Cannot I create,
Cannot I form, cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe?--KEATS.
The next morning Clarence, in his way out of town, directed his carriage
(the last and not the least acceptable present from Talbot) to stop at
Warner’s door. Although it was scarcely sunrise, the aged grandmother
of the artist was stirring, and opened the door to the early visitor.
Clarence passed her with a brief salutation, hurried up the narrow
stairs, and found himself in the artist’s chamber. The windows were
closed, and the air of the room was confined and hot. A few books,
chiefly of history and poetry, stood in confused disorder upon some
shelves opposite the window. Upon a table beneath them lay a flute, once
the cherished recreation of the young painter, but now long neglected
and disused; and, placed exactly opposite to Warner, so that his eyes
might open upon his work, was the high-prized and already more than
half-finished picture.
Clarence bent over the bed; the cheek of the artist rested upon his arm
in an attitude unconsciously picturesque; the other arm was tossed
over the coverlet, and Clarence was shocked to see how emaciated it had
become. But ever and anon the lips of the sleeper moved restlessly, and
words, low and inarticulate, broke out. Sometimes he started abruptly,
and a bright but evanescent flush darted over his faded and hollow
cheek; and once the fingers of the thin hand which lay upon the bed
expanded and suddenly closed in a firm and almost painful grasp; it was
then that for the first time the words of the artist became distinct.
“Ay, ay,” he said, “I have thee, I have thee at last. Long, very long
thou hast burnt up my heart like fuel, and mocked me, and laughed at
my idle efforts; but now, now, I have thee. Fame, Honour, Immortality,
whatever thou art called, I have thee, and thou canst not escape; but it
is almost too late!” And, as if wrung by some sudden pain, the sleeper
turned heavily round, groaned audibly, and awoke.
“My friend,” said Clarence, soothingly, and taking his hand, “I have
come to bid you farewell. I am just setting off for the Continent, but I
could not leave England without once more seeing you. I have good news,
too, for you.” And Clarence proceeded to repeat Talbot’s wish that
Warner should bring the picture to his house on the following Thursday,
that Sir Joshua might inspect it. He added also, in terms the flattery
of which his friendship could not resist exaggerating, Talbot’s desire
to become the purchaser of the picture.
“Yes,” said the artist, as his eye glanced delightedly over his labour;
“yes, I believe when it is once seen there will be many candidates!”
“No doubt,” answered Clarence; “and for that reason you cannot blame
Talbot for wishing to forestall all other competitors for the prize;”
and then, continuing the encouraging nature of the conversation,
Clarence enlarged upon the new hopes of his friend, besought him to
take time, to spare his health, and not to injure both himself and his
performance by over-anxiety and hurry. Clarence concluded by retailing
Talbot’s assurance that in all cases and circumstances he (Talbot)
considered himself pledged to be Warner’s supporter and friend.
With something of impatience, mingled with pleasure, the painter
listened to all these details; nor was it to Linden’s zeal nor to
Talbot’s generosity, but rather to the excess of his own merit, that he
secretly attributed the brightening prospect offered him.
The indifference which Warner, though of a disposition naturally kind,
evinced at parting with a friend who had always taken so strong an
interest in his behalf, and whose tears at that moment contrasted
forcibly enough with the apathetic coldness of his own farewell, was a
remarkable instance how acute vividness on a single point will deaden
feeling on all others. Occupied solely and burningly with one intense
thought, which was to him love, friendship, health, peace, wealth,
Warner could not excite feelings, languid and exhausted with many and
fiery conflicts, to objects of minor interest, and perhaps he inwardly
rejoiced that his musings and his study would henceforth be sacred even
from friendship.
Deeply affected, for his nature was exceedingly unselfish, generous,
and susceptible, Clarence tore himself away, placed in the grandmother’s
hand a considerable portion of the sum he had received from Talbot,
hurried into his carriage, and found himself on the high road to
fortune, pleasure, distinction, and the Continent.
But while Clarence, despite of every advantage before him, hastened to
a court of dissipation and pleasure, with feelings in which regretful
affection for those he had left darkened his worldly hopes and mingled
with the sanguine anticipations of youth, Warner, poor, low-born, wasted
with sickness, destitute of friends, shut out by his temperament from
the pleasures of his age, burned with hopes far less alloyed than those
of Clarence, and found in them, for the sacrifice of all else, not only
a recompense, but a triumph.
Thursday came. Warner had made one request to Talbot, which had with
difficulty been granted: it was that he himself might unseen be the
auditor of the great painter’s criticisms, and that Sir Joshua should be
perfectly unaware of his presence. It had been granted with difficulty,
because Talbot wished to spare Warner the pain of hearing remarks which
he felt would be likely to fall far short of the sanguine self-elation
of the young artist; and it had been granted because Talbot imagined
that, even should this be the case, the pain would be more than
counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might produce. Alas! vanity
calculates but poorly upon the vanity of others! What a virtue we should
distil from frailty; what a world of pain we should save our brethren,
if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs!
Thursday came: the painting was placed by the artist’s own hand in the
most favourable light; a curtain, hung behind it, served as a screen
for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, surrendered his heart to
delicious forebodings of the critic’s wonder and golden anticipations of
the future destiny of his darling work. Not a fear dashed the full and
smooth cup of his self-enjoyment. He had lain awake the whole of the
night in restless and joyous impatience for the morrow. At daybreak he
had started from his bed, he had unclosed his shutters, he had hung over
his picture with a fondness greater, if possible, than he had ever known
before! like a mother, he felt as if his own partiality was but a part
of a universal tribute; and, as his aged relative, turning her dim eyes
to the painting, and, in her innocent idolatry, rather of the artist
than his work, praised and expatiated and foretold, his heart whispered,
“If it wring this worship from ignorance, what will be the homage of
science?”
He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim that diffidence is the
companion of genius knew very little of the workings of the human heart.
True, there may have been a few such instances, and it is probable that
in this maxim, as in most, the exception made the rule. But what could
ever reconcile genius to its sufferings, its sacrifices, its fevered
inquietudes, the intense labour which can alone produce what the shallow
world deems the giant offspring of a momentary inspiration: what
could ever reconcile it to these but the haughty and unquenchable
consciousness of internal power; the hope which has the fulness of
certainty that in proportion to the toil is the reward; the sanguine and
impetuous anticipation of glory, which bursts the boundaries of time and
space, and ranges immortality with a prophet’s rapture? Rob Genius of
its confidence, of its lofty self-esteem, and you clip the wings of the
eagle: you domesticate, it is true, the wanderer you could not hitherto
comprehend, in the narrow bounds of your household affections; you abase
and tame it more to the level of your ordinary judgments, but you take
from it the power to soar; the hardihood which was content to brave the
thundercloud and build its eyrie on the rock, for the proud triumph of
rising above its kind, and contemplating with a nearer eye the majesty
of heaven.
But if something of presumption is a part of the very essence of genius,
in Warner it was doubly natural, for he was still in the heat and flush
of a design, the defects of which he had not yet had the leisure to
examine; and his talents, self-taught and self-modelled, had
never received either the excitement of emulation or the chill of
discouragement from the study of the masterpieces of his art.
The painter had not been long alone in his concealment before he heard
steps; his heart beat violently, the door opened, and he saw, through
a small hole which he had purposely made in the curtain, a man with a
benevolent and prepossessing countenance, whom he instantly recognized
as Sir Joshua Reynolds, enter the room, accompanied by Talbot. They
walked up to the picture, the painter examined it closely, and in
perfect silence. “Silence,” thought Warner, “is the best homage of
admiration;” but he trembled with impatience to hear the admiration
confirmed by words,--those words came too soon.
“It is the work of a clever man, certainly,” said Sir Joshua; “but”
(terrible monosyllable) “of one utterly unskilled in the grand
principles of his art--look here, and here, and here, for instance;” and
the critic, perfectly unconscious of the torture he inflicted, proceeded
to point out the errors of the work. Oh! the agony, the withering agony
of that moment to the ambitious artist! In vain he endeavoured to bear
up against the judgment,--in vain he endeavoured to persuade himself
that it was the voice of envy which in those cold, measured, defining
accents, fell like drops of poison upon his heart. He felt at once, and
as if by a magical inspiration, the truth of the verdict; the scales
of self-delusion fell from his eyes; by a hideous mockery, a kind of
terrible pantomime, his goddess seemed at a word, a breath, transformed
into a monster: life, which had been so lately concentrated into
a single hope, seemed now, at once and forever, cramped, curdled,
blistered into a single disappointment.
“But,” said Talbot, who had in vain attempted to arrest the criticisms
of the painter (who, very deaf at all times, was, at that time in
particular, engrossed by the self-satisfaction always enjoyed by one
expatiating on his favourite topic),--“but,” said Talbot, in a louder
voice, “you own there is great genius in the design?”
“Certainly, there is genius,” replied Sir Joshua, in a tone of calm and
complacent good-nature; “but what is genius without culture? You say
the artist is young, very young; let him take time: I do not say let
him attempt a humbler walk; let him persevere in the lofty one he has
chosen, but let him first retrace every step he has taken; let him
devote days, months, years, to the most diligent study of the immortal
masters of the divine art, before he attempts (to exhibit, at least)
another historical picture. He has mistaken altogether the nature of
invention: a fine invention is nothing more than a fine deviation
from, or enlargement on, a fine model: imitation, if noble and general,
insures the best hope of originality. Above all, let your young friend,
if he can afford it, visit Italy.”
“He shall afford it,” said Talbot, kindly, “for he shall have
whatever advantages I can procure him; but you see the picture is only
half-completed: he could alter it!”
“He had better burn it!” replied the painter, with a gentle smile.
And Talbot, in benevolent despair, hurried his visitor out of the room.
He soon returned to seek and console the artist, but the artist was
gone; the despised, the fatal picture, the blessing and curse of so many
anxious and wasted hours, had vanished also with its creator.