I.

IN a pleasant, airy, up-hill country, it was my fortune when I was young

to make the acquaintance of a certain beggar. I call him beggar, though

he usually allowed his coat and his shoes (which were open-mouthed,

indeed) to beg for him. He was the wreck of an athletic man, tall,

gaunt, and bronzed; far gone in consumption, with that disquieting smile

of the mortally stricken on his face; but still active afoot, still with

the brisk military carriage, the ready military salute. Three ways led

through this piece of country; and as I was inconstant in my choice, I

believe he must often have awaited me in vain. But often enough, he

caught me; often enough, from some place of ambush by the roadside, he

would spring suddenly forth in the regulation attitude, and launching at

once into his inconsequential talk, fall into step with me upon my

farther course. “A fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle inclining

to rain. I hope I see you well, sir. Why, no, sir, I don’t feel as

hearty myself as I could wish, but I am keeping about my ordinary. I am

pleased to meet you on the road, sir. I assure you I quite look forward

to one of our little conversations.” He loved the sound of his own voice

inordinately, and though (with something too off-hand to call servility)

he would always hasten to agree with anything you said, yet he could

never suffer you to say it to an end. By what transition he slid to his

favourite subject I have no memory; but we had never been long together

on the way before he was dealing, in a very military manner, with the

English poets. “Shelley was a fine poet, sir, though a trifle

atheistical in his opinions. His Queen Mab, sir, is quite an atheistical

work. Scott, sir, is not so poetical a writer. With the works of

Shakespeare I am not so well acquainted, but he was a fine poet.

Keats—John Keats, sir—he was a very fine poet.” With such references,

such trivial criticism, such loving parade of his own knowledge, he would

beguile the road, striding forward uphill, his staff now clapped to the

ribs of his deep, resonant chest, now swinging in the air with the

remembered jauntiness of the private soldier; and all the while his toes

looking out of his boots, and his shirt looking out of his elbows, and

death looking out of his smile, and his big, crazy frame shaken by

accesses of cough.

He would often go the whole way home with me: often to borrow a book, and

that book always a poet. Off he would march, to continue his mendicant

rounds, with the volume slipped into the pocket of his ragged coat; and

although he would sometimes keep it quite a while, yet it came always

back again at last, not much the worse for its travels into beggardom.

And in this way, doubtless, his knowledge grew and his glib, random

criticism took a wider range. But my library was not the first he had

drawn upon: at our first encounter, he was already brimful of Shelley and

the atheistical Queen Mab, and “Keats—John Keats, sir.” And I have often

wondered how he came by these acquirements; just as I often wondered how

he fell to be a beggar. He had served through the Mutiny—of which (like

so many people) he could tell practically nothing beyond the names of

places, and that it was “difficult work, sir,” and very hot, or that

so-and-so was “a very fine commander, sir.” He was far too smart a man

to have remained a private; in the nature of things, he must have won his

stripes. And yet here he was without a pension. When I touched on this

problem, he would content himself with diffidently offering me advice.

“A man should be very careful when he is young, sir. If you’ll excuse me

saying so, a spirited young gentleman like yourself, sir, should be very

careful. I was perhaps a trifle inclined to atheistical opinions

myself.” For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we are inclined in these

days to admit) he plainly bracketed agnosticism with beer and skittles.

Keats—John Keats, sir—and Shelley were his favourite bards. I cannot

remember if I tried him with Rossetti; but I know his taste to a hair,

and if ever I did, he must have doted on that author. What took him was

a richness in the speech; he loved the exotic, the unexpected word; the

moving cadence of a phrase; a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in

the very letters of the alphabet: the romance of language. His honest

head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a child’s; and when he

read his favourite authors, he can almost never have understood what he

was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I

tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for

nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. The case may

be commoner than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was laid in the

next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital and who was no sooner

installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap

Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears; fell at once in talk with

his new neighbour, and was ready, when the book arrived, to make a

singular discovery. For this lover of great literature understood not

one sentence out of twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he

understood the least—the inimitable, mouth-filling rodomontade of the

ghost in _Hamlet_. It was a bright day in hospital when my friend

expounded the sense of this beloved jargon: a task for which I am willing

to believe my friend was very fit, though I can never regard it as an

easy one. I know indeed a point or two, on which I would gladly question

Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he revisit the glimpses

of the moon, or could I myself climb backward to the spacious days of

Elizabeth. But in the second case, I should most likely pretermit these

questionings, and take my place instead in the pit at the Blackfriars, to

hear the actor in his favourite part, playing up to Mr. Burbage, and

rolling out—as I seem to hear him—with a ponderous gusto—

“Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d.”

What a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a party I and what a

surprise for Mr. Burbage, when the ghost received the honours of the

evening!

As for my old soldier, like Mr. Burbage and Mr. Shakespeare, he is long

since dead; and now lies buried, I suppose, and nameless and quite

forgotten, in some poor city graveyard.—But not for me, you brave heart,

have you been buried! For me, you are still afoot, tasting the sun and

air, and striding southward. By the groves of Comiston and beside the

Hermitage of Braid, by the Hunters’ Tryst, and where the curlews and

plovers cry around Fairmilehead, I see and hear you, stalwartly carrying

your deadly sickness, cheerfully discoursing of uncomprehended poets.