 
 
 knowledge of comic verse is certainly very large. This 
 
 knowledge of poetry has been a great resource for me 
 
 during restless nights or long journeys. My wife says I 
 
 read nothing but Burke's works, and Boswell's Life of 
 
 Johnson, and there is some truth in this exaggerated 
 
 account of my reading. I like well-written prose, but 
 
 do not find it often in quite modern books. Macaulay 
 
 and Froude have been my delight, and Hallam in a less 
 
 degree. Goldsmith, Addison, Sterne, Lamb, Washington 
 
 Irving keep ever fresh. I doubt if I could read Bulwer 
 
 or G. P. R. James now, and certainly not Harrison Ains- 
 
 worth. Shall I ever again read George Eliot? I read 
 
 Jane Eyre a few weeks ago — powerful, and yet — and yet? 
 
 — Well I think one wants a dose of Sir Walter after it. 
 
 Bacon's Essays I know very fairly well. To Gullivers 
 
 Travels I am certain I owe a good deal for keeping me 
 
 humble, and not unwilling to be guided by the Bible; 
 
 but on the whole I do not much enjoy Swift. Milton 
 
 and Hooker I have read in my youth, but I do not know 
 
 that I should care to read them now for relaxation, as I 
 
 can read Burke. I might go on gossiping about books 
 
 for ever, and to no purpose ; only I am sure that an 
 
 account of myself which left out the reading of many 
 
 books would be inadequate. Rogers the poet said : 
 
 " Whenever I hear any talk about a new book I go off 
 
 and read an old one."
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 39 
 
 Immediately upon my leaving college I published 
 through Messrs. Macmillan & Co. a small volume of 
 poems. They were noticed by two or three papers in 
 a coldly favourable manner, and the Statidard gave 
 above a column to contrasting my verses with those 
 cf some miserable wight, saying (I remember) that 
 mine, as compared with his, was as the air of Ben 
 Lomond to the air in St. Paul's Churchyard ; but even 
 this did not sell the book ! From this time until I 
 give up the Bar, and became a Metropolitan magistrate, 
 I did not publish anything in the way of literature; but 
 worked for my living, and kept my verses slyly hidden 
 away in a private drawer, from which it was my delight 
 to take them out from time to time for polishing. I 
 went to the chambers of an old conveyancer in Lincoln's 
 Inn, named Bourdillon, for a year ; and then had the 
 honour of drawing up a will of Jenny Lind, but I doubt 
 if that will was ever executed. F. C. Burnand (after- 
 wards editor of Punch) was one of those who read or 
 did not read in Bourdillon's chambers. As soon as ever 
 he appeared no one tried to work, and he kept us in fits 
 of laughter till he went away. Then I worked in the 
 chambers of Tom Jones of the Northern Circuit, where 
 I saw plenty of business ; and on the Summer Circuit I 
 went round with him to York, Durham, and Newcastle. 
 He was a most jovial, friendly man, and had a large 
 business as a junior. He was a licensed jester before 
 their lordships in the law courts. One day in the 
 absence of his leader he began to apologize, and to 
 say that " he felt he would not be able, etc.," when 
 Chief Baron Kelly said " I am sure, Mr. Jones, no one 
 would say that you were not competent to deal with the
 
 4 o ESS A YS. 
 
 case." " Well, no one would say so except myself," said 
 Mr. Jones. While following him round the circuit he 
 took me to a comfortable family hotel by the seaside 
 The landlady came smiling to the door. "What would 
 you like for dinner, sir?" "Bring me everything you 
 have got in the house." Then, turning to me, he 
 exclaimed, " Young man, that is the way to order 
 dinner." 
 
 I was called to the Bar in April, 1862, at the Inner 
 Temple and went the Midland Circuit, and Derbyshire, 
 Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire Sessions. I was for 
 many years a Revising Barrister, and was made Recorder 
 of Lincoln in 1881, a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 
 1886 (a distinguished honour, as I was only a "stuff 
 gown"), and a Metropolitan magistrate in 1888. I had 
 what may be called a small but pleasant business at the 
 Bar. One year I made ^1500. During the time I was 
 waiting for work I wrote a great many big law books, 
 which I think served to prevent my lapsing into utter 
 despair, although from a lucrative point of view the pay 
 for writing or editing is miserable. The labour of editing 
 such huge books as Addison on Torts, or Cotitracts, 
 Russell on Crimes, etc., is enormous. My old friend, 
 Mr. Justice Lawrance, used to call me "The Index 
 mongerer." I might mention that I was Secretary to 
 the Royal Commission to inquire into Bribery at Oxford, 
 where a " man in the moon " came down from the 
 Carlton Club with ^3000, sovereigns in little bags, and 
 the whole iniquity was discovered by one Professor 
 writing a letter to another Professor over the garden 
 wall, and probably leaving the letter on his table where 
 the maid read it, and handed it to her lover, who was
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 4 i 
 
 probably a Radical and sold it to the Liberal Party— at 
 all events something of the sort had occurred ; for the 
 letter was produced before the Commission by the 
 Liberal agent. Upon this enquiry was mainly based 
 the excellent statute which practically put an end to all 
 direct bribery. 
 
 I had the good fortune to be well received on the 
 Midland Circuit, and became (if my modesty will allow 
 me to say so) a very popular member thereof. I used 
 to be invariably called upon on festive occasions to sing 
 comic songs of my own making, and at one of our 
 solemn farce courts I was unanimously elected " Poet 
 Laureate." I may also mention that upon an election 
 of members to serve on the Bar Committee I was head 
 of the whole poll of the Bar. A good deal of this 
 success might be due to the tricks of canvassers, but 
 it undoubtedly showed that I was possessed of a very 
 large body of personal friends. I was very warmly 
 helped in my profession by the members thereof, and 
 by them only ; chiefly by Fitzjames Stephen and L. W. 
 Cave (afterwards Judges of the High Court) and by S. B. 
 Bristowe (afterwards County Court Judge). With Cave 
 I became very intimate, and in 1870 I married his wife's 
 sister. A more firm, loyal and helpful friend in every 
 way than Cave never lived upon earth. 
 
 It is sad to think that the good old " Circuits " are 
 becoming things of the past. They had a distinctly 
 humanizing and friendly effect upon the members of 
 the bar travelling round from town to town, and dining 
 together for some weeks as one harmonious body.
 
 42 ESS A YS. 
 
 CIRCUIT MESS. 
 Air — "Willow the King." 
 
 " Circuit Mess is a very fine thing, 
 
 Unto its praises a song I'll sing. 
 
 I know there are some folks, now, who say 
 
 That Circuit is going to vanish away ; 
 
 But oh, if its life be only a span, 
 
 It's as well to be merry as long as we can ! 
 So ho ! So ho ! We cannot do less 
 Than drink long life to the Circuit Mess. 
 
 II. 
 
 ' ' What can we say of the food at Mess ? 
 What words can the washy soups express? 
 Cod-fish, without any oyster sauce, 
 Beef, done to rags, and mutton that's coarse ; 
 But, if of our puddings we may not boast, 
 There's that jolly red herring comes in upon toast, 
 So ho ! So ho ! We cannot do less 
 Than drink long life to the Circuit Mess. 
 
 m. 
 
 "What of the wine; though the victuals ain't good? 
 
 Plenty of lush washes down the food. 
 
 Our sherries and ports are only so-so ; 
 
 And the claret seems colder the further you go. 
 
 But, bounding up to the ceiling above, 
 
 Goes the cork of the wine we all of us love. 
 So ho ! So ho ! We cannot do less 
 Than drink long life to the Circuit Mess. 
 
 Here followed verses ad lib. on the Q.C.'s at the head 
 of the table, but they were too " topical " for insertion 
 here ; and the song ended with :
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 43 
 
 " What of the juniors can I sing, — 
 You may have too much of a very good thing, 
 But, though we're all starving, the truth to tell, 
 Yet we keep up our spirits uncommonly well. 
 So now let us sing e'er my song be done, — 
 We're jolly companions every one. 
 
 So ho ! So ho ! We cannot do less 
 Than drink long life to the Circuit Mess." 
 
 I never learnt oratory as an art. I belonged to a 
 Debating Society at King's College, London, and spoke 
 once or twice a few words. I belonged to the Union 
 Debating Society at Cambridge, and never spoke, and 
 hardly ever heard a debate : I used the library of that 
 society constantly. I joined the Westminster Debating 
 Society when I left the University, and spoke twice. I 
 was always a nervous speaker at the Bar. When I went 
 into a new court, or had to deal with a new and 
 unaccustomed case, I was sometimes so nervous as to 
 suffer absolute discomfort in articulating. When I was in 
 familiar surroundings this nervousness, I believe, added 
 energy and humour to my speech. I was at times spon- 
 taneously eloquent or humorous. The Clerk of Assize 
 one day told me he had just heard some people outside 
 the court talking of a trial in which I was engaged for 
 the defence. "Well, how 'as it gone?" "Oh, Bill's 
 been let off." "How came that about?" "Well you 
 see, he had such a favourite counsel." On another 
 occasion a man came up to me at Lincoln after hearing 
 me defend a prisoner, and said he wished me to conduct 
 a civil suit of importance on the Norfolk Circuit, as he 
 had never heard any speaking like mine, etc. He was 
 nothing daunted by my telling him that I should require 
 a special fee of fifty guineas, but no doubt his solicitor
 
 44 ESS A YS. 
 
 restrained his ardour. At Derby I often spoke with 
 ease and success. 1 had to defend Sir Henry Wilmot's 
 gamekeeper, who, in broad daylight, shot a poacher, as 
 he was in the act of climbing a stile. He shot him in 
 the calf of the leg. My only possible defence was 
 "accident." But what a defence! Well, I struggled 
 so manfully that the jury could not agree, and were 
 discharged. At the next Assizes Sir Henry's solicitor 
 said to me, " Sir Henry insists upon it that you must 
 get him off. He is a most excellent gamekeeper ! " 
 "Yes," I said, "and a first-rate shot, no doubt, but 
 that only shows that it was not by accident he shot 
 the poacher." Next morning before going into Court 
 I read in the county paper that a well-known sportsman 
 in the county had been accidentally shot by one of his 
 friends. Of course I had no difficulty in drawing tears 
 from the eyes of the jury, and an acquittal from their 
 softened hearts. 
 
 On another occasion I was defending some prisoners 
 for a forcible entry. Some man had fancied that he was 
 the fifth Earl of Somewhere. A quantity of public-house 
 companions came with the fifth earl in carts to the old 
 mansion, now in the lawful possession of some modern 
 gentlefolk. As it happened the housekeeper and parlour- 
 maid were cleaning the old family pictures, and had 
 taken them down from the walls. The police had got 
 wind of the matter, and after the prisoners had generally 
 played the fool, and drunk some wine which they found 
 in a sideboard, they were taken into custody. Of course, 
 I explained to the jury that when the fifth earl arrived at 
 his ancestral seat his ancestors came down from the walls 
 to welcome him, etc., etc., and then it would ill-become
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 45 
 
 the noble earl, in the presence of his retainers, under 
 all the circumstances, to refrain from offering them some 
 old port, bottled in the reign of Richard II., when the 
 " Forcible Entry Act" was passed, etc.; and then I read 
 the section of the Act, which, of course, the jury could 
 not understand in the least. And all this time the judge 
 kept muttering, "Oh dear, what will he say next," and 
 the jury acquitted the prisoners. But the most curious 
 thing of all was that the solicitors for the other side 
 came up to London afterwards to request me to advise 
 them upon the best mode of securing for their clients 
 the peaceable possession of their property as against 
 these impostors. 
 
 On another occasion at Nottingham, before Mr. Justice 
 Hawkins, a half-cracked chemist was accused of setting 
 fire to a rick. He had stuffed his lighted pocket-hand- 
 kerchief into the rick. The rick was half destroyed, 
 but a portion of the handkerchief with his name on it 
 was still there. There was no defence ; but I suggested 
 in a hazy manner that there was no deliberate intention, 
 and dwelt upon the absence of motive. I then went 
 off upon the handkerchief, and told the story of Othello 
 in most absurd fashion : " This handkerchief did an 
 Egyptian give to my grandmother," though I professed 
 I could never understand how that could justify the Moor 
 of Venice smothering Desdemona with the bolsters, etc., 
 etc. I kept it up till judge and counsel were rolling about 
 with laughter, and the judge gave a very light sentence 
 on the jury's recommendation to mercy. It used to be 
 a chaff against me among my young friends that once 
 at Lincoln I persuaded the jury to acquit an old woman 
 who had clearly stolen some goods in the market by
 
 46 £SSA VS. 
 
 alluding to the fact that it was the Saturday before 
 Easter Sunday, and it would be very hard upon her that 
 she should not go home and hear the "Easter joy 
 bells " ringing in the morning. On another occasion of 
 a charge of stealing an umbrella I told a story to the 
 jury of how I once dined at the Reform Club, and 
 missed my umbrella, which was returned the next day 
 to the porter by a Radical member, who had run off with 
 it, as it was a wet night. The prisoner, however, was, 
 as they heard from the policeman, a member of a Co?i- 
 servative Association, so that it was clear he had not 
 stolen the umbrella. This argument proved irresistible 
 in Lincolnshire. Of course, I had graver cases to attend 
 to — cases where facts had to be kept in order, or argu- 
 ments stated with clearness and precision, and I suppose 
 I was not wholly incompetent in this direction; but I 
 have given the above illustrations to indicate that my 
 chief merits were a sort of unstudied earnestness and 
 a keen sense of the ridiculous. 
 
 Besides the singing of songs at the Mess, I would 
 sometimes scribble a parody or comic verse, which 
 would be passed round in court, and perhaps illustrated 
 by the late Sir Frank Lockwood, and at last handed up 
 to the judge, if he was (as most of their lordships were) 
 fond of a joke. On one summer circuit there were three 
 Revising Barristerships vacant, and the excitement was 
 intense as to whom these appointments would be given. 
 The two Judges of Assize were Mr. Justice (afterwards 
 Lord) Field and Mr. Justice Denman. I retain the 
 names, for I suppose none of my readers can fail to 
 see that the jokes (such as they are) contain no atom 
 of sense, and will see at once that I could only talk such
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 4 y 
 
 nonsense about persons whom I loved and honoured, 
 and who, I believe, loved me. The verses illustrate the 
 great degree of familiarity existing among the members 
 of the Old Midland Circuit : 
 
 "His lordship, Mr. Justice Field, 
 
 By all his gods he swore, 
 That the great trade in jobbery 
 
 Should be upheld no more; 
 By all his gods he swore it, 
 
 In language plain and short, 
 And bade his trumpeters proclaim 
 East and south and north that same 
 
 By order of the Court. 
 
 " Beyond all things a bobby 
 
 Loves to produce the swag ; 
 Next to himself the lawyer loves 
 
 The briefs that fill his bag ; 
 Sweet to the counsel is the fee 
 
 On which he shuts his fists, 
 Dear than life the junior 
 
 Loves the Revising Lists. 
 
 " Sparks from the vale of Putney 
 
 Led up his ruffian lot ; 
 Well may the pallid labourer mark 
 The track of his destroying bark, 
 
 And tremble for his cot. 
 From London unto Notts they went, 
 And there they took the silver Trent ; 
 On slaughter and on rapine bent, 
 
 As well their looks betray'd ; 
 Nottingham, Newark, Lincoln, York, 
 Can tell the ravages they work, — 
 The frequent soda-water cork, 
 
 The wire of lemonade !
 
 48 
 
 ESS A VS. 
 
 Three pounds of sugar in a tin, 
 Three dozen lemons in their skin, 
 Three bottles of the Old Tom gin 
 
 Inflame his hellish crew, 
 Three dozen bottles in the hold 
 (Apollinaris as I'm told) 
 They also take with ice so cold, 
 
 And drink till all is blue. 
 
 " Soden from green Tiburnia 
 
 Down by the Notting Hill ; 
 Lord of the stocks and scrips and shares, 
 Wonder of those, who, unawares, 
 Try to outvie with stags and bears, 
 
 And surely come to ill — 
 Gibbons, whom no man yet could please ; 
 And Forbes who's never at his ease, 
 
 But always on the go ; 
 Lumley, who, in the Common Pleas, 
 
 Reports as all men know ; — 
 So learned he, that, when he speaks, 
 His longtailed words will last for weeks, 
 
 So freely do they flow. 
 
 "All these and more, whom I could name, 
 Attempted to set up a claim 
 
 To fill the vacant three ; 
 But all were very far from game, 
 
 And funky as could be. 
 Was none who would be foremost 
 
 To lead such dire attack, 
 But those behind cried ' forward ! ' 
 
 And those before cried ' back ! ' 
 And backwards now and forwards 
 
 Wavers that mighty sea, 
 And for a space no man came forth 
 
 To fill the vacant three.
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 4 g 
 
 But hark ! the cry is Carter, 1 
 
 And, lo, the ranks divide, 
 And the great Midland Counsel 
 
 Comes with his stately stride ; 
 Beneath his flowing mantle 
 
 A brief he doth conceal, 
 And on the back is marked the name 
 
 Of Marigold and Beale. 
 He smiled on Sparks and Soden, 
 
 A smile serene and high, 
 He eyed the flinching jobbers, 
 
 And scorn was in his eye ; 
 Quoth he, ' This pair of judges 
 
 Stand savagely at bay ; 
 But will ye dare to follow, 
 
 If Carter clears the way ! ' 
 
 " Hut meanwhile with the judges 
 
 Was council and debate ; 
 They read the applications 
 
 From early until late. 
 Some came from men they knew right well, 
 
 (Too well, alas, 'tis said) 
 And some from men they'd never seen, 
 
 Or thought they'd long been dead — 
 They read the letters written 
 
 At peril of their lives, 
 By fathers and by mothers, 
 
 By uncles, aunts, and wives ; 
 By noble lords, and ladies, 
 
 And M. P.'s not a few, 
 Who wrote, ' if you will do this job, 
 
 I'll do a job for you.' 
 They also were much got at 
 
 By many a sage Q.C., 
 
 1 The point made here is, nobody could be less like the proud, boast- 
 ful Astur than my modest and able friend, John Currie Carter, J. I'. 
 
 D
 
 50 ESS A YS. 
 
 At length, all wearied with despair, 
 They beat their breasts, and tore their hair, 
 Then skied a copper in the air, 
 And filled the vacant Three." 
 
 My uncle, George Boden, Q.C, was a Bencher of the 
 Inner Temple, and one day he was talking about the 
 Readership, and said the Benchers wanted to have a 
 curate who really knew how to read ; and I told him 
 that, if they truly meant what they said, I could find 
 them the best Reader in England. The result was that 
 the Readership was thrown open to competition, and a 
 huge number of curates sent in testimonials. One testi- 
 monial was presented by a chaplain of a gaol, who was 
 described as " being accustomed to preach to hardened 
 sinners." He was not selected by the Benchers. Among 
 the six selected from the testimonials to read and preach 
 in the Temple Church was my friend, Alfred Ainger, 
 and there can be no doubt in anyone's mind that the 
 Benchers were right in offering him the post upon his 
 merits. He was at that time a complete stranger, but 
 that he justified their unanimous approval has been 
 shown during the many years he was Reader, and 
 during his Mastership until his death. For nearly fifty 
 years he was my most valued friend, and there was never 
 the slightest approach to coldness between us, though 
 circumstances sometimes prevented our meeting as often 
 as we might wish. I have made many good friends in 
 my time, but none so good as he. 1 
 
 I have before alluded to my taste for sketching. It 
 has, I am sure, been a source of great comfort to me, 
 
 1 Alas ! I have had many losses since I wrote this, July, 1905.
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRAPHICA L SKE TCH. 5 1 
 
 especially during holiday periods. I never had any 
 lessons in the art ; but I had the great advantage of 
 knowing Thomas Creswick, R.A., and his almost equally 
 gifted wife. Mrs. Creswick was a very intimate friend of 
 my mother. She was a Miss Sylvester, a daughter of 
 John Sylvester, senior, and sister of John Sylvester, 
 junior, both of them distinguished engineers. When 
 Thomas Creswick, then a raw young lad from Sheffield, 
 married Miss Sylvester, my father and mother were their 
 firm and fast friends, and my father very considerably 
 assisted Creswick by buying some of his pictures, and 
 getting his city friends to do the same. My mother's 
 family (the Bodens and their friends) also gave Creswick 
 many orders, and he very soon rose to be the most 
 popular landscape painter of his time ; and in my opinion 
 one of the most truly delightful and eminently English 
 landscape painters that has ever lived. When we were 
 children, my sister Isabel and I would often be sent on 
 some message from my mother to Linden Grove from 
 Porchester Terrace ; and when we rang the bell, would 
 see Creswick's huge untidy figure, with hair unkempt, 
 slouching velveteen coat, and large yellow slippers, emerg- 
 ing from behind the bushes in the garden, and shouting 
 " What ! Horatio the bold and the fair Imogen ! Come 
 along ! " Then followed loud shouts to " Anne ! Anne ! " 
 who came out crying " What is it Tom, dear ! " and then 
 my sister would go off to eat cakes and goodies with Mrs. 
 Creswick, and I would be taken to look at the pictures— 
 oh, day of delight ! I wonder what I used to say on those 
 occasions. I expect I said very little but, like the parrot, 
 I thought the more. Afterwards, I used frequently to 
 play with Creswick at billiards ; and I have stayed with
 
 52 
 
 ESS.4 VS. 
 
 him and Mrs. Creswick at Whitby, and at Barnard Castle, 
 when he has been painting there. He seemed to be really 
 pleased with my futile performances in painting. One of 
 the most beautiful pictures he ever painted was described 
 in the Royal Academy catalogue by a verse from one of 
 my poems which he admired. I don't remember Creswick 
 ever giving me any direct instruction in painting, but I 
 learnt I suppose something from watching him at work. 
 When quite a boy I gave up trying to paint in oil colours — 
 they are most inconvenient in many ways for amateurs, — 
 and Creswick almost never painted in water colours. One 
 day he tried ; and a picture dealer was so delighted that 
 he gave a high price for the picture and ordered another. 
 Creswick swore (more suo) at having to do it ; and having 
 put it under the pump showed it to me, saying, that was 
 the true secret of water-colour drawing, which was beastly. 
 He told me that Constable was the only artist who ever 
 painted a tree really naturally, and said that Constable 
 put endless dabs of white on the leaves of trees, and that 
 it was quite true to nature, the light on the leaves making 
 them white, while those in shade remained green. His 
 ardent enthusiasm for the beauties of nature, and his 
 delight in his art, were only to be equalled by his idleness 
 and his easy good humour. In the Life of Lord Tenny- 
 son, Creswick is very happily described as "a capital 
 broad genial fellow," which he certainly was. His art is 
 very characteristically described by Ruskin in Modern 
 Painters. After protesting " I am very far from calling 
 Creswick's good tree painting" he proceeds to write an 
 eloquent tirade upon the exquisite beauty of Creswick's 
 tree-painting, and the inferiority of everybody else's. He 
 speaks of him as " one of the very few artists who do draw
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 53 
 
 from nature." l At Creswick's house I used to see many 
 artists, amongst whom I remember Mulready, Redgrave, 
 Elmore, Frith, Egg, Cooke, Holman Hunt, Webster, Sir 
 E. Landseer, and Ansdell, and no doubt some others 
 whom I have forgotten. 
 
 In the course of my life as a barrister, I have made 
 many friends, and amongst them many distinguished 
 lawyers, but I do not know that any of them have had 
 any direct influence upon my life or character. I ought 
 to mention those who have assisted me in my career. 
 The present Lord James of Hereford gave me my first 
 appointment of Counsel to the Mint on the Midland 
 Circuit, and also made me Secretary to the Royal 
 Commission on Bribery at Oxford. Mr. Justice Mellor 
 made me a Revising Barrister (because of my singing of 
 comic songs, as it was said). Sir William Harcourt made 
 made me Recorder of Lincoln, a post which, although 
 not lucrative, was pleasant and useful in many ways. 
 The Earl of Halsbury, L.C., nominated me as Auditor of 
 the Inner Temple, and this was a step towards my 
 subsequent election as a Bencher of that Inn. This 
 was a distinguished honour as I was only a "stuff gown," 
 and the Benchers seldom depart from their rule of electing 
 " silk gowns " only. I suppose I was very proud in con- 
 sequence ; but pride will have a fall. Two years after 
 being elected a Bencher to represent the interest of the 
 "stuff gowns," I was made a Metropolitan Magistrate; 
 and on meeting a very charming brother Bencher, I told 
 him of my appointment and added, " I am sorry to for- 
 sake the ' stuff gowns,' and afraid they will think that 1 
 have basely deserted them as I was elected to represent 
 1 Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. i. pp. 421, 422, 431.
 
 54 ESS A YS. 
 
 them." " Never mind, my dear fellow," he exclaimed, 
 "you did it d— d badly!" 
 
 I was made a Metropolitan Magistrate on the recom- 
 mendation of the Home Secretary, Sir Henry Matthews, 
 in 1888. It cannot be said that I owed my appointments 
 to political favouritism. Indeed I was told that Sir Henry 
 Matthews said, "Why should I appoint Mr. Horace 
 Smith, he could get anything he wanted from the other 
 side." However that might be, I got what I had always 
 wanted, for I had (very soon after being called to the 
 Bar) a strong desire to become a magistrate in London, — 
 a position of the highest possible usefulness, and of the 
 deepest interest. It is true that at times one feels 
 as if 
 
 " the burthen of the mystery, 
 . . . the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world " 
 
 were too great to bear, and one longs that it may be 
 "lightened." 
 
 I remember old Mr. Justice Byles saying to me that the 
 happiest times of his life were those which he spent with 
 his wife and children in the vacation by the seaside or 
 in other holiday places. I cordially agree, notwithstand- 
 ing I have felt at each particular time or place that there 
 were some drawbacks. I was too poor and my family too 
 large (amounting in time to four boys and four girls) to 
 admit of our going away from home every year. I used to 
 say we only could go every other year ; but as a matter 
 of fact we frequently went from home for a short time in 
 the years when we were supposed to be economising. I 
 used, when a bachelor, to go abroad in the summer 
 vacation. I went three or four times to Switzerland,
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRA PHICA L SKE TCH. 5 5 
 
 twice to the Saltzkammergut, and once to the Pyrenees. 
 Since then I have been with my wife to Switzerland, and 
 other places abroad, and in the summer of 1899 I went 
 with my eldest son, and two of the girls (Janet and 
 Dorothy) and my wife to Pontresina and to the Italian 
 Lakes. With the family I have been at Seaton, Sidmouth, 
 Sullington (four times), Burwash, the Lakes (three 
 times), North Wales (four times), Church Stretton and 
 Minehead. Wherever I have been I have always insisted 
 upon having room enough, and enjoying ourselves 
 thoroughly without stint. If one can't afford to do the 
 thing handsomely, it is better to abandon it altogether. 
 To leave a comfortable house to be crowded into a 
 narrow and uncomfortable lodging seems to me to be the 
 height of folly. At Sullington Rectory we were most 
 happy in a lovely country, simply roaming over the Downs 
 all day, and of course sketching, picnicing, etc. In North 
 Wales at Towyn we have had a very good time, a fine sea 
 to bathe in, and lovely mountains to climb close at hand. 
 One year some of us spent a pleasant time at Machynleth 
 and Capel Curig, and also at Llangollen. Church Stret- 
 ton is a very favourite place to me. It stands very high 
 on the water-shed, the streams flowing one way to Ludlow, 
 and the other to Shrewsbury. Perhaps the very jolliest 
 of our holidays were spent at Glenridding, Ullswater, 
 and Butherlyp How, Grasmere, the beautiful house and 
 grounds belonging to my dear brother Bencher, Mr. 
 Etherington Smith. Wherever we went we generally 
 contrived to have friends or. relations visiting us. The 
 goings there were times of great joy, and so were the 
 comings home, though the latter would be mixed with 
 regret. I don't think that for any of us the time ever felt
 
 56 ESS A VS. 
 
 heavy or dull for a moment. The only weak point was 
 the inevitable shortness of the allotted time, never extend- 
 ing beyond six weeks, and sometimes five or four only. 
 We were never I think without a piano. Some had some 
 lessons to learn or reading or writing on hand, and at 
 least four of the party were sketchers. Sometimes tennis 
 and cricket were obtainable, but I think mountain climb- 
 ing, coupled with tea at a country inn or farm house were 
 the chief amusements, varied at times with long drives. 
 Bathing and occasional boating were to be had in the 
 Lake Country, but scrambling about the hills is an endless 
 and ever-increasing delight. The wild excitement of 
 games at "stump cricket" can only be understood by 
 those who joined in the fun. As one gets older one 
 fails to keep up with the young folks in physical en- 
 deavour, but I do not on the whole find my enjoyment 
 of life on such holidays any less than in former years. I 
 have now my grand-children around me— quite as good 
 and beautiful as my own children. 
 
 I have purposely omitted to say anything about my 
 home life. The above sketch was meant to interest and 
 amuse my family, and such intimate friends as may care 
 to read it. It was not intended for publication, and I 
 do not think that any correction or addition by me 
 would improve it. If anything further is desired any 
 one of my children would be quite capable of supplying 
 it. My character and doings are, I believe, very simple 
 and straightforward, whether for bad or good, and are 
 probably much better known by any of my family than 
 by myself. Of my poetry 1 should like to say a word 
 or two. It is obvious that it makes no pretension to 
 modern cleverness. It is simple and unaffected. It is
 
 AN A UTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKE TCH. 5 7 
 
 often open to the charge of imitativeness, if that be a 
 fault ; but it is often quite my own. Its prevailing note 
 is cheerfulness — a kind of sunshine through the clouds, 
 and it has music in it. The hymns and some of the 
 psalms have the same qualities, and I believe them to 
 possess feeling and poetic fervour kept within proper 
 bounds by good sense and simple taste. How much 
 or how little merit they possess it is not for me to 
 judge, but I wish to indicate the general scope and 
 tendency of them. My prose essays and stories and 
 also my parodies and lighter verses, such as they are, 
 require no observations of mine. 
 
 If one half of what my kind critics in the Press say 
 may be taken as true, it would seem that I have sufficient 
 grounds for believing that this Autobiographical Sketch 
 may be thought interesting, although devoid of any 
 striking incidents or any valuable remarks. I sincerely 
 hope that I have not offended any person either by 
 commission or omission, or given the slightest pain to 
 any.
 
 SELFISHNESS. 
 
 If it be true, as Pope or Bolingbroke would have us 
 
 believe, 
 
 "That true self-love and social are the same," 
 
 this self-love must be a very different thing from selfish- 
 ness. Selfishness is the exclusion of all consideration 
 for others in order to make room for our own selves. 
 In some degree, no doubt, while we are benefiting 
 ourselves we may be doing good to others; but the 
 really selfish man is not interested in this view, and 
 thinks solely of himself. I think we can all agree that 
 selfishness is a mean and miserable vice, but its various 
 developments are not perhaps sufficiently recognized; 
 and very often, though we can detect this vice in the 
 character and conduct of our neighbour, we forget to 
 notice it in ourselves,— the mote in our neighbour's 
 eye is easily detected. In a recent novel and play, by 
 by Mrs. De la Pasteur, called Peters Mother, the 
 selfishness of the son and his unconsciousness of it are 
 powerfully drawn, although the manifestations of it are 
 often impossible. 
 
 The story told by Sir Walter Scott in Redgauntlet 
 about the Pretender and his mistress is not, of course, 
 historically correct, but it is powerfully told. The 
 supreme and overpowering selfishness of the Prince is
 
 SELFISHNESS. 
 
 59 
 
 marvellously exposed. His own debased dignity, and 
 the smile or frown of his lady-love, were more to him 
 than the welfare of his country or the extraordinary 
 devotion of his followers. For a worthless passion he 
 sacrifices a kingdom. In the Bin-ford Papers, p. 119, 
 by Mr. W. H. Hutton, the substance of the story is 
 told as a matter of historic fact — Charles could not, 
 and would not, give up Clementina Walkinshaw ! Marie 
 Antoinette and King Louis might have escaped to 
 England had not the former delayed their flight by 
 insisting on taking with her her precious jewels. Some 
 people are selfish even on their death-bed : 
 
 " ' I give and I devise (old Euclio said 
 
 And sigh'd) my lands and tenements to Ned.' 
 ' Your money, Sir ? ' ' My money, Sir ! What, all ? 
 
 Why, if I must (then wept), I give it Paul.' 
 'The manor, Sir?' 'The manor, hold,' he cried, 
 'Not that — I cannot part with that' — and died." 
 
 There is no doubt that habits of selfishness will grow, 
 and grow very fast, like all other bad habits, until a 
 man becomes absolutely isolated and self-centred. 
 He loses all interest in anything which does not seem 
 to touch himself personally. In consequence of this habit 
 he often misses what would be for his pleasure or profit ; 
 and his views become more and more narrow, until at 
 last he becomes unendurable, not only to others, but 
 also to himself. The selfish man shuts himself up from 
 all mankind, and like the limpet he glues himself tightly 
 to the rock on the approach of anything which he thinks 
 may interfere with his security, though it may turn out 
 that the dreaded intruder is only a harmless passer-by, 
 who has no desire to disturb him in the slightest degree.
 
 60 ESS A YS. 
 
 The selfish man lives in a state of abject fear lest his 
 repose should be invaded or his pleasures curtailed. 
 
 Lord Bacon says : " An ant is a wise creature for 
 itself; but it is a shrewd thing in an orchard or garden. 
 And certainly men that are great lovers of themselves 
 waste the public. ... It is a poor centre of a man's 
 actions, Himself. It is right earth ; for that only stands 
 fast upon his own centre ; whereas all things that have 
 affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of 
 another which they benefit. ... It is the nature of 
 extreme self lovers, as they will set a house on fire, and 
 it were but to roast their eggs." 
 
 In our ordinary every-day actions are we invariably 
 thinking of others rather than of ourselves ? Which of 
 us can conscientiously answer this question in the 
 affirmative? Do we desire for breakfast, luncheon, and 
 dinner those dishes and wines which we know are 
 most appreciated by those who are to share the meat 
 with us. Perhaps we may — sometimes. In settling our- 
 selves comfortably in a railway carriage, do we always 
 consider the other travellers before we close or open a 
 window ? Perhaps we may — sometimes. Surely we ought. 
 Are we quite sure that in arranging for our holiday in 
 Saltcombe-by-sea we are mainly considering the dear 
 children's health, and not the propinquity of the golf- 
 links ? Let us hope that none of us would wilfully and 
 spitefully do anything to irritate or incommode our 
 neighbour. To act from such motives is something 
 worse than selfishness ; but I doubt if it is as mean and 
 contemptible as pure unadulterated selfishness. 
 
 You, my dear reader, know very well that the trees 
 which yield you such delightful shade in your garden
 
 SELFISHNESS. 6 1 
 
 darken the rooms in your neighbour's house. Do you 
 propose to cut them down, or even to lop them ? You 
 know that your motor car smothers with dust the whole 
 roadside, and that people are made sick by the noxious 
 smells which it emits. What steps are you inclined to 
 take to mitigate the nuisance ? None at all ! Sound the 
 horn! Clear the road ! " For this Englishman, he comes, 
 he comes." You know that your dog barks half the 
 night and keeps your invalid neighbour a.wake. Do you 
 propose to send the dog into another county ? No ! 
 for the dog is hardly as great a nuisance as the screaming 
 parrot across the street; and it (that is the dog) keeps 
 thieves away, so that after all you are a benefactor. I 
 am afraid that the good old legal maxim, " Sic utere tuo 
 ut alienum non Icedas" is very frequently disregarded. 
 
 You, my dear reader, are a gentleman of quiet and 
 unostentatious habits. You find your best enjoyment in 
 being "left alone," and you shrink more or less at what 
 is called " pleasure." Your wife and daughter, however, 
 take a different view of life, and in their harmless fashion 
 like to indulge in a little vanity. Do you assist them in 
 their endeavours, or do you offer a gloomy resistance ? 
 Or perhaps you are fond of field-sports- — of hunting or 
 shooting. Would you give up a day without grumbling 
 in order to pay a visit to a bed-ridden friend ? I know 
 you would readily give a sovereign to a poor man in 
 hospital, but would you go and sit with him for half-an- 
 hour every other day ? Oh, my dear fellow Christians, 
 I am afraid we flatter ourselves too much in these matters, 
 and do not allow our consciences a full opportunity of 
 being heard. " I have heard Clive tell of two noble 
 young Americans who came to Europe to study their art ;
 
 62 ESS A VS. 
 
 of whom one fell sick whilst the other supported his penni- 
 less comrade, and out of sixpence a day absolutely kept 
 but a penny for himself, giving the rest to his sick com- 
 panion. ' I should have liked to have known that good 
 Samaritan, sir,' our colonel said, twirling his mustachios." 
 There is Mr. John Smith, for instance, that eminent 
 Member of Parliament, whose name appears in innumer- 
 able charity lists, and who takes the chair and makes 
 orations on the." Ameliorization of the Destitute both at 
 Home and Abroad," and is credited with an absolute 
 overflow of kindness and benignity. Yet by his imperious 
 temper at home his wife and daughters are rendered 
 generally miserable, and have frequently to retire with 
 tears in their eyes, while his servants tremble behind his 
 chair. Or there is Mrs. Henry Jones, who is such a 
 wonderful organizer of everything, from a picnic party to 
 a woman's mission. How splendidly she manages every- 
 thing and everybody, and what a wonderfully good lady 
 she is by most accounts of her which are prevalent. Yet 
 it is strange that her maids seldom stay beyond the 
 month, and that neither her son or daughter will live in 
 the house longer than they can help. Then there is 
 young Mr. and Mrs. Brown. They have only been 
 married a couple of years, yet they squabble constantly, 
 even before "company"; and it would be mere hypo- 
 crisy to pretend to hope that they are better friends when 
 they are alone. Now, what is the meaning of these 
 things ? These are all good and even goody people ; but 
 on the other hand they are scarcely Christians. They 
 are supremely selfish. They do not allow the least thing 
 to interfere with the constant gratification of their own 
 pleasure, or pride, or comfort or wilfulness, or vanity or
 
 SELFISHNESS. 63 
 
 desire for fame, riches, or honours. They may stand 
 praying with the Pharisee in the parable, and enumerate 
 as many virtues as he, but there is very little of the 
 humility of the Publican about them. They distinctly 
 fail to realize the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice. 
 
 It is, I think, noticeable that in these days too many 
 of the clergy in their sermons and teaching pay very little 
 attention to ordinary morals — to the ten commandments. 
 In the Stuart times the clergy were enthusiastic upon 
 ritual and church doctrine, and the nonconformists were 
 equally enthusiastic on the other side. Both these en- 
 thusiasms had their day ; but the eighteenth century 
 clergy carefully avoided such matters, and coldly wrote 
 about conduct and morals. They discussed the question, 
 
 "Which is the happier man or wiser, 
 The man of merit or the miser ? " 
 
 Then arose Wesley and Evangelicanism, and there was 
 a wave of enthusiasm for religion ; and lastly came the 
 revival of the " Oxford School," where doctrine and cere- 
 mony were once more the evidences of a passionate 
 enthusiasm. The only moral virtue which is now taught 
 from many pulpits is a sort of wild desire to make every 
 body religious and to dabble in socialistic schemes, of 
 which the parson knows nothing. I think it would be 
 well if the clergy sometimes left these high matters, and 
 gave assistance to the average man or woman desirous 
 of conducting his or her actions according to the will of 
 God in the most ordinary circumstances of life. 
 
 "The daily round, the common task 
 Will furnish all we need to ask — 
 Room to deny ourselves, a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God."
 
 64 £SSA YS. 
 
 But what is the " daily round " and " the common 
 task " ? They are supposed generally to mean our 
 ostensible occupations, our way of making our living 
 and performing our obvious and manifest avocations. 
 For instance, if we are grocers we must not put sand 
 in the sugar, however lucrative the operation may be; 
 if we are doctors, we must not give quack medicines, 
 if we are barristers we must do our best for our clients, 
 and if solicitors we must not betray secrets, and if 
 borough or county councillors we must not '"job," 
 and so on and so on. But what I wish to hear more 
 about is, how much care and attention ought we to 
 give to the little but really important duties of detail 
 in our lives as human beings, and in our relations with 
 other human beings in the ordinary affairs of every-day 
 existence ? A man may be buried in Westminster Abbey 
 with all his honours thick upon him, and every word on 
 his tombstone may be true enough, yet if you knew him 
 intimately you would be bound to admit that his every- 
 day conduct left much to be desired. I am very far 
 from wishing to pry into his conduct, as many persons 
 are so willing to do, raking up the small defects of 
 character to satisfy the curiosity of a gaping public. 
 No, I would leave his greatness untarnished ; but it is 
 quite another thing, if we ourselves excuse ourselves for 
 our many failings and faults on the ground that we have 
 done some good deeds, and flatter ourselves by the 
 soothing reflection that on the same day on which we 
 stuck a knife into our enemy or our friend, we gave a 
 cheque for a ^ioo to a hospital. If a man has ^iooo 
 in his current account at his bankers, and ,£100,000 
 well invested elsewhere, it is easy enough for him to
 
 SELFISHNESS. 65 
 
 give ^100 to a hospital ; but it is a very difficult thing 
 for him to give even the smallest assistance to some 
 poor fellow who has offended his dignity or interfered 
 with his pride or pleasure. Archdeacon Burney was 
 at a meeting when a list of subscriptions was being 
 
 read: "Mr. , Fifty Pounds." "That's pretty good," 
 
 he whispered to his neighbour, Archdeacon Cheetham, 
 who happened to know that the donor was excessively 
 rich. Cheetham murmured, " It ought to have been 
 ^500," to which Burney rejoined, " Ah ! he forgot the 
 ought ! " 
 
 I have said that I wish that the parson would some- 
 times tell us, from the pulpit, about the duty of being 
 unselfish; but, on the other hand, I must own that I have 
 frequently suffered from a peevish ill-temper, while I have 
 listened to a parson tejling his congregation that they 
 ought to give a tenth part of their '"goods" in charity. 
 A tenth part of what ? Does the preacher mean a tenth- 
 part of a man's actual income, or a tenth part of his 
 surplus after satisfying all reasonable demands on his 
 purse ? In the seat in front of me in church is a man 
 with ^1500 a year, all told. He has a wife and two 
 daughters and three sons, one of the latter at Camford, 
 and the other two at a public school. He is as poor 
 as a rat ; and though he gives to this and that charity, 
 yet he knows that he is robbing his wife and children 
 in doing so. In the same seat are a man and his wife 
 with no children, and their joint income amounts to 
 the same sum as the income of the man with a family. 
 Does the preacher really think that both these men 
 ought to give neither more nor less than ^150 a year 
 in charity ? One man is in an official position, 
 
 E
 
 66 ESS A YS. 
 
 and another can spend as much or as little as lie 
 pleases, being under no obligation to keep up appear- 
 ances. Their incomes are precisely the same. Must 
 each of them give a tenth, neither more nor less? A 
 clergyman was reading the service before one of the 
 royal dukes in the days of George III., and when 
 he arrived at the text : " Zacchaeus stood forth and said, 
 ' Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,' ' 
 the royal duke broke out, " Too much ! too much ! 
 don't mind tithes, but can't stand that." Again I ask 
 the question, when you order me to give a tenth, what 
 do you mean, — a tenth of what? After a man has 
 provided the necessaries of life according to his lawful 
 requirements, surely he ought to save up for his old 
 age, or for his wife and family. It would be a positive 
 scandal and wickedness if he did not do so ; and then 
 the question arises as to how ?tiuch he ought to put by. 
 At this rate, dear reader, you will find very little left for 
 the " tenth " to operate upon. The real and true rule is 
 for each man honestly to consider within his conscience 
 whether he might not so regulate his expenses by the sup- 
 pression of useless follies and fancies that he may have a 
 margin to devote to the welfare of his poorer neighbours. 
 Children, it is to be hoped, may be taught to be 
 unselfish, and gradually to form habits of unselfishness. 
 Parents in these days, whether rich or poor, are too much 
 given to spoiling their children. They indulge them in 
 idleness and in luxury, and then they are surprised that 
 when the children are grown up they will not be con- 
 trolled, and are unable to control themselves. The 
 present writer has had a long experience of the 
 ways of the poor in dealing with their children. One
 
 SELFISHNESS. 67 
 
 prolific source of experience arises during the hearing of 
 " Educational Cases," or, as they used to be called, 
 ''School Board Cases." The babies of poor parents are 
 never taught obedience, and therefore the children turn 
 out to be "truants," or worse. A child of five years of 
 age had not regularly attended school. "Why doesn't 
 your child go to school ? " I asked. " Please your 
 worship he keeps such bad company." " Really, 
 ma'am," I said, "you are the only company he ought 
 to keep." Another child of ten years of age had not 
 been at school for two months. "Why is that?" I 
 asked. " He's had the stomach ache, your worship." 
 "Good heavens, ma'am," I cried, "if he has had the 
 stomach ache for two months he should have been dead 
 and buried long ago ! " This showed a sad irritability 
 on my part, but I had already dealt with twenty or thirty 
 equally foolish excuses. There is much neglect of children 
 amongst the poor, and the S.P.C.C. has done a great 
 deal to diminish it by warning parents, or, if necessary, 
 by prosecuting them. On the other hand, too much 
 attention is paid to the children by many parents in the 
 well-to-do classes. In former days the children were 
 kept in the background ; now they are often too much 
 en evidence. The happy mean is not, perhaps, easy to 
 hit. Cruelty or wilful neglect is punishable by law, and 
 a terrible crime it is ; but unlimited spoiling may have 
 worse effect in the end. A lady was asked whether she 
 liked peaches, and she said she could not tell, because she 
 had never tasted one. Being asked to explain, she said : 
 " You see when I was young we were told that peaches 
 were only for the grown-ups, and when I had grown up 
 I found that they were reserved for the children."
 
 68 ESSA YS. 
 
 The rich have many temptations towards selfish 
 indulgence. The possession of wealth places everything 
 which can gratify their tastes or appetites at their imme- 
 diate disposal. 
 
 " They may talk as they please about what they calf pelf, 
 And how one ought never to think of one's self, 
 How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking, — 
 My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking 
 How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho ! 
 How pleasant it is to have money." 
 
 Not that money is a pleasure, but it commands so 
 much. 
 
 Gentlemen's clubs (and I suppose ladies' clubs are 
 not behindhand in this respect) are a sort of hot-bed of 
 selfishness. It is not merely that at the club a member 
 can get anything he wishes to eat or drink ; but the 
 whole of the appointments tend towards selfishness. 
 Every comfort and luxury is heaped up in profusion. 
 It is true that some men restrain their appetites, and live 
 abstemiously even at their clubs ; but it is the absolute 
 comfort and freedom from any anxiety or regard for 
 others which makes a club so delightful and so selfish. 
 The head of the family even when at home is in most 
 cases taught selfishness. His wife, his children, and his 
 servants wait upon his wishes and his whims. The 
 effect of this upon the whole of his character is perhaps 
 modified by the fact that, when he is away from home 
 about his business or pleasure, he finds that mankind 
 in general take him at their valuation, and not at his, 
 and treat him accordingly. 
 
 The poor are often very selfish in their limited oppor- 
 tunities of being so. Brothers and sisters will grow up
 
 SELFISHNESS. 69 
 
 together on tolerably friendly terms ; but, when they find 
 that they have to " fend for themselves," they become 
 callous about the fate of each other, and of their parents. 
 In a pamphlet issued by the S.P.C.C. it is, fairly pointed 
 out that "the reason for this selfishness . . . lies, no 
 doubt, in the instinct of self-preservation. People who 
 live near the line which separates them from actual want 
 are led by this instinct to cut themselves off from those 
 whose claims upon them might drag them over the line." 
 It is often a real struggle for existence, and the love of 
 life is stronger than the affection of friendship or family 
 ties. As is said in the Bad Ballads by the shipwrecked 
 midshipmite : 
 
 " I loved that cook as a brother, I did, 
 And that cook he worshipped me ; 
 But we'd both be blow'd if we'd either be stow'd 
 In t'other one's hold, d'y see." 
 
 Self-preservation is undoubtedly a strong and universal 
 instinct ; and the law recognizes it as such, and will 
 reduce the implication of murder arising from death 
 caused by violence to the lesser crime of manslaughter. 
 It is somewhat of a Jesuitical inquiry as to whether 
 there may not be cases where, apart from any lawful 
 resistance of violence, the crime of murder may not be 
 morally condoned. There is an old story, retold in 
 verse by Robert Browning, of a mother with several 
 children in a sledge being pursued by wolves, and 
 one by one she throws out the children, and escapes 
 herself into the town. She was torn to pieces by 
 the townsfolk, and this was supposed to be a 
 righteous judgment upon her. It seems to me that 
 up to the last baby her conduct would be justifiable,
 
 7 o £SSA VS. 
 
 and the question of 5^-preservation would hardly enter 
 her mind ; but with the last baby it must have become 
 paramount. By the hypothesis nothing could be gained 
 by throwing herself to the wolves, both she and the last 
 baby would be gobbled up ; and if she survived she 
 might be useful still in her generation. A merciful 
 Providence does not practically as a matter of fact place 
 such problems before us for solution. 
 
 Cases of shipwreck or of fire on land or sea afford 
 instances of the problem of self-preservation at the cost 
 of others ; and although it may be easy to preach 
 magnanimity, it might be difficult to practice it ; and I 
 think one's judgment ought to be tempered by some 
 sympathy where magnanimity has not prevailed. But 
 it is more useful to point out how frequently selfishness 
 displays itself in a most revolting manner when only 
 some slight advantage over one's -neighbour is to be 
 gained. When a London crowd has collected to see the 
 King and Queen pass by, what pushing and shoving, 
 and taking of unfair advantage are seen ! To get a 
 good place at a concert, football or cricket match, I am 
 afraid many men and women struggle unfairly to the 
 front. At that quiet, select, and orderly place, Chisle- 
 hurst, where the Emperor Napoleon III. was lying in 
 state in the Roman Catholic chapel, numbers of 
 fashionably dressed ladies had their garments torn from 
 their backs in their eagerness to see the show. 
 
 Some persons succeed in gaining a reputation for 
 unselfishness which they little deserve. They make 
 themselves agreeable and pleasant to their neighbours, 
 and are lavish in their promises. It would "give them 
 so much pleasure if you would come and see them,
 
 SELFISHNESS. 
 
 71 
 
 and stay for a week. Oh no, no trouble at all, quite 
 delighted if you will come"; but they carefully avoid 
 fixing a date, or even telling where they live, or how you 
 are to get to their abode. They remind one of the old 
 story of the boy who was asked to give an account of 
 the parable of the good Samaritan. He concluded his 
 essay by saying that " the Samaritan gave the innkeeper 
 twopence, and said, that if he spent any more he would 
 repay him when he came again. This he said well 
 knowing that he would see his face no more." 
 
 There are also some persons who fancy themselves 
 to be entirely unselfish, and the world in general admits 
 them to be so. But perhaps in some of them 
 selfishness may be ruling their conduct. In the case 
 of persons obviously denying themselves the ordinary 
 pleasures of life, and devoting themselves to good 
 works or to meditation, there may be a mixture of 
 pride, or love of admiration, or a positive distaste for 
 the affairs and pleasures and duties of ordinary life, 
 which has induced them to separate themselves from 
 "the world." No doubt this selfishness of good people 
 is not like the selfishness of the wicked, but there it is. 
 Henry V. says : 
 
 " But if it be a sin to covet honour, 
 I am the most offending soul alive." 
 
 There are some persons who will endure any amount 
 of hardship and suffering in the performance of some 
 purely voluntary or self-imposed task, yet they will 
 absolutely decline to do the thing they ought to do, 
 and which lies immediately in their path. They are 
 selfish, though one-half the motive of their action may 
 be philanthropic.
 
 7 2 JSSSAi'S. 
 
 " A Christian," says Bishop Wilson, in his Maxims, 
 " is under a continual necessity of denying himself." 
 Perhaps this is a hard saying; hut at all events one 
 may say that the necessity is sure to arise pretty 
 frequently ; for as the Bishop notices in another page, 
 " to learn to bear with the pride of one, the stupidity 
 of another, the rudeness, the neglect of a third ; . . . 
 to submit to disappointment, loss of goods and friends, 
 to bear with the humours, follies, tricks of those with 
 whom we have to do — these are instances of great self- 
 denial," and perhaps we may trace a little asperity in the 
 remarks of the Bishop. 
 
 It is mostly in little things — in trifles, that our selfish- 
 ness is most frequently indulged ; and it is in these 
 trifles that we often irritate or alienate our best friends. 
 It is also in little things — in trifles, that we endear 
 ourselves to our friends, who, perhaps, when we are 
 absent or even dead, will ponder with affection 
 
 " On that best portion of a good man's life, 
 His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness, and of love." 
 
 Lord Bacon says : "If a man be gracious and courteous 
 to strangers it shows he is a citizen of the world, and 
 that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, 
 but a continent that joins to them. If he be com- 
 passionate towards the afflictions of others it shows 
 that his heart is like the noble tree that is wounded 
 itself when it gives the balm. If he easily pardons 
 and remits offences, it shows that his mind is planted 
 above injuries, so that he cannot be shot. If he 
 be thankful for small benefits it shows that he weighs 
 men's minds, and not their trash. But above all, if he
 
 SELFISHNESS. 73 
 
 have St. Paul's perfection, that he would wish to be an 
 Anathema from Christ, for the salvation of his brethren, 
 it shows much of a divine nature, and a kind of con- 
 formity with Christ himself." 
 
 If the account given by Mr. Fielding Hall of the 
 doctrine of Buddha, in his The Soul of the People, be 
 adequate and correct, as I have no doubt it is, then 
 Buddhism is unmitigated selfishness. It is the direct 
 opposite to the Christian ideal, which is self-sacrifice. 
 The true Christian, however much as a human being 
 he may wish for rest (for the Peace of God which 
 passeth all understanding) has yet a higher ideal than 
 the mere " Great Peace " of the Buddhist. He looks 
 forward to an endless life of strenuous exertion, and 
 victory by the blessing of God throughout eternity. 
 
 " Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle to right the wrong — 
 Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she : 
 Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 
 
 She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 
 To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : 
 Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." 
 
 Though a man should be surrounded by every comfort 
 or luxury he can desire, though he may be loaded with 
 titles, and smothered in wealth, he may still be unhappy 
 in himself, if he is selfish — if he has no real love for his 
 friends or his country : 
 
 " The wretch, concenter'd all in sell, 
 Living shall forfeit fair renown, 
 And, doubly-dying, shall go down 
 To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, 
 Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung."
 
 A FARRAGO OF VERSES. 
 
 HYMN FOR THE NEW YEAR. 
 
 O Thou, whom neither time nor space 
 
 Can limit, hold, or bind, 
 Look down from Heaven, Thy dwelling place, 
 
 In pity on mankind ! 
 
 Another year has just begun: — 
 
 Thy loving care renew. 
 Forgive the ill that we have done, 
 
 The good we failed to do. 
 
 In doubt or danger all our days 
 
 Be nigh to guard us still. 
 Let all our thoughts and all our ways 
 
 Be governed by Thy will. 
 
 Oh, help us now and here to live 
 
 From selfish passions free ; 
 And at the last vouchsafe to give 
 
 Immortal life with Thee.
 
 76 VERSES. 
 
 HYMN FOR SUNDAY. 
 
 Lord of the Sabbath, unto Thee 
 
 We come for rest and peace — 
 Oh, bid our worldly fancies flee, 
 
 Our week-day troubles cease ! 
 
 Each moment hopes and fears are born ; — 
 
 Our thoughts still start astray : 
 We idly pluck the ears of corn, 
 
 That grow beside the way. 
 
 Lord give us evermore Thy bread, 
 
 In answer to our prayer ; 
 And where Thy table, Lord, is spread, 
 
 Be ever with us there. 
 
 So shall our earthly troubles flee, 
 
 And all our murmuring cease ; 
 So shall our souls be stayed on Thee, 
 
 And rest in perfect peace. 
 
 OLD ENGLAND. 
 By the kind permission of the Editor of the " Spectator." 
 
 Our armies march, and scour the plain ; 
 
 Our navies guard our shores ; 
 Our cities strain with might and main 
 
 To fill the world with stores; 
 Brave workers toil both night and day, 
 
 With matchless strength and skill ; — 
 Where are the " signs of slow decay " ? — 
 
 England is England still.
 
 VERSES. 7 7 
 
 Through many a shire by tow'r and spire 
 
 Each village makes its nest, — 
 Hard sons of toil with hearts of fire — 
 
 Our bravest and our best ; 
 They tend the kine, they fold the sheep, 
 
 The fields they sow or till, 
 Their "noiseless tenour" yet they keep, — 
 
 England is England still. 
 
 Oh friends far off, — far, far away 
 
 From this our Island Home, 
 What shall we pray,— what can we say 
 
 To you across the foam ? 
 Whate'er betide may fear or pride 
 
 Ne'er touch our right good will ; 
 May you and we long live to see 
 
 England, old England still. 
 
 Though factions fight with all their might, 
 
 And mar each wise endeavour, 
 The cause of Freedom and of Right 
 
 Still rolls along for ever. 
 This happy land secure shall stand 
 
 Based on her People's will ; 
 Though wide the range, through every change, 
 
 England is England still. 
 
 O rolling down more lovely made 
 
 By every passing cloud, 
 O purple heath, and dappled glade, 
 
 O wood by breezes bow'd,
 
 7 8 VERSES. 
 
 O land and sea, O lake and lea, 
 
 O meadow, stream, and hill, 
 O rock-bound coast ! where'er we be, 
 
 England is England still. 
 
 Dear Mother Isle, how fair the smile 
 
 That lightens up thy face ; 
 E'en those who part from thee awhile 
 
 Long for thy warm embrace. 
 Through hours of joy — through hours of pain 
 
 My heart with thee I fill ; 
 Through shine or rain thou wilt remain 
 
 England, my England still. 
 
 CHRISTMAS IS COMING. 
 
 BY THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." 
 
 As I look from my window at dawning of day, 
 
 On his cocoanut up in the tree 
 A little tom-tit goes swinging away, 
 
 As happy as happy can be. 
 
 The blackbirds and thrushes steal out of the bushes, 
 
 As gloomy and starved as can be ; 
 But that little tom-tit he cares not a bit, 
 
 On his cocoanut up in the tree. 
 
 For he swings with the breeze on a twig in the trees, 
 And he pecks at his nut half the day ; 
 
 And no other bird that ever I heard 
 Could perch on that bendable spray.
 
 VERSES. 79 
 
 But see how he scatters his food all around, 
 
 In a shower of little white bits ! 
 And the birds on the ground have all of them found 
 
 A blessing in little tom-tits. 
 
 So Christmas is coming, and with it good cheer 
 To all whom Dame Fortune has blest ; 
 
 And eating and drinking might set us all thinking 
 Of what we can do for the rest. 
 
 THE TOM-TITS REPLY. 
 
 [To the Editor of the "Spectator."] 
 
 Sir, — May I venture to offer the enclosed verses as a 
 reply to Mr. Horace Smith's in the Spectator of December 
 18th, 1909?— I am, Sir, etc., C. J. Boden. 
 
 North Wingfield Rectory, Chesterfield. 
 
 As I look from my cocoanut up in the tree, 
 
 High up on a " bendable spray," 
 Through your dressing-room window your face I can see, 
 
 Though I can't even guess what you say. 
 
 Your figures of speech are quite out of the reach 
 
 Of the brain of a little tom-tit, 
 Just as when in the spring I'm beginning to sing 
 
 You won't understand me a bit. 
 
 But we easily tell that you're meaning us well, 
 
 For actions speak louder than words, 
 And we little tomtits, when the weather permits, 
 
 Will give thanks on behalf of the birds.
 
 8o VJERSES. 
 
 May you have all good cheer through the coming new year, 
 And your love for the birds grow still greater. 
 
 How I wish I might speak to my dear brother Beak 
 Through the means of a friendly Spectator! 
 
 Tom Tit. 
 
 THE TOAD'S PROTEST. 
 
 " I'll larn ye be a toad," he cried, and struck 
 My grandsire with a four-pronged fork — a blow 
 Would fell an ox ! He died aged ninety-three, 
 But might have lived at least a score more years, 
 Ugly but useful. Oh, you men, you men, 
 Why will you worship beauty ? There's that frog, 
 That skips and hops like any idiot : 
 Because it has a silken skin bedecked 
 With yellow spots, you show it to your child, 
 And talk of froggy going wooing — fudge ! 
 But when you see an honest toad you cry 
 Beware, my child, it's venomous, it spits — 
 All lies ! But virtue is its own reward. 
 I'll crawl along, and eat a hundred flies, 
 And then curl up my legs, and have a sleep. 
 
 TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD ALVERSTON, 
 
 L.C.J. 
 
 You ask more verses ; but, alas, one knows 
 
 Too many poets scribble now-a-days ; 
 
 And no man listens to tin ir blame or praise. 
 There's something I could wish to say in prose,
 
 VERSES. 8 1 
 
 But dare not. Who would seek to flatter those 
 Who scorn all flattery, being sternly bent 
 Step after step to climb the steep ascent — 
 
 The rugged pathway to the eternal snows ? 
 
 Stalwart in mind and body — doubly strong ; 
 
 Insatiate of work, which must be done 
 To help the Right in battle with the Wrong ! 
 
 Great sorrows have been yours, great triumphs won 
 With fortitude. Oh, may the day be long 
 
 Ere shadows deepen with the setting sun ! 
 
 JUST AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 {Being a close adaptation of "As You Like It," Act II., Scene J, 
 including the famous invocation, " Ducdame, ditcdame, due- 
 dame") 
 
 By the kind and special permission of the proprietors of 
 •• Punch," Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co. 
 
 Mr. Asquith sings : 
 
 Under St. Stephen's fane, 
 
 Who would with me remain, 
 
 Tuning his merry note 
 
 Unto old Cobden's throat, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither : 
 
 Here shall he see 
 
 No enemy, 
 But Free Trade and fair weather. 
 
 Mr. Balfour sings : 
 Who doth all dumping shun 
 And loves to live i' the sun, 
 F
 
 82 VEKSES. 
 
 ('■rowing the food he eats, 
 
 Content with what he gits, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither : 
 
 Here shall he see 
 
 No enemy, 
 But Tariff and fine weather. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George sings : 
 
 Since it has come to pass 
 
 That every idle ass 
 
 Loves his own wealth and ease, 
 
 Grown rich by slow degrees, 
 (Dukes dam'em, dukes dam'em, dukes dam'em) : 
 
 He, even he, 
 
 Well tax'd shall be 
 An if he will come to me. 
 
 Mr. Asquith. — What's that " Dukes dam'em " ? 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George. — 'Tis an East End invocation for 
 
 calling fools within my circle. I'll get my Bill passed 
 
 if I can ; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the well-born 
 in England. 
 
 Mr. Asquith. — And I'll go worry the Lords ; their 
 
 ruin is prepared. \Exeunt. 
 
 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE. 
 
 " Aviation " is vexation, 
 
 " Dirigibles " as bad, 
 
 The " monoplane " is quite insane, 
 
 And " aero " drives me mad.
 
 VERSES. 83 
 
 THE DUCK AND HER BROOD. 
 
 By the kind permission ok the Editor ok the 
 "Westminster Gazette." 
 
 A wonderful brood, to be sure, I've got, 
 
 Pretty enough, but a rather mixed lot. 
 
 Can I keep them together, I wonder, or not ? 
 
 Quack-quack ! Quack-quack ! 
 
 Come back, come back ! 
 Hey-dear, hey-dear, you're a wandering pack ! 
 
 Some take to the water and some to the wood, 
 
 And others fly into the trees for food — 
 
 You ought to attend to your mother — you should ! 
 
 Quack-quack ! Quack-quack ! 
 
 Come back, come back ! 
 They'll none of them listen — alack ! alack ! 
 
 They've all kinds of notions and all sorts of ways, 
 And one half can't tell what t'other half says ; 
 But whatever else happens it's vie that pays ! 
 
 Quack-quack ! Quack-quack ! 
 
 But, alack ! alack ! 
 I hope they won't wander away from the track. 
 
 They've been taken up now by Protectionist quacks, 
 Who'd shift the burden on other folks' backs ; 
 They'll squabble like mad over tariff and tax ; 
 
 Quack-quack ! Quack-quack ! 
 
 But, if foes attack, 
 
 We'll all stand together — every man-jack ! 
 
 f 2
 
 84 VEXSES. 
 
 A STREET ROW. 
 
 (A Trite Story.) 
 
 She stole in furtive silence through the crowd 
 
 That thronged the street. Ever she turned and shot 
 
 A fearful backward glance, as though aware 
 
 Of danger drawing nearer, in full flight 
 
 Still breathing slaughter. Ere she reached the curb, 
 
 Lo ! on a sudden from a butcher's shop 
 
 Out sprang, ferocious, a huge mongrel dog, 
 
 Fed on raw scraps of soul-destroying meat. 
 
 He, rolling over with tumultuous bark 
 
 His natural enemy, turned round again 
 
 To face a collie from a coster's stall, 
 
 Ready for fight. Fiercely they met and fought. 
 
 Which, when the butcher saw, he rushed to save 
 
 His mongrel ; and with heavy boot he kicked 
 
 The noble collie, roaring loud in pain. 
 
 At which the coster shouted " What d'ye mean 
 
 By kicking of my dog. If you want fight 
 
 Fight ?ne, Fm ready." And at once they met 
 
 A Douglas and a Percy, in affray. 
 
 The Douglas hit the Percy on the nose, 
 
 And he retaliated with a punch 
 
 Full in the stomach ; when behold there rose 
 
 The awful form, gaunt, imperturbable, 
 
 Of Mercury, who bore them both away 
 
 To Bow Street, where sat Jupiter in state, 
 
 Omniscient, but scarce knowing what to do.
 
 VERSES. 85 
 
 LAYS OF LITERARY LUNATICS. 
 
 I. 
 
 ODE TO A BEETLE FOUND DROWNING IN A 
 TREACLE JAR. 
 
 Little beetle ! 
 In the treacle, 
 
 Can I kill thee? No! 
 Men might do so, well I wot, 
 For falling in this treacle pot, 
 
 But I will not do so ! 
 
 Little creature ! 
 I'll not treat your 
 
 Case in such a way ; 
 Rescued by this silver spoon, 
 You'll be crawling very soon— 
 
 Where ? — I cannot say ! 
 
 Little crawler ! 
 Though much smaller 
 
 Thou mayst be than man ; 
 From thy tumbling in the jar 
 Man may learn what's better far 
 
 Than from books he can ! 
 
 Little teacher ! 
 Let the preacher 
 
 Find a sermon here ;■ — 
 Tell it to the scoffing world 
 Ere to Hades they are hurled 
 
 Ne'er to reappear ! !
 
 86 VERSES. 
 
 Awful sinner ! 
 Sunk within a 
 
 Slough, you writhe about ; — 
 Lo ! you struggle in despair, 
 Like the little beetle there, — 
 
 And no one pulls you out ! ! 
 
 II. 
 THE MEETING. 
 
 I have qualms about thee, queerest 
 Doubts which make me doubly sad ; 
 
 Never will I leave thee, dearest, 
 Never, though I own I'm mad. 
 
 We were standing where the ' buses ' 
 Roar beside the Marble Arch ; 
 
 And the dampness of the evening 
 Took away my collar's starch. 
 
 Oh, the dreary deluge falling 
 
 On the night when first we met, 
 
 Lip to lip, with an umbrella 
 O'er us to keep off the wet; 
 
 While a thousand lamps were shining 
 From their iron posts above ; 
 
 And the nursery maids were telling 
 All the Life Guards of their love.
 
 VERSES. 87 
 
 III. 
 
 THE LOVE-LORN. 
 
 The beady belted bumble bee. 
 
 The blur that blots the blue, 
 Remind me of a lily lass, 
 
 So trustful and so true. 
 
 I loved a little lily lass, 
 
 Within a garden gay ; 
 A most disloyal lordling stole 
 
 My lily lass away ! 
 
 Ah me ! the primroses so pale 
 
 Rise in a radiant row ! — 
 He stole my lily lass away, 
 
 Where greeny grasses grow. 
 
 The lambent light has left the lea, 
 
 The swirling swallows swim ; 
 Where margent marigolds bedeck 
 
 The brackish watery brim. 
 
 The green impurpled fields of sky 
 
 To pearly paleness pass — 
 But I am into Bedlam gone, 
 
 And so's the lily lass.
 
 88 .VERSES. 
 
 IV. 
 THE MYSTERY 
 
 We watched in the gloaming together : 
 The moon rose over the hill : 
 
 There was blood on the purple heather, 
 And a cry that was weird and shrill. 
 
 Oh pine wood mirky and dreary ! 
 
 Oh moonshine wanish and pale ! 
 My dim faint heart is a-weary ; — 
 
 But how can I tell the tale ? 
 
 " We must not be parted for ever ! " — 
 But I knew not the words I said — 
 A splash on the foaming river, 
 
 And the living was dead — stark dead ! 
 
 This story is one of the queerest, 
 I am ready at once to admit, 
 
 And I cannot disclose if my dearest 
 Was an he, or a she, or an it. 
 
 LIMERICKS. 
 
 A gentleman living at Brixton 
 The 9.27 had fix'd on, 
 
 He arrived just too late 
 
 But consented to wait 
 And went up to town by the nixt 'un.
 
 VERSES. 89 
 
 There was an old party of Meintz, 
 Who used to drink beer out of pints ; 
 
 He then took to quarts, 
 
 And became out of sorts 
 With rheumatics in most of his jints. 
 
 AN EMBARRASSED SUPPORTER OF 
 FEMALE SUFFRAGE. 
 
 Air— "The Gentle Maiden." 
 I. 
 
 I dreamed she was mild as an angel, 
 
 And sweet as the flowers of May ; 
 She seemed like a "gentle maiden," 
 
 With never a word to say. 
 Her eyes had the glance of moonshine, 
 
 And I hoped she knew how to behave ; — 
 Far more than the shifty Lodger's, 
 
 Her vote and support I'd crave. 
 
 11. 
 
 But I'm forced to abandon my darling. 
 
 I hear of her everywhere ! 
 The sound of her voice is tremendous : 
 
 Her eloquence rends the air. 
 She screeches out, "Votes for Women!" 
 
 Vociferates, " That's a lie ! " — 
 The shrieks of that frantic spinster 
 
 Will follow me till I die! 
 
 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS »V ROHERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
 
 By th}£ same Author. 
 
 COLLECTED POEMS, 1908. 
 
 Some Press Opinions. 
 
 The Ti?nes. — "Apart from the pleasure which his work would give 
 to those who are already lovers of literature, it might wean to the 
 study of poetry the many hundreds of cultivated minds who shun it 
 for fear of extravagance or difficulty. Mr. Horace Smith is never 
 extravagant and never difficult ; he is witty and wise." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. — " If his themes are various and his manner 
 now suited to the nobilitv of a hymn and now to the pleasantry of 
 light verses, there are unfailing dignity and simplicity about the style 
 such as should commend it to those readers who do not require that 
 poetry should be exotic in character. Mr. Horace Smith writes with 
 a cheery optimism, a delight in the aspects of nature, a wholesome 
 look-out on life, which may be said to be infectious. As a writer 
 of hymns Mr. Horace Smith is peculiarly successful." 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. — "The breezy robustness, and the 
 scholarly charm, combine with a direct and delicate poetical expression 
 to give us a very acceptable little collection of a busy man's leisured 
 thoughts and dreams." 
 
 The Oxford Magazine. — " Whether in religious mood or in a 
 lighter vein, Mr. Smith's touch is equally sure, and the graceful and 
 healthy verse collected in this volume should find a large circle of 
 admirers." 
 
 The Spectator. — " Some of his hymns are fine, and the book contains 
 some excellent parodies and lighter verse." 
 
 The Scotsman. — "Mr. Horace Smith's poetry is already favourably 
 known to a circle of readers who can appreciate the pleasing lucidity, 
 the studious correctness and the graceful feeling of his work.'' 
 
 The Globe. — "Some of the most delightful verse published in recent 
 years.'' 
 
 The Glasgow Citizen. — "As a hymn writer Mr. Smith has established 
 a reputation, and his verse is of a catholic nature, now grave, now gay, 
 and always happy and hopeful."
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 INTERLUDES: First SERIES. Being Two Essays, a 
 Story, and Some Verses. 
 
 Daily Chronicle.— ""Van essays indicate good old-fashioned reading, and 
 are well written." 
 
 Athenaeum.- "His essays on 'Criticism and Luxury' are full of genial 
 good scn.se, and are illuminated here and there by bits of legal anecdotes. 
 Ili- views he expresses are urged so pleasantly, and with so much modesty, 
 that opposition is disarmed." 
 
 INTERLUDES : Second SERIES. Being Two Essays, 
 a Farce, and Some Verses. 
 
 limes. — "Worthy sequel to the first issue, and an interesting proof that 
 a man can he a busy and useful police magistrate and can yet fill his leisure 
 with good literature." 
 
 Academy. — "He has every right to claim recognition as a teller of good 
 stories. Shrewd, humorous, ludicrous anecdotes trample on each ether's heels 
 through seventy delightful pages." 
 
 INTERLUDES : THIRD Series. Being Two Essays, 
 a Ghost Story, and Some Verses. 
 
 Spectator. — " He has the gilt of humour, has read widely, and knows how 
 to quote. Finall) , there is a ' Farrago of Verses,' mainly parodies, with 
 enough to show that the writer can be serious to good purpose when he so 
 pleases." 
 
 Times. — "A third series of Mr. Horace Smith's 'Interludes' is quite as 
 entertaining, both in prose and verse, as the previous fruits of a busy police 
 magistrate's leisure." 
 
 INTERLUDES: Fourth Series. Being Three Essays 
 and Some Verses. 
 
 Athenaeum. — "We note again the sound sense and humour which dis- 
 tinguished the author's earlier volumes." 
 
 Academy. — "A book which is characteristic and (.banning from cover to 
 cover." 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-32m-8,'58(5876s4)444
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 376 568 2 
 
 PR 
 S696i