While the murmuring busy bee, Pattern of wakeful industry, Flies from flower to flower to drain The choicest juice from sweetest vein; While the lowly cottage youth, His mind well stored with sacred truth, Rises, devout, his thanks to pay, And hails the welcome dawn of day.

Oh, that 'twere mine, the happy lot, To dwell within the peaceful cot-- There rise, each morn, my thanks to pay, And hail the welcome dawn of day!"

Cooper stayed with Clarke for a year and a half, and, after a brief interval, went to work with a "first-rate hand," who was known in the shoemaking fraternity as _Don_ Cundell. Here the youth, more expert at his craft than many of his companions, learned before the age of nineteen to make "a really good woman's shoe."[61] During this period he seems to have settled in good earnest alike to his daily occupation and the work of self-culture. Under the guidance of a friend named Macdonald, who lent him books, he read such works as Robertson's "Histories of Scotland," "America," and "Charles the Fifth," Neale's "History of the Puritans," and a little theology. Like mult.i.tudes of youths in a position similar to his, Thomas Cooper derived much benefit from a Mutual Improvement Society which was started in Gainsborough about this time by a friend of his, a draper's a.s.sistant named Joseph Foulkes Winks. In this society papers were read and discussions held on all imaginable subjects, literary, historical, and religious. "This weekly essay-writing," he says, "was an employment which absorbed a good deal of my thought, and was a good induction into the writing of prose, and into a mode of expressing one's thoughts." On one occasion a prize was offered for the best essay on "The Worst King of England." The tug of war lay between Winks, who chose as his subject James II., and Cooper, who eventually was adjudged the victor, and had taken William the Conqueror as his ideal of a bad king. The friendship thus commenced in amicable rivalry lasted, as we shall see, through life. Not content with self-improvement, these youths, with Macdonald and Wood, banded themselves together in a resolve to instruct others less favored than themselves, and an "Adult School" was formed. This was one of the first if not the first school of the kind in Lincolnshire, and must have proved a great benefit to the illiterate poor of the town, for by the end of the following year, when this branch was admitted into "The Adult Schools Society," the numbers on the books were 324. Friendships with two other young men brought such books in his way as Sibley's famous ill.u.s.trated work on astrology, over which he wasted much valuable time, Volney's "Ruins of Empires" and Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary,"

over which his time was worse than wasted. But the best piece of good fortune in the way of reading came to him in the discovery that one "Nathaniel Robinson, mercer," "had left his library for the use of the inhabitants of the town." It seems that this boon had been neglected or forgotten by the good folk of Gainsborough. Once known to the ardent young shoemaker, it was not neglected nor forgotten, at all events as far as he was concerned. He pounced upon it with the avidity and excited joy of a naturalist who lights upon a new or rare specimen. We must let him speak for himself in the matter, and describe this precious "find"

in his own words. He says: "I was in ecstasies to find the dusty, cobwebbed shelves loaded with Hooker, and Bacon, and Cudworth, and Stillingfleet, and Locke, and Jeremy Taylor, and Tillotson, and Bates, and Bishop Hall, and Samuel Clarke, and Warburton, and Bull, and Waterland, and Bentley, and Bayle, and Ray, and Derham, and a score of other philosophers and divines, mingled with Stanley's 'History of Philosophers,' and its large full-length portraits; Ogilvy's 'Emba.s.sies to j.a.pan and China,' with their large curious engravings; Speed's and Rapin's folio Histories of England, Collier's 'Church History,' Fuller's 'Holy War,' Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' the first edition, in black letter, with its odd rude plates, and countless other curiosities and valuables."

[61] This seems to be a test of proficiency in the trade. Bloomfield's brother says, "Robert is a _ladies'_ shoemaker;" and stories are told of his receiving, after he became famous as a poet, many orders from the n.o.bility for ladies' boots.

Cooper now settled to reading in desperate earnest, and with something like a fixed purpose to become a scholar, and perhaps a writer, or a great political or religious orator, or, more probable than all things else--for the poetic fervor was very strong just now--a _poet_! Yet he had no very definite notions of what he was to be. All he was certain about was that he must and would study, and fit himself for some higher walk in life when the time came to enter on it. Let the reader keep this fact in mind while reading the story we have to tell of close application to study, lofty aspirations, and great attainments as a scholar. _Thomas Cooper during his shoemaker's life, in which he laid the foundation of rare scholarship, never earned more than ten shillings a week_--scarcely enough to buy food and clothes. He had not become an apprentice, and therefore the laws of the trade prevented the best masters employing him. One "Widow Hoyle, who sold her goods in the market cheap," was his only employer, so long as he remained at the trade. If he was not, in these days of lowly toil and lofty thoughts,

"Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,"

he well knew what it was to feel the restraint of

"Poverty's unconquerable bar."

Yet he had _courage_, an indispensable quality in a youth so situated, and it was the courage that "mounteth with the occasion," and all these bars to self-culture only acted as a stimulus to more resolute toil.

Strange to say, one of his greatest incentives to study at this time was an account of the life of Dr. Samuel Lee, Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, which the young student had read in the _Imperial Magazine_, then edited by another of our ill.u.s.trious shoemakers, Samuel Drew. Lee had been a carpenter, ignorant of English grammar, had bought Ruddiman's Latin Rudiments, and having mastered the book, had learned to read Caesar and Virgil, and had taught himself Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac by the time he was six-and-twenty years of age! Cooper said within himself, "If one man can teach himself a language, another can." So he went to work, following in Lee's steps so far as to take Ruddiman's book and commit "the entire volume to memory--notes and all!" Then came the study of _Hebrew_ with the help of Lyon's small grammar, bought for a shilling at an old bookstall; and a year after he was busy at _Greek_, and created for himself a pleasing diversion by the comparatively easy task of mastering _French_. All this time his general reading was not neglected. By the advice of a valued friend, John Hough, he fortified his mind against the sceptical thoughts which previous reading had awakened by going carefully through the chief works on Christian evidences. Few divinity students at the end of their course have read more carefully or extensively than this occupant of a cobbler's stall had done by the time he was twenty-three years old.

Paley's "Horae Paulinae," "Natural Theology," and "Evidences," Bishop Watson's "Apologies," Soame Jenyns' "Internal Evidences," Lord Lyttleton's "Conversion of St. Paul," Sherlock's "Trial of the Witnesses," besides profounder works like Butler's "a.n.a.logy," Bentley's "Folly of Atheism," Dr. Samuel Clarke's "Being and Attributes of G.o.d,"

Stillingfleet's "Origines Sacrae," and Warburton's "Divine Legation of Moses," were as familiar to him as the "Paradise Lost" and most of the plays of Shakespeare were to his companion Thomas Miller.[62] The labors of this period, from 1824 to 1828, were tremendous, or, as one of Sir Walter Scott's characters was wont to say, "prodigious." Cooper had left Don Cundell's, and now worked at home, so that he could arrange his time for study and work as he pleased. Like Drew, he had learned to do a fair day's work and not to neglect the means of earning his daily bread for the more fascinating occupations of reading and study. But if ordinary work was not neglected, it must be confessed that the work of the scholar was overdone. No one can live as Cooper lived from the age of nineteen to twenty-three without incurring fearful risk to body and mind. Rising at three, or four at the latest, he read history, or the grammar of some language, or engaged in translation till seven, when he sat down to his stall. At meal-times he attempted the double task of taking in food for the body and the mind at the same time, cutting up his food and eating it with a spoon that he might not have occasion to take his eyes off the book he held in his hand; at work till eight or nine, he was all the while committing to memory and reciting aloud pa.s.sages from the poets, or declensions and conjugations, or rules of syntax; and when he rose from his stool, it was only to pace the room, while he still went on with his studies, until at last he dropped into bed utterly exhausted. This was his method in spring and summer, but even in winter his hours were just as long, and study in the early morning was not accompanied by the invigorating influence of walking exercise and fresh air; for he says, "When in the coldness of winter we could not afford to have a fire till my mother rose, I used to put a lamp on a stool, which I placed on a little round table, and standing before it wrapped up in my mother's old red cloak, I read on till seven, or studied a grammar or my Euclid, and frequently kept my feet moving to secure warmth or prevent myself from falling asleep."[63] In this way Latin was so far mastered that Caesar's "De Bello Gallico" could be read "page after page with scarcely more than a glance at the dictionary,"

and the "Eneid" of Virgil became an intellectual love that lasted for life. We have no s.p.a.ce to describe the vast amount of historical and miscellaneous reading done at this time. It was surely no small feat for a shoemaker, working hard for twelve or thirteen hours in the day, to go in a few years through Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," Sale's "Preliminary Discourse to his Translation of the Koran," Mosheim's "Church History,"

all the princ.i.p.al English poets from Shakespeare to Scott and Keats; to read the "Curiosities of Literature," "Calamities" and "Quarrels of Authors," Wharton's "History of Poetry" and Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," Boswell's "Life of Johnson" and Landor's "Imaginary Conversations," Southey's "Book of the Church," and Lingard's "Anglo-Saxon Antiquities," besides a host of books of travel, and quarterly and monthly magazines innumerable.

[62] Thomas Miller, afterward known as a poet and novelist, and for his charming descriptions of rural scenery, was an intimate friend of Cooper from childhood to old age.

[63] "Life of Thomas Cooper," pp. 60, 61.

We have said that Cooper _overdid_ the work of study. Like Kirke-White, he was so completely absorbed with the pa.s.sion for learning, that he set all the laws of health at defiance, and had to pay the penalty. Having a stronger const.i.tution than the Nottingham youth, Cooper managed to escape with his life, and, after a period of bodily and mental prostration, with all his old vigor restored to him; but it was a narrow escape. These excessive labors, coupled with the effects of scanty fare, brought him to a state of extreme weakness. He says, "I not unfrequently swooned away and fell all along the floor when I tried to take my cup of oatmeal gruel at the end of my day's labor. Next morning, of course, I was not able to rise at an early hour; and then very likely the next day's study had to be stinted. I needed better food than we could afford to buy, and often had to contend with the sense of faintness, while I still plodded on with my double task of mind and body."[64] At length, after many premonitory symptoms, came a crisis. One night he had to be carried to bed in a dead faint, and for nine weeks he left his bed but for a short time each day. The greatest fears were felt for his safety; the doctor had little hope, and once he was so prostrate, that a friend who was called in sadly told his mother that the pulse had ceased to beat, and _he was dead_! This was at the end of 1827; by the spring of the following year he had recovered sufficiently to begin to think of going to work again. A brief spell at his old occupation was enough to satisfy him that it would not suit him in his altered state of health; and, after a short rest and more complete recovery, he took the welcome advice of two friends and agreed to _open a school_. He had now done forever with the trade of a shoemaker, after giving to it eight years of the best part of his early life. These he confesses to have been, on the whole, most happy years, and of the last four he says with enthusiasm, "What glorious years were those years of self-denial and earnest mental toil, from the age of nearly nineteen to nearly three-and-twenty, that I sat and worked in that corner of my poor mother's lowly home!" He had certainly made wondrous progress as a self-taught scholar, and now he was prepared to enter the world and make his own way in it, with such a stock of learning and culture as few young men in England, in his position, could boast of. We scarcely dare venture to estimate his acquirements at this time. The reader can easily judge from our account of his studies how considerable they must have been. In English literature, from Spenser and Shakespeare to the essayists and poets, such as De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb, or Byron, Campbell, and Moore, he was well versed. He had read extensively in history, philosophy, theology, and Christian evidences. As to mathematics, he had gone pretty deeply into algebra and geometry; and in the languages, besides his "easy" French, he had done something in Hebrew, could read his Greek Testament, and found delight in the Latin authors, such as Caesar, Virgil, Tacitus, and Lactantius. This is no mean story to tell of the accomplishments of a self-taught shoemaker, who has never earned more than ten shillings per week.

[64] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 67.

School-teaching was a congenial employment for one so fond of study and so apt to teach as Thomas Cooper. He threw his whole soul into the work, and succeeded in establishing a first-rate school of its cla.s.s; and _that_ cla.s.s of school was certainly a vast improvement on the Free School of his own early days. Everybody in Gainsborough knew the studious shoemaker who had learned four languages at the cobbler's stall, read as much, or more, than any one in the town of his own age, had a marvellous memory, and could repeat the whole of _Hamlet_ and the first four books of the "Paradise Lost!" Besides all this, he was known and esteemed for a steady young man, who, though he might incur a little suspicion among the strictly religious folk by his neglect of public worship, was guilty of no waste of time or money in vicious company and riotous living. And so pupils flocked in; a hundred names were entered on his books by the end of the first year, and the school prospered to his heart's content. Nor was the confidence of parents misplaced; never, surely, did a teacher give himself more completely to his work. He gave even more than was bargained for, drilling all the boys in Latin grammar, and carrying them on as far as possible in the higher branches of arithmetic. Five years were thus spent most usefully and happily at Gainsborough, after which he removed from the old town and settled in the cathedral city of Lincoln.

But before quitting Gainsborough a vital change had taken place in his thoughts and mode of life. Brought face to face with death in his recent illness, the most serious thoughts had been aroused within his mind, and on his recovery he was not the man to abandon or drown such thoughts because the immediate fear of death had pa.s.sed away. The earnest conversations he held with the young curate of the parish, "the pious and laborious Charles Hensley," and his two former friends, Hough and Kelvey, strengthened his resolve to seek for peace of mind in the belief of gospel truth and entire devotion to a religious life. In January, 1829, he joined the Methodist Society. The perusal of Sigston's "Life of William Bramwell" fired his soul with a pa.s.sion for holiness, and such was his intensity of religious fervor for a time, that he is constrained to say in his Autobiography: "If throughout eternity in heaven I be as happy as I often was for whole days during that short period of my religious life, it will be heaven indeed. Often for several days together I felt close to the Almighty--felt I was His own and His entirely. I felt no wandering of the will and inclination to yield to sin; and when temptation came, my whole soul wrestled for victory till the temptation fled." Entered on the local preachers' plan, he turned his rare gifts to good account in ministering to the congregations which formed the Gainsborough "circuit," and developed that faculty of eloquent speech which in later years has delighted the thousands who gathered to hear his political orations as an advocate of the "People's Charter" or his grand lectures on the evidences of the Christian religion. Driven away from his old home by unhappy disturbances in the Wesleyan Society, he went, as we have said, in November, 1833, to live at Lincoln, where once more he occupied himself as a schoolmaster.

Just before leaving Gainsborough he was constrained to gather a few pieces of his poetry together and publish them by subscription in a small volume, with the t.i.tle, taken from the first piece, "The Wesleyan Chiefs." The book fell flat on the market, and seems to have had very little merit. Its publication was chiefly remarkable for bringing the author into the company of James Montgomery, who kindly undertook to read the proof sheets. Only one of these selections seems to have called forth a word of commendation from the veteran poet. Against the lines addressed to "Lincoln Cathedral" he wrote: "These are very n.o.ble lines, and the versification is truly worthy of them."[65] Montgomery was then over sixty years of age, and had published all the poems by which his name is known to fame.

[65] These lines stand first among the minor pieces in "Cooper's Poetical Works." London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1877.

Soon after going to reside in Lincoln, Cooper married Miss Jobson, sister of Frederic James Jobson, afterward well known as Dr. Jobson among the Wesleyan Methodists, and at one time their honored President of the Conference. The religious troubles at Gainsborough followed the local preacher to Lincoln, for the superintendent with whom he had disagreed at the former place would not suffer him to rest in his new home; and at length, soured and wearied by what he could not but deem ill-usage, he threw up his appointment on the plan, and finally cut himself off from the Methodist connection. Free to devote his energies to other pursuits, he now flung himself very zealously into the new Mechanics' Inst.i.tute movement, took a cla.s.s in Latin, sought to perfect himself in French p.r.o.nunciation, and to acquire a knowledge of Italian under the tutorship of Signor D'Albrione, "a very n.o.ble-looking Italian gentleman, a native of Turin, who had been a cavalry officer in the armies of Napoleon, had endured the retreat from Moscow, was at the defeat of Leipzig," etc., and had become "a refugee in England on account of his partic.i.p.ation in the conspiracy of the Carbonari."

German, also, was studied for a time; but very soon a new attraction arose in the formation of a Choral Society, of which the zealous schoolmaster became the secretary and chief manager, collecting its funds, enlisting by his persuasive powers the best singers in the city, and arranging for its meetings and public performances. His attendance at the lectures of the Inst.i.tute incidentally led to a new employment, in which undoubtedly Thomas Cooper might have excelled and gained no mean emolument and renown had he chosen to devote himself exclusively to it. Having sent a paragraph report of one of the lectures on chemistry to the _Lincoln_, _Rutland_, and _Stamford Mercury_, he was waited upon by the editor, Richard Newcomb, and requested to supply intelligence weekly of any affairs of importance in the city, and promised 20 a year for his trouble. This was in 1834. In two years he gave up his connection with the Choral Society, cultivated the newspaper correspondent business to such an extent that he was advanced to 100 per year, and so gave up his school. Having put his hand to the work of newspaper correspondence, he did not do it by halves. He exposed the abuses, as he deemed them, then rife in the city, wrote sketches of the "Lincoln Preachers," and created such a stir by his lively and racy articles on munic.i.p.al and political matters, that the paper rapidly rose in circulation, and he found himself for a time the most notorious man in the city, feared by many, hated by not a few, and courted by those who had favors to win or help to secure from the lively correspondent.

In 1838, at the urgent request of Mr. Newcomb, he removed to Stamford, under a verbal promise that when the editor retired, which he intimated would be very soon, Cooper should have the sole management. After remaining for a few months in the position of clerk to Mr. Newcomb, and finding to his chagrin that the old editor gave no sign of keeping to his agreement, he very rashly threw down his pen and gave notice to leave. A little patience might have sufficed to gain his end, but his mortification was extreme, and so a good situation, worth, in all, 300 a year, was sacrificed. "On the 1st of June, 1839," he writes, "we got on the stage-coach, with our boxes of books, at Stamford, and away I went to make my first venture in London."

The six years spent at Lincoln had been a time of literary activity in more ways than that of newspaper correspondence. Many minor pieces, such as are found at the end of the collected poems, were written, and the t.i.tle and plan of his best poetical work, "The Purgatory of Suicides,"

was decided upon. But he had done more in the way of prose. The first volume of a historical romance was finished ere he left Lincoln, and now that he had come to London, he hoped to make his way with this as an introduction to the publishers and the reading world. But he very soon discovered, as thousands besides have done, that he had little to hope from patrons, even though, like Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, they might be men to whom he had rendered some political service in days gone by, and that his unlucky ma.n.u.script was a poor broken reed to lean upon. After nine months' bitter experience of fruitless attempts to find employment, and when all his stock of five hundred books, the dear companions of the last ten years of earnest study, had been sold, and even his father's old silver watch and articles of clothing had been carried to the p.a.w.nshop, he was fortunate enough to make an engagement, at 3 per week, as editor of the _Kentish Mercury_, _Gravesend Journal_, and _Greenwich Gazette_, of which Mr. William Dougal Christie was the proprietor. He had held this office but a short time when disagreement as to the management of the paper led him to give notice of retirement from his awkward position. Strangely enough, at this very juncture a letter reached him from a friend in Lincoln enclosing another from the manager of a paper in Leicester, asking to be informed of "the whereabouts of Thomas Cooper, who wrote the articles ent.i.tled 'Lincoln Preachers' in the _Stamford Mercury_." Dropping the letter, he exclaimed to his wife, "The message has come at last--the message of Destiny! We are going to live at Leicester," thus expressing a thought he had secretly cherished for years, "that he had something to do of a stirring and important nature at Leicester." And so it proved, but that "something" was very different from what he had ever antic.i.p.ated. Answering the inquiry in person, he agreed with the manager of the _Leicestershire Mercury_ to accept a reporter's place at a small remuneration, and in November, 1840, he went to reside in his native town and prepare himself for his "destiny." In London he had met with his old friend Thomas Miller, who was then writing "Lady Jane Grey;" and here at Leicester he discovered another Gainsborough youth, Joseph Winks, who had been his companion and rival in the Improvement Society, and was now "a printer and bookseller, a busy politician, Baptist preacher, and editor of three or four small religious periodicals."[66]

[66] The _Children's Magazine_ (next to the _Teacher's Offering_ the first magazine for children published in this country), the _Christian Pioneer_, the _Child's Magazine_. He was also editor of the _Baptist Reporter_ for many years.

Sent one night by the manager of the _Mercury_ to attend and report a Chartist lecture, he was introduced for the first time to those poor but desperately earnest politicians who were at that time making their pathetic and pa.s.sionate voices heard throughout the Midland and Northern Counties. From that night Thomas Cooper was a Chartist; and for the next three years his best powers were devoted to the cause of the suffering operatives and his life-interests bound up in the Chartist movement.

Nothing could be more pitiable than the condition of the Leicester "stockingers" at this time. The average weekly wages of a man who worked hard were four-and-sixpence! Ground down to the point of starvation by "frame-rent," payment for "standing," for "giving-out," and for the "seamer," and, worst of all, obliged to pay the full week's rent when working on half-time, it is no wonder that his spirit was galled to madness, and that he looked to something like a political revolution for a redress of his wrongs. Lord Byron, in the only speech he ever delivered in the House of Lords, had spoken eloquently and generously in behalf of these suffering operatives of the Midland Counties.

One cannot wonder that a man like Cooper, who had known the pinchings of poverty, should have felt his soul stirred within him. His sympathies and views soon drew him into writing and speaking for the Chartists.

This was an offence in the eyes of his employers of the _Mercury_, and led to his severance from them. He now, at the request of the factory hands of Leicester, became their political leader, and the editor of their paper, the _Midland Counties Illuminator_, which fell into his own hands after a few weeks, and was changed in style and t.i.tle, and made a new appearance as the _Chartist Rushlight_, and afterward as the _Extinguisher_. In the midst of the dispute between Whigs and Tories, Cooper was "nominated" by the Chartists as their candidate, not with any hope of being carried at the poll, but rather as a means of spiting the Whigs, against whom the working-men were intensely bitter, on account of their unwillingness to support "The People's _Charter_." Endeavoring to turn his leadership of the Chartists to some account apart from politics, he added to the task of regular addresses in the open air the conduct of a Sunday adult school and Sunday-evening meetings; and, when the winter came on, gathered his friends together, and sought to lift their thoughts above their daily care, and awaken in their minds a desire for reading, by a course of lectures on literature and science.

But the bad times of 1842 put a stop to all this. The condition of the stockingers grew worse and worse, and Cooper took to supplying bread on sale or loan, to meet the wants of the poor starving creatures, and ran into debt by so doing. The poorhouse, or _Bastile_, as the working-men always called it, was crowded to excess, and riots broke out now and again; but with these neither Cooper nor the Chartist a.s.sociation had anything to do. In August of the same year he was appointed by this body as a delegate to the Chartists' Convention at Manchester. On the way thither he lectured or spoke in the open air at Birmingham, Wednesbury, Bilston, Wolverhampton, and at length came to Hanley, where he addressed a vast crowd of men at "the _Crown Bank_." His subject was the sixth commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder," in which he spoke of the violations of this law by conquerors and legislators, and by masters who oppressed the hireling in his wages. The men were now out on strike, and the excitement produced by this and another address on the following night was intense. He counselled perpetually "peace, law, and order,"

and bade the men hold out in their strike until the People's Charter became the law of the land. Riot and incendiarism broke out in a short time, for which Cooper was in no way directly responsible, but had, on the other hand, distinctly endeavored to dissuade them from. He was taken prisoner on his return from Manchester, and having been tried for the crime of arson, was acquitted, having pleaded his own case so eloquently that the judge was evidently affected, and the ladies present at the trial were even moved to tears. Tried again at the Spring a.s.sizes on the charge of sedition, he cross-examined the witnesses from Monday to Sat.u.r.day at noon, and then proceeded to sum up his defence in a speech which altogether (Sunday intervening) lasted ten hours. "I do not think," he remarks, "I ever spoke so powerfully in my life as during the last hour of that defence. The peroration, the Stafford papers said, would never be forgotten; and I remember as I sat down, panting for breath and utterly exhausted, how Talfourd and Erskine and the jury sat transfixed, gazing at me in silence, and the whole crowded place was breathless, as it seemed, for a minute." The case being removed by a "writ of _certiorari_" to the Court of Queen's Bench, was tried on the 5th of May, 1843. In his defence Thomas Cooper again delivered an eloquent speech, five and a half hours long, and was again acquitted of the charge of felony. Judge Erskine's notes of the trial had "_mistake_"

written alongside the evidence on that part of the charge. But the eloquent Chartist orator was convicted on the charge of _sedition_ and _conspiracy_, and sent to Stafford jail for two years.

There are few chapters in the Autobiography so full of interest and so graphically written as those which describe Thomas Cooper's prison experience. Galled to the quick by the treatment he received--for he was kept on low, miserable fare and denied "literary privileges"--he determined to break down "the system of restraint in Stafford jail, and win the privilege of reading and writing, or die in the attempt." After many manoeuvres he managed to get pen, ink, and paper, and write a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons, which was handed in at the bar of the House by Mr. Duncombe, M.P. for Finsbury. All that he could reasonably expect was now granted in answer to his appeal, and the remainder of his time was filled up with literary work. He revelled in the English poets from Shakespeare to Sh.e.l.ley; read again the "Decline and Fall,"

Prideaux's "Connexion," White's "Selborne," etc., etc.; fell pa.s.sionately in love with the study of Hebrew, and almost raved about the glories of the sacred language of the Old Testament; and read two thirds of the Hebrew Bible, copying out verbs and nouns as he went along. One day he was visited by Lord Sandon, afterward Earl of Harrowby, who fell into conversation with the learned prisoner about the poetical books of the Bible in the old German edition which lay open before him on the table. A short time before his release the chaplain told him that the way was open for him to go to Cambridge if he would; but the conditions were such as did not suit the independent mind of the political martyr. Cooper had a shrewd suspicion that the visit of the n.o.bleman had some connection with this generous offer.

Cooper's best work in Stafford jail was the composition of the well-known poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides." This poem, he tells us, was the working out of a thought which occurred to him ten years before, when he was sitting as a reporter in the a.s.size court at Lincoln. The historical romance, the first part of which he had carried to London in 1839, was also completed during his imprisonment, and he wrote during the same period a volume of tales, afterward published under the t.i.tle, "Wise Saws and Modern Instances." "These," he says, "I took out of prison with me as my keys for unlocking the gates of fortune."

On his liberation, May 4th, 1845, he went up to London, shedding tears of gladness and grat.i.tude on the way as he looked once more on the green fields and hedgerows of the Midland Counties. His first care was to find a publisher for his prison rhyme and tales. As soon as he was able he sought out Mr. Duncombe, to thank him for his generous help in the matter of the pet.i.tion to the House of Commons, and to ask for counsel in seeking a publisher. Duncombe sent him to Mr. D'Israeli, with the following note:

"MY DEAR D'ISRAELI,--I send you Mr. Cooper, a Chartist, red-hot from Stafford jail. But don't be frightened; he won't bite you.

He has written a poem and a romance, and thinks he can cut out 'Coningsby' and 'Sybil.' Help him if you can, and oblige yours, T. S. DUNCOMBE."

It is gratifying to read of the kindness with which the shrewd statesman, then a Tory of the Tories, received the "red-hot radical." "I wish I had seen you before I finished my last novel," said he; "my heroine Sybil is a Chartist." With the kindly help of Douglas Jerrold the "Purgatory" was at length published by Jeremiah How, Fleet Street, who undertook to bear the cost and risk of printing. It came out in September, 1845, and the five hundred copies of the first edition were sold off before Christmas. Cooper now began to write for Douglas Jerrold's "Shilling Magazine." The volume of tales called "Wise Saws,"

etc., and a short poem, "The Baron's Yule Feast," were issued about the same time. The "Purgatory of Suicides" had been dedicated, without leave asked, to Thomas Carlyle, to whom the author sent a copy, and from whom he received in acknowledgment a characteristic letter, in which, among other kind and wise things, that greatest of all the literary men of his age said, "I have looked into your poem, and find indisputable traces of genius in it--a dark t.i.tanic energy struggling there, for which we hope there will be clearer daylight by and by;" and along with the letter came a copy of "Past and Present," with Carlyle's autograph. In 1846 Cooper was at work on Douglas Jerrold's weekly paper, visiting the Midland and Northern Counties as a sort of commissioner, and writing articles on the "Condition of the People of England." Pa.s.sing through the Lake District, he called on Wordsworth, and was most kindly received by the "majestic old man." Great, however, was the Chartist's amazement to hear the "Tory" Wordsworth say with reference to the Chartist movement, "You were right; I have always said the people were right in what they asked; but you went the wrong way to get it." On his return to London, Cooper engaged to lecture on Sunday evenings at South Place, Finsbury Square, and continued the work of public lecturer for the next eight years. During this time he lectured through the winter for various political and socialist societies in several large halls in London, such as the John Street Inst.i.tution and the "Hall of Science," City Road, and filled up the time during the summer by lecturing tours throughout the kingdom. He had now become a _sceptic_, _i.e._ _doubter_, and confined himself in his lectures exclusively to secular topics, political or literary. The misery he had witnessed in Leicester and the Potteries, the failure of all his efforts to benefit the suffering poor, and the long imprisonment he had endured as a disinterested champion of their cause, had sorely shaken his faith in Divine Providence and driven him to the verge of downright atheism, but only to the verge: he declares that he was never an atheist, nor ever "proclaimed blank atheism in his public teaching."[67] Yet it must be confessed he went far in this direction. The worst period of his life in this respect was the winter of 1848-49, when, having become a disciple of Strauss, he engaged to give a series of lectures on Sunday evenings in the "Hall of Science" on the teachings of the "Leben Jesu." He says: "There is no part of my teaching as a public lecturer that I regret so deeply as this. It would rejoice my heart indeed if I could obliterate those lectures from the realm of fact."[68] But for the most part his addresses were on purely literary or historical subjects, and marvellous indeed was the versatility and extent of learning they displayed. The enumeration of topics alone would occupy several pages. Every one of the chief English poets and their poems, the history of every European country, the lives of great reformers, statesmen, generals, inventors, discoverers, men of science, musicians, ancient philosophers and modern philanthropists, negro slavery, taxation, national debt, the age of chivalry, the Middle Ages, wrongs of Poland, the Gypsies, ancient Egypt, astronomy, geology, natural history, the vegetable kingdom--these and scores of other topics were treated during these years of lecturing life in London and the provinces. In addition to these duties he had other cares and toils. In 1848-49 he edited a weekly paper called the _Plain Speaker_, and in the following year _Cooper's Journal_. His "Triumph of Perseverance"

appeared in 1849, "Alderman Ralph" and "The Family Feud," two novels, in 1853 and 1855 respectively.

[67] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 262, also pp.

356-367.

[68] "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 316.

Returning from a lecturing tour at the end of 1855, he was conscious of a great and vital change which had for some time been going on within his mind, and when he attempted to recommence his work at the City Hall in January, 1856, he found it impossible to go on along the old lines.

On a certain memorable night, when announced to speak on "Sweden and the Swedes," he could not utter a word. He turned pale as death, and as the audience sat gazing and wondering what could have come to the bold and fluent speaker, whose tongue was ready on every theme, his pent-up feelings at length found vent. He told the people he could lecture on Sweden, but must relieve his conscience, for he could suppress conviction no longer. He then declared that he had been insisting on the duty of morality for years, but there had been this radical defect in his teachings, that he had "neglected to teach the right foundation for morals--the existence of a Divine moral Governor."[69] In the storm which followed he challenged them to bring the best sceptics they could muster in the metropolis, and he would meet them in debate on the being of G.o.d and the argument for a future state. He kept his promise, and for four nights maintained his ground against _Robert_ Cooper[70] and others in the City Hall and the John Street Inst.i.tute.

[69] Ibid p. 335.

[70] The charges of atheism and atheistic advocacy made against _Thomas_ Cooper have often arisen from confounding _Thomas_ Cooper the _sceptic_ with _Robert_ Cooper the _infidel_. See "Life of Thomas Cooper," p. 357.

But though the battle was fought out bravely in public, he had yet another conflict to wage and win ere his mind enjoyed rest and peace in the faith of a true _Christian_. In this conflict he received valuable aid from the Rev. Charles Kingsley,[71] and his old friend and relative, Dr. Jobson. Through the kind interest of the Rev. F. D. Maurice, W. E.

Foster, M.P., and W. F. Cowper, President of the Board of Health, Cooper obtained employment for two years under Government as a copyist of letters. Returning to the City Hall, he now began a series of Sunday-evening lectures on Theism, and advancing stage by stage, he took up such themes as the Moral Government of G.o.d, Man's Moral Nature, the Soul and a Future State, Evidences of Christianity, Atonement, Faith, Repentance, etc. But his return to the truth of Christ and Christianity was gradual, though sure. As he says, "I had been twelve years a sceptic; and it was not until fully two years had been devoted to hard reading and thinking that I could conscientiously and truly say, I am again a Christian, even nominally." Saved in an extraordinary manner from death by a railway accident as he was travelling to Bradford on the 10th May, 1858, he finally and fully resolved to dedicate his powers to the service of G.o.d, saying within himself as he stood looking on the mournful sight of the ruined train and the dead and wounded lying around, "Oh, take my life, which Thou hast graciously kept, and let it be devoted to Thee. I have again entered Thy service; let me never more leave it, but live only to spread Thy truth!"

[71] See letters to Thomas Cooper in "Kingsley's Life and Letters." London: Henry King & Co., 1877, pp. 183 and 221, etc.

He began at once not only to lecture on the evidences of Christianity, but to preach, and received many solicitations to join different religious societies. Dr. Hook of Leeds generously offered him an appointment as head of a band of Scripture-readers, with freedom to go out on his own mission as a speaker when he pleased. This offer he declined, with grateful thanks to the worthy vicar. In the spring of the following year he decided to join the Baptist denomination, and writes, "Reflection made me a Baptist in conviction, and on Whitsunday, 1859, my old and dear friend, Joseph Foulkes Winks, immersed me in baptism in Friar Lane Chapel, Leicester."

From that time to the present--twenty-two years--Thomas Cooper has devoted his great powers to the work of preaching and lecturing on the evidences of the Christian religion. The energy and ability displayed in this n.o.ble work by the veteran orator have been remarkable. For months together he has been known to travel long distances by rail, and lecture four or five times in the week, and preach three times on Sunday. After a two hours' lecture he was wont, during the first few years of this period, to recite the first two or three books of Milton's "Paradise Lost." Few, if any, that ever heard his preaching can forget its rich spirituality of tone and delightful purity and simplicity of style. The lectures it is hard to describe without seeming to exaggerate their rare merits. The best testimony to their worth has been given by the hundreds of thousands who have come together to listen to them as delivered in all the chief towns of England, Scotland, and Wales for more than twenty years, and by their rapid and extensive sale when published. Crowded with facts of history or science which are clearly arranged and pressed into the service of logical argument, delivered extemporaneously in language of the truest and homeliest Saxon type, and often marked by pa.s.sages of great eloquence, these lectures may be taken as ideals of what popular lectures on religious evidences should be. Of his present employment, Thomas Cooper, writing in 1872, says, in his own simple fashion: "My work is indeed a happy work. Sunday is now a day of heaven to me. I feel that to preach 'the unsearchable riches of Christ' is the most exalted and enn.o.bling work in which a human creature can be engaged. And believing that I am performing the work of duty--_that I am right_--my employment of lecturing on the 'Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion,' from week to week, fills me with the consoling reflection that my life is not being spent in vain, much less spent in evil." Happy close of a strangely eventful and checkered life! May the stalwart old laborer of _seventy-five_ be spared to scatter many a handful of the seeds of truth before he hears the summons which shall end his labors.

We have spoken, in the t.i.tle of this chapter, of Thomas Cooper as "The self-educated shoemaker who reared his own monument." This sketch cannot be closed more appropriately than by giving the t.i.tles of the works published during the last eight years--the stones which form the chief part of that monument:

The Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time (1872), twentieth thousand.

Plain Pulpit-Talk (1872), third edition.