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_Ecce iterum!_ Well, why not? So long as I do not exanimate you with
my letters, I remain content. Besides, I have not yet fully-developed
all my theories. Let us, therefore, continue to chat together for a
little.
I cannot proceed for ever by the negative method. No doubt I might in
the end, exhaust the list of those who are not your subjects, but the
process would be long, and, I fear, tedious. No; I must come to the
point and produce my cases. What shall we say of them, then? HOOD
declares that--
"There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea."
and so forth; doubtless you remember the sonnet. Not there, however,
is the true silence--
"But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,--
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone."
As with silence, so with failure, say I. The man who has never felt
the spur of ambition nor the intoxication of a success, who has
travelled always upon the level tracts of an unaspiring satisfaction,
on him, surely, failure sets no mark, and disappointment has for him
no stings. But the poor souls who soar only to sink, who melt their
waxen wings in the fierce heat of the sun, and fall crashing to earth,
theirs is the lot for pity. And yet it is not well to be too sure. For
in the eyes of the world a man may be cheated of his purpose, and yet
gain for himself the peace, the sober, contented joy, which is more
to him than the flaunting trophies of open success. And some clasp the
goddess in their arms, only to wither and decay in the embrace they
sought with so eager a passion. But I tarry, while time creeps on.
From the mist of memory rises a scene. A knot of laughing Freshmen is
gathered in the ancient Court outside the lecture-room staircase. It
wants a minute or two to the hour. They are jesting and chaffing with
all the delightful unconcern of emancipated youth, and their cheerful
faces shine brighter in the October sunshine. Some thirty yards away
from them a strange figure, in dingy cap and gown, paces wearily
along. It is that of a prematurely aged man, his back bent, his head
sunk upon his chest. The Freshmen begin to knock one another about;
there is what we used to call a "rag," and one of them, seizing a
small lump of turf, throws it at a companion. It misses him, and
strikes the old, weary figure on the back of the neck. He totters
forward with outstretched hands, just saves himself from falling, and
turns round. There is a terrible, hunted, despairing look on the face,
made more pitiful by the grey, straggling beard. The Freshman has
darted forward with an apology. The old man mutters, half to himself,
"What was it? Did some one call for me? I am quite alone, and I
scarcely remember----" and then shuffles away quickly, without
listening to the words of apology. The adventure chills the
laughter of the young men, the clock strikes, and they vanish to the
lecture-room.
This poor, rambling, distraught wreck of a man, was all that was left
in those days of a great and brilliant scholar, whose fame a quarter
of a century before had been alive in the mouths of Cambridge men.
From the moment that he entered at St. Mark's, HENRY ARKWRIGHT began
a glorious career of prize-winning. Scholarships were to him a part
of his daily bread. He swallowed them as other men swallow rolls for
breakfast. A magic influence seemed to smooth for him the rough
and rocky paths of learning. While his comrades stumbled along with
bruised limbs, he marched with firm and triumphant step to the summit.
And he had other advantages. He was handsome, his manner was frank
and winning, he was an athlete of distinction, he spoke with fiery and
epigrammatic eloquence at the Union. It is needless to add that his
popularity was unbounded amongst his companions. He took the best
degree of his year, and was made a Fellow of his College.
There was no lack of glowing prophecies about his future. The only
doubt was whether the Lord Chancellorship or the post of Prime
Minister would more attract his genius. Nobody supposed that he would
stay on at Cambridge. But he did. A few years after taking his degree
he published a monumental edition of a Greek classic, which is still
one of the fountain-heads of authority, even amongst the severe
scholars of the Fatherland. And after that there was an end of him.
Nobody quite knew what had happened to him, and as the years rolled
on fewer and fewer cared to inquire. He went to hall, he sat silent
in the Combination-room, he withdrew himself gradually from all
intercourse with friends. His whole appearance changed, he became
dishevelled, his face grew old and wrinkled, and his hair turned grey
before his time. And thus dwindling and shrinking he had come to be
the pitiable shadow who, as I have related, faded dismally across the
College Court before a knot of cheerful Undergraduates on an October
morning many years ago. What was the reason? I have often wondered.
Did his labours over his book displace by a hair's-breadth some minute
particle of matter in his brain? Or was there in his nature a lack
of the genuine manly fibre, unsuspected even by himself until he felt
himself fatally recoiling from the larger life of which the triumphs
seemed to be within his grasp, if only he would stretch out his hand
and seize them? I know not. Somebody once hinted that there was a
woman at the bottom of it. There may have been, but it is a canon of
criticism to reject the easier solution. When he died a few years ago,
it appeared to be a shock to all but a few to remember that he had not
died ages before.
And as I write this, I am reminded, I scarce know why, of poor
Mrs. HIGHFLYER. _Poor_ Mrs. HIGHFLYER! I hear somebody exclaim in
astonishment. Why is she poor? Why must we pity her? Is she not rich?
Do not the great and the titled throng to her parties during the
London Season? Has she not entertained Princes in the country? What
lot can be more enviable? Granted, I reply, as to the riches and
the parties. But can it be seriously supposed that a life spent in
a feverish struggle for recognition, its days and nights devoted
to schemes for social advancement, to little plots by which Lady
MOTTLING, the wife of the millionaire Member of Parliament, shall be
out-witted; or Mrs. FURBER, the wife of the returned Australian, shall
be made to pale her ineffectual fires; to conspiracies which shall
end in a higher rung of the giddy ladder of party-giving ambition--can
such a life, I ask, with all its petty miseries, its desperations,
its snubs, and its successes no less perilous than desperation, be
considered an enviable one? Ask Mrs. HIGHFLYER herself. Visit that
poor lady, as she is laying her parallels for her tenth attempt
to capture some stout and red-faced royalty for her dance or her
country-house, and see for yourself how she feels. She may bear aloft
a smiling face, but there is unhappiness in her heart, and all her
glories are as nothing to her, because she has read in the _Weekly
Treadmill_ that Lady MOTTLING'S latest party was attended by a Royal
Duke, two Ambassadors, and a Kamtchatkan Chieftain. There is failure
in the meanest shape. Was I right to pity her?
Are there not, moreover, critics and literary celebrities who----but I
dare too much, my pen refuses its office, so tremendous is the subject
on which I have rashly entered. And with that, farewell.