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 color
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 toward 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
artisan—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 afterward 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 among us, they occupy a very small portion
of our thoughts, and fill up but desultory interstices in the bitumen and
tufa 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 caroled 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 homey,
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
every thing 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’s 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 forever; genius and soul were reconciled to human life.
It was a face most lovable; 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 candor 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 toward 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.”(7)
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.