Call it oddity, eccentricity, humour, or what you please, it is evident
that the special flavour of mind or manner which, independently of
fortune, station, or profession, sets a man apart and makes him
distinguishable from his fellows, and which gives the charm of
picturesqueness to society, is fast disappearing from amongst us. A
man may count the odd people of his acquaintance on his fingers; and it
is observable that these odd people are generally well stricken in
years. They belong more to the past generation than to the present.
Our young men are terribly alike. For these many years back, the young
gentlemen I have had the fortune to encounter are clever, knowing,
selfish, disagreeable; the young ladies are of one pattern, like minted
sovereigns of the same reign,--excellent gold, I have no doubt, but
each bearing the same awfully proper image and superscription. There
are no blanks in the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the prizes are
all of a value, and there is but one kind of article given for the
ticket. Courtship is an absurdity and a sheer waste of time. If a man
could but close his eyes in a ball-room, dash into a bevy of muslin
beauties, carry off the fair one that accident gives to his arms, his
raid would be as reasonable and as likely to produce happiness as the
more ordinary methods of procuring a spouse. If a man has to choose
one guinea out of a bag containing one hundred and fifty, what can he
do? What wonderful wisdom can he display in his choice? There is no
appreciable difference of value in the golden pieces. The latest
coined are a little fresher, that's all. An act of uniformity, with
heavy penalties for recusants, seems to have been passed upon the
English race. That we can quite well account for this state of things,
does not make the matter better, does not make it the less our duty to
fight against it. We are apt to be told that men are too busy and
women too accomplished for humour of speech or originality of character
or manner. In the truth of this lies the pity of it. If, with the
exceptions of hedges that divide fields, and streams that run as
marches between farms, every inch of soil were drained, ploughed,
manured, and under that improved cultivation rushing up into
astonishing wheaten and oaten crops, enriching tenant and proprietor,
the aspect of the country would be decidedly uninteresting, and would
present scant attraction to the man riding or walking through it. In
such a world the tourists would be few. Personally, I should detest a
world all red and ruled with the ploughshare in spring, all covered
with harvest in autumn. I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors
and barren places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; the
warren where, when you approach, you can see the twinkle of innumerable
rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, would not feel sorry although
Reynard himself had a hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands
of his rising family cost Farmer Yellowleas a fat capon or two in the
season. The fresh, rough, heathery parts of human nature, where the
air is freshest, and where the linnets sing, is getting encroached upon
by cultivated fields. Every one is making himself and herself useful.
Every one is producing something. Everybody is clever. Everybody is a
philanthropist. I don't like it. I love a little eccentricity. I
respect honest prejudices. I admire foolish enthusiasm in a young head
better than a wise scepticism. It is high time, it seems to me, that a
moral game-law were passed for the preservation of the wild and vagrant
feelings of human nature.
I have advertised myself to speak of _vagabonds_, and I must explain
what I mean by the term. We all know what was the doom of the first
child born of man, and it is needless for me to say that I do not wish
the spirit of Cain more widely diffused amongst my fellow-creatures.
By vagabonds, I do not mean a tramp or a gipsy, or a thimble-rigger, or
a brawler who is brought up with a black eye before a magistrate in the
morning. The vagabond as I have him in my mind's eye, and whom I
dearly love, comes out of quite a different mould. The man I speak of,
seldom, it is true, attains to the dignity of a churchwarden; he is
never found sitting at a reformed town-council board; he has a horror
of public platforms; he never by any chance heads a subscription list
with a donation of fifty pounds. On the other hand, he is very far
from being a "ne'er-do-weel," as the Scotch phrase it, or an imprudent
person. He does not play at "Aunt Sally" on a public race-course, he
does not wrench knockers from the doors of slumbering citizens; he has
never seen the interior of a police-cell. It is quite true, he has a
peculiar way of looking at many things. If, for instance, he is
brought up with cousin Milly, and loves her dearly, and the childish
affection grows up and strengthens in the woman's heart, and there is a
fair chance for them fighting the world side by side, he marries her
without too curiously considering whether his income will permit him to
give dinner-parties, and otherwise fashionably see his friends. Very
imprudent, no doubt. But you cannot convince my vagabond. With the
strangest logical twist, which seems natural to him, he conceives that
he marries for his own sake, and not for the sake of his acquaintances,
and that the possession of a loving heart and a conscience void of
reproach is worth, at any time an odd sovereign in his pocket. The
vagabond is not a favourite with the respectable classes. He is
particularly feared by mammas who have daughters to dispose of,--not
that he is a bad son, or likely to prove a bad husband or a treacherous
friend; but somehow gold does not stick to his fingers as it does to
the fingers of some men. He is regardless of appearances. He chooses
his friends neither for their fine houses nor their rare wines, but for
their humours, their goodness of heart, their capacities of making a
joke and of seeing one, and for their abilities, unknown often as the
woodland violet, but not the less sweet for obscurity. As a
consequence, his acquaintance is miscellaneous, and he is often seen at
other places than rich men's feasts. I do believe he is a gainer by
reason of his vagrant ways. He comes in contact with the queer corners
and the out-of-the-way places of human life. He knows more of our
common nature, just as the man who walks through a country, and who
strikes off the main road now and then to visit a ruin, or a legendary
cairn of stones, who drops into village inns, and talks with the people
he meets on the road, becomes better acquainted with it than the man
who rolls haughtily along the turnpike in a carriage and four. We lose
a great deal by foolish hauteur. No man is worth much who has not a
touch of the vagabond in him. Could I have visited London thirty years
ago, I would rather have spent an hour with Charles Lamb than with any
other of its residents. He was a fine specimen of the vagabond, as I
conceive him. His mind was as full of queer nooks and tortuous
passages as any mansion-house of Elizabeth's day or earlier, where the
rooms are cosey, albeit a little low in the roof; where dusty stained
lights are falling on old oaken panellings; where every bit of
furniture has a reverent flavour of ancientness; where portraits of
noble men and women, all dead long ago, are hanging on the walls; and
where a black-letter Chaucer with silver clasps is lying open on a seat
in the window. There was nothing modern about him. The garden of his
mind did not flaunt in gay parterres; it resembled those that Cowley
and Evelyn delighted in, with clipped trees, and shaven lawns, and
stone satyrs, and dark, shadowing yews, and a sun-dial, with a Latin
motto sculptured on it, standing at the farther end. Lamb was the
slave of quip and whimsey; he stuttered out puns to the detriment of
all serious and improving conversation, and twice or so in the year he
was overtaken in liquor. Well, in spite of these things, perhaps on
account of these things, I love his memory. For love and charity
ripened in that nature as peaches ripen on the wall that fronts the
sun. Although he did not blow his trumpet in the corners of the
streets, he was tried as few men are, and fell not. He jested, that he
might not weep. He wore a martyr's heart beneath his suit of motley.
And only years after his death, when to admiration or censure he was
alike insensible, did the world know his story and that of his sister
Mary.
Ah, me! what a world this was to live in two or three centuries ago,
when it was getting itself discovered--when the sunset gave up America,
when a steel hand had the spoiling of Mexico and Peru! Then were the
"Arabian Nights" commonplace, enchantments a matter of course, and
romance the most ordinary thing in the world. Then man was courting
Nature; now he has married her. Every mystery is dissipated. The
planet is familiar as the trodden pathway running between towns. We no
longer gaze wistfully to the west, dreaming of the Fortunate Isles. We
seek our wonders now on the ebbed sea-shore; we discover our new worlds
with the microscope. Yet, for all that time has brought and taken
away, I am glad to know that the vagabond sleeps in our blood, and
awakes now and then. Overlay human nature as you please, here and
there some bit of rock, or mound of aboriginal soil, will crop out with
the wild-flowers growing upon it, sweetening the air. When the boy
throws his Delectus or his Euclid aside, and takes passionately to the
reading of "Robinson Crusoe" or Bruce's "African Travels," do not shake
your head despondingly over him and prophesy evil issues. Let the wild
hawk try its wings. It will be hooded, and will sit quietly enough on
the falconer's perch ere long. Let the wild horse career over its
boundless pampas; the jerk of the lasso will bring it down soon enough.
Soon enough will the snaffle in the mouth and the spur of the tamer
subdue the high spirit to the bridle, or the carriage-trace. Perhaps
not; and, if so, the better for all parties. Once more there will be a
new man and new deeds in the world. For Genius is a vagabond, Art is a
vagabond, Enterprise is a vagabond. Vagabonds have moulded the world
into its present shape; they have made the houses in which we dwell,
the roads on which we ride and drive, the very laws that govern us.
Respectable people swarm in the track of the vagabond as rooks in the
track of the ploughshare. Respectable people do little in the world
except storing wine-cellars and amassing fortunes for the benefit of
spendthrift heirs. Respectable well-to-do Grecians shook their heads
over Leonidas and his three hundred when they went down to Thermopylae.
Respectable Spanish churchmen with shaven crowns scouted the dream of
Columbus. Respectable German folks attempted to dissuade Luther from
appearing before Charles and the princes and electors of the Empire,
and were scandalised when he declared that "Were there as many devils
in Worms as there were tiles on the house-tops, still would he on."
Nature makes us vagabonds, the world makes us respectable.
In the fine sense in which I take the word, the English are the
greatest vagabonds on the earth, and it is the healthiest trait in
their national character. The first fine day in spring awakes the
gipsy in the blood of the English workman, and incontinently he
"babbles of green fields." On the English gentleman lapped, in the
most luxurious civilisation, and with the thousand powers and resources
of wealth at his command, descends oftentimes a fierce unrest, a
Bedouin-like horror of cities and the cry of the money-changer, and in
a month the fiery dust rises in the track of his desert steed, or in
the six months' polar midnight he hears the big wave clashing on the
icy shore. The close presence of the sea feeds the Englishman's
restlessness. She takes possession of his heart like some fair
capricious mistress. Before the boy awakes to the beauty of cousin
Mary, he is crazed by the fascinations of ocean. With her voices of
ebb and flow she weaves her siren song round the Englishman's coasts
day and night. Nothing that dwells on land can keep from her embrace
the boy who has gazed upon her dangerous beauty, and who has heard her
singing songs of foreign shores at the foot of the summer crag. It is
well that in the modern gentleman the fierce heart of the Berserker
lives yet. The English are eminently a nation of vagabonds. The sun
paints English faces with all the colours of his climes. The
Englishman is ubiquitous. He shakes with fever and ague in the swampy
valley of the Mississippi; he is drowned in the sand pillars as they
waltz across the desert on the purple breath of the simoom; he stands
on the icy scalp of Mont Blanc; his fly falls in the sullen Norwegian
fiords; he invades the solitude of the Cape lion; he rides on his
donkey through the uncausewayed Cairo streets. That wealthy people,
under a despotism, should be travellers seems a natural thing enough.
It is a way of escape from the rigours of their condition. But that
England--where activity rages so keenly and engrosses every class;
where the prizes of Parliament, literature, commerce, the bar, the
church, are hungered and thirsted after; where the stress and intensity
of life ages a man before his time; where so many of the noblest break
down in harness hardly halfway to the goal--should, year after year,
send off swarms of men to roam the world, and to seek out danger for
the mere thrill and enjoyment of it, is significant of the indomitable
pluck and spirit of the race. There is scant danger that the rust of
sloth will eat into the virtue of English steel. The English do the
hard work and the travelling of the world. The least revolutionary
nation of Europe, the one with the greatest temptations to stay at
home, with the greatest faculty for work, with perhaps the sincerest
regard for wealth, is also the most nomadic. How is this? It is
because they are a nation of vagabonds; they have the "hungry heart"
that one of their poets speaks about.
There is an amiability about the genuine vagabond which takes captive
the heart. We do not love a man for his respectability, his prudence
and foresight in business, his capacity of living within his income, or
his balance at his banker's. We all admit that prudence is an
admirable virtue, and occasionally lament, about Christmas, when bills
fall in, that we do not inherit it in a greater degree. But we speak
about it in quite a cool way. It does not touch us with enthusiasm.
If a calculating-machine had a hand to wring, it would find few to
wring it warmly. The things that really move liking in human beings
are the gnarled nodosities of character, vagrant humours, freaks of
generosity, some little unextinguishable spark of the aboriginal
savage, some little sweet savour of the old Adam. It is quite
wonderful how far simple generosity and kindliness of heart go in
securing affection; and, when these exist, what a host of apologists
spring up for faults and vices even. A country squire goes recklessly
to the dogs; yet if he has a kind word for his tenant when he meets
him, a frank greeting for the rustic beauty when she drops a courtesy
to him on the highway, he lives for a whole generation in an odour of
sanctity. If he had been a disdainful, hook-nosed prime minister who
had carried his country triumphantly through some frightful crisis of
war, these people would, perhaps, never have been aware of the fact;
and most certainly never would have tendered him a word of thanks, even
if they had. When that important question, "Which is the greatest foe
to the public weal--the miser or the spendthrift?" is discussed at the
artisans' debating club, the spendthrift has all the eloquence on his
side--the miser all the votes. The miser's advocate is nowhere, and he
pleads the cause of his client with only half his heart. In the
theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and Joseph Surface is hissed.
The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to
Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but
deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and
Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour
and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over.
Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were
shabby fellows both, and were treated a great deal too well. But there
are other vagabonds whom I love, and whom I do well to love. With what
affection do I follow little Ishmael and his broken-hearted mother out
into the great and terrible wilderness, and see them faint beneath the
ardours of the sunlight! And we feel it to be strict poetic justice
and compensation that the lad so driven forth from human tents should
become the father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities is
poison, who work without any tool, and on whose limbs no conqueror has
ever yet been able to rivet shackle or chain. Then there are Abraham's
grandchildren, Jacob and Esau--the former, I confess, no favourite of
mine. His, up at least to his closing years, when parental affection
and strong sorrow softened him, was a character not amiable. He lacked
generosity, and had too keen an eye on his own advancement. He did not
inherit the noble strain of his ancestors. He was a prosperous man;
yet in spite of his increase in flocks and herds,--in spite of his
vision of the ladder, with the angels ascending and descending upon
it,--in spite of the success of his beloved son,--in spite of the
weeping and lamentation of the Egyptians at his death,--in spite of his
splendid funeral, winding from the city by the pyramid and the
sphinx,--in spite of all these things, I would rather have been the
hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt in the promise,
rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds
with him an essentially noble nature--no brother with his mess of
pottage could mulct him of that. And he had a fine revenge; for when
Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother was near with four
hundred men, and made division of his flocks and herds, his
man-servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent,
the fierce son of the desert, baked red with Syrian light, leaped down
upon him, and fell on his neck and wept. And Esau said, "What meanest
thou by all this drove which I met?" and Jacob said, "These are to find
grace in the sight of my lord;" then Esau said, "I have enough, my
brother, keep that thou hast unto thyself." O mighty prince, didst
thou remember thy mother's guile, the skins upon thy hands and neck,
and the lie put upon the patriarch, as, blind with years, he sat up in
his bed snuffing the savory meat? An ugly memory, I should fancy!
Commend me to Shakspeare's vagabonds, the most delightful in the world!
His sweet-blooded and liberal nature blossomed into all fine
generosities as naturally as an apple-bough into pink blossoms and
odours. Listen to Gonsalvo talking to the shipwrecked Milan nobles
camped for the night in Prospero's isle, full of sweet voices, with
Ariel shooting through the enchanted air like a falling star;--
"Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord,
I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service none; contract, succession,
Bourne, bound of land, tilth, title, vineyard none;
No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil;
No occupation--all men idle--all!
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty;
All things in common nature should produce,
Without sweat or endurance; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature would bring forth
Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
I would with such perfection govern, sir,
To excel the golden age."
What think you of a world after that pattern? "As You Like it" is a
vagabond play, and, verily, if there waved in any wind that blows a
forest peopled like Arden's, with an exiled king drawing the sweetest,
humanest lessons from misfortune; a melancholy Jacques, stretched by
the river bank, moralising on the bleeding deer; a fair Rosalind,
chanting her saucy cuckoo-song; fools like Touchstone--not like those
of our acquaintance, my friends; and the whole place, from centre to
circumference, filled with mighty oak bolls, all carven with lovers'
names,--if such a forest waved in wind, I say, I would, be my worldly
prospects what they might, pack up at once, and cast in my lot with
that vagabond company. For there I should find more gallant
courtesies, finer sentiments, completer innocence and happiness, more
wit and wisdom, than I am like to do here even, though I search for
them from shepherd's cot to king's palace. Just to think how those
people lived! Carelessly as the blossoming trees, happily as the
singing birds, time measured only by the patter of the acorn on the
fruitful soil! A world without debtor or creditor, passing rich, yet
with never a doit in its purse, with no sordid care, no regard for
appearances; nothing to occupy the young but love-making, nothing to
occupy the old but perusing the "sermons in stones" and the musical
wisdom which dwells in "running brooks"! But Arden forest draws its
sustenance from a poet's brain: the light that sleeps on its leafy
pillows is "the light that never was on sea or shore." We but please
and tantalise ourselves with beautiful dreams.
The children of the brain become to us actual existences, more actual,
indeed, than the people who impinge upon us in the street, or who live
next door. We are more intimate with Shakspeare's men and women than
we are with our contemporaries, and they are, on the whole, better
company. They are more beautiful in form and feature, and they express
themselves in a way that the most gifted strive after in vain. What if
Shakspeare's people could walk out of the play-books and settle down
upon some spot of earth and conduct life there? There would be found
humanity's whitest wheat, the world's unalloyed gold. The very winds
could not visit the place roughly. No king's court could present you
such an array. Where else could we find a philosopher like Hamlet? a
friend like Antonio? a witty fellow like Mercutio? where else Imogen's
piquant's face? Portia's gravity and womanly sweetness? Rosalind's true
heart and silvery laughter? Cordelia's beauty of holiness? These would
form the centre of the court, but the purlieus, how many-coloured!
Malvolio would walk mincingly in the sunshine there; Autolycus would
filch purses. Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch would be eternal
boon companions. And as Falstaff sets out homeward from the tavern,
the portly knight leading the revellers like a three-decker a line of
frigates, they are encountered by Dogberry, who summons them to stand
and answer to the watch as they are honest men. If Mr. Dickens's
characters were gathered together, they would constitute a town
populous enough to send a representative to Parliament. Let us enter.
The style of architecture is unparalleled. There is an individuality
about the buildings. In some obscure way they remind one of human
faces. There are houses sly-looking, houses wicked-looking, houses
pompous-looking. Heaven bless us! what a rakish pump! what a
self-important town-hall! what a hard-hearted prison! The dead walls
are covered with advertisements of Mr. Sleary's circus. Newman Noggs
comes shambling along. Mr. and the Misses Pecksniff come sailing down
the sunny side of the street. Miss Mercy's parasol is gay; papa's
neck-cloth is white, and terribly starched. Dick Swiveller leans
against a wall, his hands in his pockets, a primrose held between his
teeth, contemplating the opera of Punch and Judy, which is being
conducted under the management of Messrs. Codlings and Short. You turn
a corner and you meet the coffin of little Paul Dombey borne along.
Who would have thought of encountering a funeral in this place? In the
afternoon you hear the rich tones of the organ from Miss La Creevy's
first floor, for Tom Pinch has gone to live there now, and as you know
all the people as you know your own brothers and sisters, and
consequently require no letters of introduction, you go up and talk
with the dear old fellow about all his friends and your friends, and
towards evening he takes your arm, and you walk out to see poor Nelly's
grave--a place which he visits often, and which he dresses with flowers
with his own hands. I know this is the idlest dreaming, but all of us
have a sympathy with the creatures of the drama and the novel. Around
the hardest cark and toil lies the imaginative world of the poets and
romancists, and thither we sometimes escape to snatch a mouthful of
serener air. There our best lost feelings have taken a human shape.
We suppose that boyhood with its impulses and enthusiasms has subsided
with the gray cynical man whom we have known these many years. Not a
bit of it. It has escaped into the world of the poet, and walks a
love-flushed Romeo in immortal youth. We suppose that the Mary of
fifty years since, the rose-bud of a girl that crazed our hearts,
blossomed into the spouse of Jenkins, the stockbroker, and is now a
grandmother. Not at all. She is Juliet leaning from the balcony, or
Portia talking on the moonlight lawns at Belmont. There walk the
shadows of our former selves. All that Time steals he takes thither;
and to live in that world is to live in our lost youth, our lost
generosities, illusions, and romances.
In middle-class life, and in the professions, when a standard or ideal
is tacitly set up, to which every member is expected to conform on pain
of having himself talked about, and wise heads shaken over him, the
quick feelings of the vagabond are not frequently found. Yet, thanks
to Nature, who sends her leafage and flowerage up through all kinds of
_débris_, and who takes a blossomy possession of ruined walls and
desert places, it is never altogether dead! And of vagabonds, not the
least delightful is he who retains poetry and boyish spirits beneath
the crust of a profession. Mr. Carlyle commends "central fire," and
very properly commends it most when "well covered in." In the case of
a professional man, this "central fire" does not manifest itself in
wasteful explosiveness, but in secret genial heat, visible in fruits of
charity and pleasant humour. The physician who is a humourist commends
himself doubly to a sick-bed. His patients are as much indebted for
their cure to his smile, his voice, and a certain irresistible
healthfulness that surrounds him, as they are to his skill and his
prescriptions. The lawyer who is a humourist is a man of ten thousand.
How easily the worldly-wise face, puckered over a stiff brief, relaxes
into the lines of laughter. He sees many an evil side of human nature,
he is familiar with slanders and injustice, all kinds of human
bitterness and falsity; but neither his hand nor his heart becomes
"imbued with that it works in," and the little admixture of acid,
inevitable from his circumstances and mode of life, but heightens the
flavour of his humour. But of all humourists of the professional
class, I prefer the clergyman, especially if he is well stricken in
years, and has been anchored all his life in a country charge. He is
none of your loud wits. There is a lady-like delicacy in his mind, a
constant sense of his holy office, which warn him off dangerous
subjects. This reserve, however, does but improve the quality of his
mirth. What his humour loses in boldness, it gains in depth and
slyness. And as the good man has seldom the opportunity of making a
joke, or of procuring an auditor who can understand one, the dewy
glitter of his eyes, as you sit opposite him, and his heartfelt
enjoyment of the matter in hand, are worth going a considerable way to
witness. It is not, however, in the professions that the vagabond is
commonly found. Over these that awful and ubiquitous female, Mrs.
Grundy--at once Fate, Nemesis, and Fury--presides. The glare of her
eye is professional danger, the pointing of her finger is professional
death. When she utters a man's name, he is lost. The true vagabond is
to be met with in other walks of life,--among actors, poets, painters.
These may grow in any way their nature directs. They are not required
to conform to any traditional pattern. With regard to the
respectabilities and the "minor morals," the world permits them to be
libertines. Besides, it is a temperament peculiarly sensitive, or
generous, or enjoying, which at the beginning impels these to their
special pursuits; and that temperament, like everything else in the
world, strengthens with use, and grows with what it feeds on. We look
upon an actor, sitting amongst ordinary men and women, with a certain
curiosity,--we regard him as a creature from another planet, almost.
His life and his world are quite different from ours. The orchestra,
the foot-lights, and the green baize curtain, divide us. He is a
monarch half his time--his entrance and his exit proclaimed by flourish
of trumpet. He speaks in blank verse, is wont to take his seat at
gilded banquets, to drink nothing out of a pasteboard goblet. The
actor's world has a history amusing to read, and lines of noble and
splendid traditions, stretching back to charming Nelly's time, and
earlier. The actor has strange experiences. He sees the other side of
the moon. We roar at Grimaldi's funny face: he sees the lines of pain
in it. We hear Romeo wish to be "a glove upon that hand that he might
touch that cheek:" three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh
himself with a pot of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely,
but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster: he sees them
sit down to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the
stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets
of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their
brethren in Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay,
hunted by bailiffs and familiar with sponging-houses, and who, when
hospitably entertained, were wont to disturb the household of the
entertainer by roaring for hot punch at four o'clock in the morning.
Since that period the poets have improved in the decencies of life:
they wear broadcloth, and settle their tailors' accounts even as other
men. At this present moment Her Majesty's poets are perhaps the most
respectable of Her Majesty's subjects. They are all teetotallers; if
they sin, it is in rhyme, and then only to point a moral. In past days
the poet flew from flower to flower, gathering his honey; but he bore a
sting, too, as the rude hand that touched him could testily. He freely
gathers his honey as of old, but the satiric sting has been taken away.
He lives at peace with all men--his brethren excepted. About the true
poet still there is something of the ancient spirit,--the old "flash
and outbreak of the fiery mind,"--the old enthusiasm and dash of
humourous eccentricity. But he is fast disappearing from the catalogue
of vagabonds--fast getting commonplace, I fear. Many people suspect
him of dulness. Besides, such a crowd of well-meaning, amiable, most
respectable men have broken down of late years the pales of Parnassus,
and become squatters on the sacred mount, that the claim of poets to be
a peculiar people is getting disallowed. Never in this world's history
were they so numerous; and although some people deny that they are
poets, few are cantankerous enough or intrepid enough to assert that
they are vagabonds. The painter is the most agreeable of vagabonds.
His art is a pleasant one: it demands some little manual exertion, and
it takes him at times into the open air. It is pleasant, too, in this,
that lines and colours are so much more palpable than words, and the
appeal of his work to his practised eye has some satisfaction in it.
He knows what he is about. He does not altogether lose his critical
sense, as the poet does, when familiarity stales his subject, and takes
the splendour out of his images. Moreover, his work is more profitable
than the poet's. I suppose there are just as few great painters at the
present day as there are great poets; yet the yearly receipts of the
artists of England far exceed the receipts of the singers. A picture
can usually be painted in less time than a poem can be written. A
second-rate picture has a certain market value,--its frame is at least
something. A second-rate poem is utterly worthless, and no one will
buy it on account of its binding. A picture is your own exclusive
property: it is a costly article of furniture. You hang it on your
walls, to be admired by all the world. Pictures represent wealth: the
possession of them is a luxury. The portrait-painter is of all men the
most beloved. You sit to him willingly, and put on your best looks.
You are inclined to be pleased with his work, on account of the strong
prepossession you entertain for his subject. To sit for one's portrait
is like being present at one's own creation. It is an admirable excuse
for egotism. You would not discourse on the falcon-like curve which
distinguishes your nose, or the sweet serenity of your reposing lips,
or the mildness of the eye that spreads a light over your countenance,
in the presence of a fellow-creature for the whole world; yet you do
not hesitate to express the most favourable opinion of the features
starting out on you from the wet canvas. The interest the painter
takes in his task flatters you. And when the sittings are over, and
you behold yourself hanging on your own wall, looking as it you could
direct kingdoms or lead armies, you feel grateful to the artist. He
ministers to your self-love, and you pay him his hire without wincing.
Your heart warms towards him as it would towards a poet who addresses
you in an ode of panegyric, the kindling terms of which--a little
astonishing to your friends--you believe in your heart of hearts to be
the simple truth, and, in the matter of expression, not over-coloured
in the very least. The portrait-painter has a shrewd eye for
character, and is usually the best anecdote-monger in the world. His
craft brings him into contact with many faces, and he learns to compare
them curiously, and to extract their meanings. He can interpret
wrinkles; he can look through the eyes into the man; he can read a
whole foregone history in the lines about the mouth. Besides, from the
good understanding which usually exists between the artist and his
sitter, the latter is inclined somewhat to unbosom himself; little
things leak out in conversation, not much in themselves, but pregnant
enough to the painter's sense, who pieces them together, and
constitutes a tolerably definite image. The man who paints your face
knows you better than your intimate friends do, and has a clearer
knowledge of your amiable weaknesses, and of the secret motives which
influence your conduct, than you oftentimes have yourself. A good
portrait is a kind of biography, and neither painter nor biographer can
carry out his task satisfactorily unless he be admitted behind the
scenes. I think that the landscape painter, who has acquired
sufficient mastery in his art to satisfy his own critical sense, and
who is appreciated enough to find purchasers, and thereby to keep the
wolf from the door, must be of all mankind the happiest. Other men
live in cities, bound down to some settled task and order of life; but
he is a nomad, and wherever he goes "Beauty pitches her tents before
him." He is smitten by a passionate love for Nature, and is privileged
to follow her into her solitary haunts and recesses. Nature is his
mistress, and he is continually making declarations of his love. When
one thinks of ordinary occupations, how one envies him, flecking his
oak-tree boll with sunlight, tinging with rose the cloud of the morning
in which the lark is hid, making the sea's swift fringe of foaming lace
outspread itself on the level sands, in which the pebbles gleam forever
wet. The landscape painter's memory is inhabited by the fairest
visions,--dawn burning on the splintered peaks that the eagles know,
while the valleys beneath are yet filled with uncertain light; the
bright blue morn stretching over miles of moor and mountain; the slow
up-gathering of the bellied thunder-cloud; summer lakes, and cattle
knee-deep in them; rustic bridges forever crossed by old women in
scarlet cloaks; old-fashioned waggons resting on the scrubby common,
the waggoner lazy and wayworn, the dog couched on the ground, its
tongue hanging out in the heat; boats drawn up on the shore at sunset;
the fisher's children looking seawards, the red light full on their
dresses and faces; farther back, a clump of cottages, with bait-baskets
about the door, and the smoke of the evening meal coiling up into the
coloured air. These things are forever with him. Beauty, which is a
luxury to other men, is his daily food. Happy vagabond, who lives the
whole summer through in the light of his mistress's face, and who does
nothing the whole winter except recall the splendour of her smiles!
The vagabond, as I have explained and sketched him, is not a man to
tremble at, or avoid as if he wore contagion in his touch. He is
upright, generous, innocent, is conscientious in the performance of his
duties; and if a little eccentric and fond of the open air, he is full
of good nature and mirthful charity. He may not make money so rapidly
as you do, but I cannot help thinking that he enjoys life a great deal
more. The quick feeling of life, the exuberance or animal spirits
which break out in the traveller, the sportsman, the poet, the painter,
should be more generally diffused. We should be all the better and all
the happier for it. Life ought to be freer, heartier, more enjoyable
than it is at present. If the professional fetter must be worn, let it
be worn as lightly as possible. It should never be permitted to canker
the limbs. We are a free people,--we have an unshackled press,--we
have an open platform, and can say our say upon it, no king or despot
making us afraid. We send representatives to Parliament; the franchise
is always going to be extended. All this is very fine, and we do well
to glory in our privileges as Britons. But, although we enjoy greater
political freedom than any other people, we are the victims of a petty
social tyranny. We are our own despots,--we tremble at a neighbour's
whisper. A man may say what he likes on a public platform,--he may
publish whatever opinion he chooses,--but he dare not wear a peculiar
fashion of hat on the street. Eccentricity is an outlaw. Public
opinion blows like the east wind, blighting bud and blossom on the
human bough. As a consequence of all this, society is losing
picturesqueness and variety,--we are all growing up after one pattern.
In other matters than architecture past time may be represented by the
wonderful ridge of the Old Town of Edinburgh, where everything is
individual and characteristic: the present time by the streets and
squares of the New Town, where everything is gray, cold, and
respectable; where every house is the other's _alter ego_. It is true
that life is healthier in the formal square than in the piled-up
picturesqueness of the Canongate,--quite true that sanitary conditions
are better observed,--that pure water flows through every tenement like
blood through a human body,--that daylight has free access, and that
the apartments are larger and higher in the roof. But every gain is
purchased at the expense of some loss; and it is best to combine, if
possible, the excellences of the old and the new. By all means retain
the modern breadth of light, and range of space; by all means have
water plentiful, and bed-chambers ventilated,--but at the same time
have some little freak of fancy without,--some ornament about the door,
some device about the window,--something to break the cold, gray, stony
uniformity; or, to leave metaphor, which is always dangerous
ground,--for I really don't wish to advocate Ruskinism and the
Gothic,--it would be better to have, along with our modern
enlightenment, our higher tastes and purer habits, a greater
individuality of thought and manner; better, while retaining all that
we have gained, that harmless eccentricity should be respected,--that
every man should be allowed to grow in his own way, so long as he does
not infringe on the rights of his neighbour, or insolently thrust
himself between him and the sun. A little more air and light should be
let in upon life. I should think the world has stood long enough under
the drill of Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the posture is
wearisome, and Fashion is an awful martinet, and has a quick eye, and
comes down mercilessly on the unfortunate wight who cannot square his
toes to the approved pattern, or who appears upon parade with a darn in
his coat, or with a shoulder-belt insufficiently pipe-clayed. It is
killing work. Suppose we try "standing at ease" for a little!