At first Leonard had always returned home through the crowded
thoroughfares--the contact of numbers had animated his spirits. But
the last two days, since the discovery of his birth, he had taken his
way down the comparatively unpeopled path of the New Road. He had just
gained that part of this outskirt in which the statuaries and
tomb-makers exhibit their gloomy wares--furniture alike for gardens
and for graves--and, pausing, contemplated a column, on which was
placed an urn half covered with a funeral mantle, when his shoulder
was lightly tapped, and, turning quickly, he saw Mr. Burley standing
behind him.
"Excuse me, sir, but you understand perch-fishing; and since we find
ourselves on the same road, I should like to be better acquainted with
you. I hear you once wished to be an author. I am one."
Leonard had never before, to his knowledge, seen an author, and a
mournful smile passed his lips as he surveyed the perch-fisher. Mr.
Burley was indeed very differently attired since the first interview
by the brooklet. He looked less like an author, but more perhaps like
a perch-fisher. He had a new white hat, stuck on one side of his
head--a new green overcoat--new gray trousers, and new boots. In his
hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be
more fragrant, devil-me-carish, and to use a slang word, _tigrish_,
than his whole air. Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself
seem vulgar, but rather eccentric, lawless, something out of the pale
of convention. His face looked more pale and more puffed than before,
the tip of his nose redder; but the spark in his eye was of livelier
light, and there was self-enjoyment in the corners of his sensual
humorous lip.
"You are an author, sir," repeated Leonard. "Well, and what is the
report of your calling? Yonder column props an urn. The column is
tall, and the urn is graceful. But it looks out of place by the
roadside: what say you?"
_Mr. Burley._--"It would look better in the churchyard."
_Leonard._--"So I was thinking. And you are an author!"
_Mr. Burley._--"Ah, I said you had a quick sense of allegory. And so
you think an author looks better in a churchyard, when you see him but
as a muffled urn under the moonshine, than standing beneath the
gas-lamp, in a white hat, and with a red tip to his nose.
Abstractedly, you are right. But, with your leave, the author would
rather be where he is. Let us walk on." The two men felt an interest
in each other, and they walked some yards in silence.
"To return to the urn," said Mr. Burley, "you think of fame and
churchyards. Natural enough, before illusion dies; but I think of the
moment, of existence--and I laugh at fame. Fame, sir--not worth a
glass of cold without! And as for a glass of warm, with sugar--and
five shillings in one's pocket to spend as one pleases--what is there
in Westminster Abbey to compare with it?"
"Talk on, sir--I should like to hear you talk. Let me listen and hold
my tongue." Leonard pulled his hat over his brows, and gave up his
moody, questioning, turbulent mind to his new acquaintance.
And John Burley talked on. A dangerous and a fascinating talk it
was--the talk of a great intellect fallen. A serpent trailing its
length on the ground, and showing bright, shifting, glorious hues as
it grovelled. A serpent, yet without the serpent's guile. If John
Burley deceived and tempted, he meant it not--he crawled and glittered
alike honestly. No dove could be more simple.
Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an elegant enthusiasm on the joy
of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think
of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of
the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius;
you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me,
because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it
than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes
to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in
the skies.' Is this true?"
"Yes, very true."
"What can rob us of this joy! The bookseller will not buy, the public
will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the
angels--we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such
good-tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from
them, when one knows what one's self is worth, and what they are. They
are just worth the coin one can extract from them in order to live.
Our life--_that_ is worth so much to us. And then their joys, so
vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose
Burns drinking at the ale-house, with his boors around him, was
drinking, like them, only beer and whisky? No, he was drinking
nectar--he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts--shaking with the
laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to
unlock his spirit from the clay--take it from jerkin and corduroys,
and wrap it in the 'singing-robes' that floated wide in the skies: the
beer or the whisky was needed but for that, and then it changed at
once into the drink of Hebe. But come, you have not known this
life--you have not seen it. Come, give me this night. I have moneys
about me--I will fling them abroad as liberally as Alexander himself,
when he left to his share but hope. Come!"
"Whither?"
"To my throne. On that throne last sate Edmund Kean--mighty mime. I am
his successor. We will see whether in truth these wild sons of genius,
who are cited but 'to point a moral and adorn a tale,' were objects of
compassion. Sober-suited cits to lament over a Savage and a Morland--a
Porson and a Burns!--"
"Or a Chatterton," said Leonard, gloomily.
"Chatterton was an impostor in all things; he feigned excesses that he
never knew. _He_ a bacchanalian--a royster! He!--No. We will talk of
him. Come!"
Leonard went.