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 his 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 much 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 trowsers, and new boots. In his
hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be more
vagrant, 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 your
report of the calling? Yonder column props an urn. The column is tall,
and the urn is graceful. But it looks out of place by the road-side:
what say you?"
MR. BURLEY.--"It would look better in the church-yard."
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 church-yard, 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
church-yards. 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
groveled. 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 eloquent 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 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.