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 medieval
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--'t is 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 convey. 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, sat 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 spray on high,--there her benefactor
and mine told me that I was to lose her, 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 revery,
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,--'Haec 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's infinite amusement, Mrs. Fairfield always returned the
same answer. "'Deed, sir, and thank you kindly, but 't is my belief that
the drawin'-room would be awful dusty."
Once more left alone, Leonard's mind returned to the state of revery, 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, perhaps 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 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."
[At home--"In the serene regions
Where dwell the pure forms."]
From this revery 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.