Who has not seen--who not admired, that noble picture by Daniel
Maclise, which refreshes the immortal name of my ancestor Caxton!
For myself, while with national pride I heard the admiring murmurs
of the foreigners who grouped around it, (nothing, indeed, of
which our nation may be more proud had they seen in the Crystal
Palace,)--heard, with no less a pride in the generous nature of
fellow-artists, the warm applause of living and deathless masters,
sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd;--what struck me
more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has been
always renowned, and the just though gorgeous affluence of colour
which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of
conception, out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen.
That monk, with his scowl towards the printer and his back on the
Bible, over which _his form casts a shadow_--the whole transition
between the mediæval Christianity of cell and cloister, and the
modern Christianity that rejoices in the daylight, is depicted
there, in the shadow that obscures the Book--in the scowl that is
fixed upon the Book-diffuser;--that sombre musing face of Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the
expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into futurity, as
if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created to the
schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force;--the chivalrous head
of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under his helmet,
as if the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes, in
steel, was already half passed away: and, not least grand of all,
the rude thews and sinews of the artisan forced into service on the
type, and the ray of intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions
yet to be, struggling through his rugged features, and across his
low knitted brow;--all this, which showed how deeply the idea
of the discovery in its good and its evil, its saving light and
its perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul, charmed me
as effecting the exact union between sentiment and execution,
which is the true and rare consummation of the Ideal in Art. But
observe, while in these personages of the group are depicted the
deeper and graver agencies implicated in the bright but terrible
invention--observe how little the light epicures of the hour heed
the scowl of the monk, or the restless gesture of Richard, or the
troubled gleam in the eyes of the artizan--King Edward, handsome
_Poco curante_, delighted, in the surprise of a child, with a new
toy; and Clarence, with his curious yet careless glance--all the
while Caxton himself, calm, serene, untroubled, intent solely
upon the manifestation of his discovery, and no doubt supremely
indifferent whether the first proofs of it shall be dedicated
to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry, Plantagenet or
Tudor--'tis all the same to that comely, gentle-looking man. So is
it ever with your Abstract Science!--not a jot cares its passionless
logic for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The stream, once
emerged from its source, passes on into the Great Intellectual Sea,
smiling over the wretch that it drowns, or under the keel of the
ship which it serves as a slave.
Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties
of Life, this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my
recollection, and illustrated what I designed to say. In the
surface of every age, it is often that which but amuses, for the
moment, the ordinary children of pleasant existence, the Edwards
and the Clarences, (be they kings and dukes, or simplest of simple
subjects,) which afterwards towers out as the great serious epoch
of the time. When we look back upon human records, how the eye
settles upon WRITERS as the main landmarks of the past! We talk of
the age of Augustus, of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV., of Anne, as the
notable eras of the world. Why? Because it is their writers who
have made them so. Intervals between one age of authors and another
lie unnoticed, as the flats and common lands of uncultured history.
And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst us,
they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but
desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build
up the Babylon of our lives! So it is, and perhaps so it should
be, whether it pleases the conceit of penmen or not. Life is meant
to be active; and books, though they give the action to future
generations, administer but to the holiday of the present.
And so, with this long preface, I turn suddenly from the Randals and
the Egertons, and the Levys, Avenels, and Peschieras--from the plots
and passions of practical life, and drop the reader suddenly into
one of those obscure retreats wherein Thought weaves, from unnoticed
moments, a new link to the chain that unites the ages.
Within a small room, the single window of which opened on a fanciful
and fairy-like garden, that has been before described, sate a
young man alone. He had been writing: the ink was not dry on his
manuscript, but his thoughts had been suddenly interrupted from his
work, and his eyes, now lifted from the letter which had occasioned
that interruption, sparkled with delight. "He will come," exclaimed
the young man; "come here--to the home which I owe to him. I have
not been unworthy of his friendship. And she"--his breast heaved,
but the joy faded from his face. "Oh strange, strange, that I
feel sad at the thought to see her again. See _her_--Ah no!--my
own comforting Helen--my own Child-angel! _Her_ I can never see
again! The grown woman--that is not my Helen. And yet--and yet,
(he resumed, after a pause,) if ever she read the pages, in which
thought flowed and trembled under her distant starry light--if ever
she see how her image has rested with me, and feel that, while
others believe that I invent, I have but remembered--will she not,
for a moment, be my own Helen again! Again, in heart and in fancy,
stand by my side on the desolate bridge--hand in hand--orphans both,
as we stood in the days so sorrowful, yet, as I recall them, so
sweet.--Helen in England, it is a dream!"
He rose, half consciously, and went to the window. The fountain
played merrily before his eyes, and the birds in the aviary carolled
loud to his ear. "And in this house," he murmured, "I saw her last!
And there, where the fountain now throws its stream on high--there
her benefactor and mine told me that I was to lose _her_, and that I
might win--fame. Alas!"
At this time a woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and
air, which, though not without a certain respectability, were very
homely, entered the room; and, seeing the young man standing thus
thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits;
and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So
she did not disturb his reverie, but began softly to arrange the
room--dusting, with the corner of her apron, the various articles of
furniture, putting a stray chair or two in its right place, but not
touching a single paper. Virtuous woman, and rare as virtuous!
The young man turned at last, with a deep, yet not altogether
painful sigh--
"My dear mother, good day to you. Ah, you do well to make the room
look its best. Happy news! I expect a visitor!"
"Dear me, Leonard, will he want? lunch--or what?"
"Nay, I think not, mother. It is he to whom we owe all--'_Hæc otia
fecit_.' Pardon my Latin; it is Lord L'Estrange."
The face of Mrs Fairfield (the reader has long since divined the
name) changed instantly, and betrayed a nervous twitch of all the
muscles, which gave her a family likeness to old Mrs Avenel.
"Do not be alarmed, mother. He is the kindest--"
"Don't talk so; I can't bear it!" cried Mrs Fairfield.
"No wonder you are affected by the recollection of all his benefits.
But when once you have seen him, you will find yourself ever after
at your ease. And so, pray smile and look as good as you are; for I
am proud of your open honest look when you are pleased, mother. And
he must see your heart in your face as I do."
With this, Leonard put his arm round the widow's neck and kissed
her. She clung to him fondly for a moment, and he felt her tremble
from head to foot. Then she broke from his embrace, and hurried out
of the room. Leonard thought perhaps she had gone to improve her
dress, or to carry her housewife energies to the decoration of the
other rooms; for "the house" was Mrs Fairfield's hobby and passion;
and now that she worked no more, save for her amusement, it was her
main occupation. The hours she contrived to spend daily in bustling
about those little rooms, and leaving everything therein to all
appearance precisely the same, were among the marvels in life which
the genius of Leonard had never comprehended. But she was always so
delighted when Mr Norreys or some rare visitor came; and said, (Mr
Norreys never failed to do so,) "How neatly all is kept here. What
could Leonard do without you, Mrs Fairfield?"
And, to Norreys' infinite amusement, Mrs Fairfield always returned
the same answer. "'Deed sir, and thank you kindly, but 'tis my
belief that the drawin'-room would be awful dusty."
Once more left alone, Leonard's mind returned to the state of
reverie, and his face assumed the expression that had now become
to it habitual. Thus seen, he was changed much since we last
beheld him. His cheek was more pale and thin, his lips more firmly
compressed, his eye more fixed and abstract. You could detect, if
I may borrow a touching French expression, that "sorrow had passed
by there." But the melancholy on his countenance was ineffably
sweet and serene, and on his ample forehead there was that power,
so rarely seen in early youth--the power that has conquered, and
betrays its conquests but in calm. The period of doubt, of struggle,
of defiance, was gone for ever; genius and soul were reconciled to
human life. It was a face most loveable; so gentle and peaceful
in its character. No want of fire; on the contrary, the fire was
so clear and so steadfast, that it conveyed but the impression of
light. The candour of boyhood, the simplicity of the villager were
still there--refined by intelligence, but intelligence that seemed
to have traversed through knowledge--not with the footstep, but
the wing--unsullied by the mire--tending towards the star--seeking
through the various grades of Being but the lovelier forms of truth
and goodness; at home as should be the Art that consummates the
Beautiful--
"In den heitern Regionen
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."[57]
From this reverie Leonard did not seek to rouse himself, till the
bell at the garden gate rang loud and shrill; and then starting up
and hurrying into the hall, his hand was grasped in Harley's.
[57]
At home--"In the serene regions
Where dwell the pure forms."