My Life as an Author | Page 2

XXXVII.
Autographs and Advertisements--Worth Eighteenpence each--A Hundred at Once--Photographs--Oil Paintings--Locks of Hair--Interviewers--Puffs and Anti-puffs 304-311
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Kindness to Animals--Louis Napoleon and Alfort--Vivisection--Pontrilas Court--The Omnibus Hack--Divers Ballads 312-315
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Orkney and Shetland--Our Voyage--Wick Herring Fair--Balfour at Shapinshay--Kirkwall--Aytoun--Gulf Stream--Snuff-Boxes and Corals--Fair Isle Hosiery--Stennis--Scalloway--Lerwick Literature--Artificial Flora--Thurso Castle--Robert Dick--Cape Wrath--Stornoway--Callanish--Pipers--The brooch of Lorne, &c. 316-321
CHAPTER XL.
Literary Friends--Mrs. Somerville, Miss Granville, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Ouida, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Carter Hall, Mrs. Grote, Lady Wilde, Miss Mackay, Rogers, Carlyle, Haweis, Tennyson, Browning, Mortimer Collins, Dickens and Son, Owen, Austen, Pengelley, Bowerbank, S. Mackenzie, M. Arnold, S. Brooks, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon, Tenniel, Cooper, P.B. Cole, E. Yates, Frank Smedley, J.G. Wood, Cuthbert Collingwood, Mr. and Mrs. Zerffi, Birch, Miss Hooper, Miss Barlee, G. MacDonald, Ronald Gower, Fred. Burnaby, Charles Marvin--A Diner-Out--A Mormon Guest--Apostles--Frank's Ranche--Twelve Anecdotes--Thackeray and Leech, Longfellow, C. Kingsley, Ainsworth, Lord Elgin 322-350
CHAPTER XLI.
Some Older Friendships--Nightingale, and Farley Heath--Walter Hawkins--His Tomb--Anchor--Anagrams--Christmas Largesse--Sham Antiques--Joseph Durham--Alice's Statue--"Sir Joe" and the Noviomagians--Prince Albert at St. Peter's Port--Baroness Barnekow--Swedish Proverbial--King Oscar's Poems--Geo. Metivier--French Proverbial--John Sullivan--Canon Jenkins--Barnes, De Chatelain, De Pontigny--Correspondents, &c. 351-362
CHAPTER XLII.
Political--A Dark Horse--No Party-Man--Gladstone--Ambidextrous Stanzas--Liberal and Tory--The One-Vote System--Fancy Franchises--The Voter's Motto--Fair Trade v. Free Trade--Radically Conservative--Strikes, &c. 363-372
CHAPTER XLIII.
A Cure for Ireland--Racial Difficulties--The Unsunned Corner--?sop Smith's Prescription--An Irish Balmoral in 1858--My Anti Celtic Ballads--Adventures 373-379
CHAPTER XLIV.
Some Spiritist Experiences--Not a Spiritualist, but an Honest Recorder of Facts--Alexis--Howell--Vernon's Mesmerised Child--Mrs. Cora Tappan--Chauncey Townsend's Book--Spirit-Drawings--Planchette--Showers of Flowers, and Sugar-Plums, and Pearls--Mr. Home--Prayer before S��ance--The Table in the Air--Live Coals in My Hand--The Vitalised Accordion--The Colonel's Ghost--Iamblicus--Query Electrical Influence--Our Mysterious Key--Miss Hudson--Thought-Reading 380-399
CHAPTER XLV.
Fickle Fortune--Losses and Failures--Testimonial--"L'espoir est ma force"--My Lev��e in 1851--The Missed Codicil--Life and Death 400-403
CHAPTER XLVI.
Henry De Beauvoir, killed in Africa--Archdeacon Kitton--Our Old Chancery Suit: A Lost Fortune--Belgravian Five Fields, another Missed Chance--Earl Grosvenor 404-407
CHAPTER XLVII.
Flying: my Lecture at the Royal Aquarium with Fred. Burnaby as Chairman--Henry Middleton's Invention--De Lisle Hay's "Conquest of the Air"--Ezekiel's Angels--Ovid, and Tennyson--Claude Hamilton--Extracts 408-412
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Luther--The Peroration as to his Life and Exploits--Anniversary Stanzas, in many Languages--Bullinger's Music--Wycliffe Ballad--Wondrous Parallel 413-416
CHAPTER XLIX.
Final--Whatever is, is Right--Sick-bed Repentance--Intuitions--What We Shall Be--Protest Against Atheism--The Infinities--A Childlike Hymn--Eternal Hope--Mercy for Ever--The Assurance of Ovid 417-431

MY LIFE AS AN AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:--
"You bid me write the story of my life, And draw what secrets in my memory dwell From the dried fountains of her failing well, With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife, And such small facts, with good or evil rife, As happen to us all: I have no tale Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,-- Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale: My life is in my books: the record there, A truthful photograph, is all I choose To give the world of self; nor will excuse Mine own or others' failures: glad to spare From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes, Leaving unwritten what God only knows."
In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its apparent vainglory as to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of self-registered virtues and successes,--but even still more from the mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace troubles and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life," to the casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations--whether pleasant or the reverse--of matters merely personal, and therefore more of a private than a public character.
Indeed, so disquieted was I at the possible prospect of any one getting hold of a mass of manuscript in old days diligently compiled by myself from year to year in several small diaries, that I have long ago ruthlessly made a holocaust of the heap of such written self-memories, fearing their posthumous publication; and in this connection let me now add my express protest against the printing hereafter of any of my innumerable private letters to friends, or other MSS., unless they are strictly and merely of a literary nature.
Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded. And even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good or evil, and