To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man!
A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the
country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle
shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve
name and fortune--and after years of dire struggle, and neglect, and
poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had
longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a
poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home; he paints the
friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with the
remembrances of Lissoy.
Wander he must, but he carries away a home relic with him, and dies with
it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as
on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in
building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and
he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, keeps him. What is
the charm of his verse, of his style, and humor? His sweet regrets, his
delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness
which he owns?
Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's
battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind
vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon, save the harp
on which he plays to you, and with which he delights great and humble,
young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire,
or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and
sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of "The
Vicar of Wakefield" he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet
in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice in our
lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm of his
delightful music.