Lavengro

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"My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the day I took off
my coat in the park to fight Big Ben," said my father, on meeting his son
wet and dripping, immediately after his bold feat. And who cannot excuse
the honest pride of the old man--the stout old man?

Ay, old man, that son was worthy of thee, and thou wast worthy of such a
son; a noble specimen wast thou of those strong single-minded Englishmen
who, without making a parade either of religion or loyalty, feared God
and honoured their king, and were not particularly friendly to the
French, whose vaunting polls they occasionally broke, as at Minden and
Malplaquet, to the confusion vast of the eternal foes of the English
land. I, who was so little like thee that thou understoodest me not, and
in whom with justice thou didst feel so little pride, had yet perception
enough to see all thy worth, and to feel it an honour to be able to call
myself thy son; and if at some no distant time, when the foreign enemy
ventures to insult our shore, I be permitted to break some vaunting poll,
it will be a triumph to me to think that, if thou hadst lived, thou
wouldst have hailed the deed, and mightest yet discover some distant
resemblance to thyself, the day when thou didst all but vanquish the
mighty Brain.

I have already spoken of my brother's taste for painting, and the
progress he had made in that beautiful art. It is probable that, if
circumstances had not eventually diverted his mind from the pursuit, he
would have attained excellence, and left behind him some enduring
monument of his powers, for he had an imagination to conceive, and that
yet rarer endowment, a hand capable of giving life, body, and reality to
the conceptions of his mind; perhaps he wanted one thing, the want of
which is but too often fatal to the sons of genius, and without which
genius is little more than a splendid toy in the hands of the
possessor--perseverance, dogged perseverance, in his proper calling;
otherwise, though the grave had closed over him, he might still be living
in the admiration of his fellow-creatures. O ye gifted ones, follow your
calling, for, however various your talents may be, ye can have but one
calling capable of leading ye to eminence and renown; follow resolutely
the one straight path before you, it is that of your good angel, let
neither obstacles nor temptations induce ye to leave it; bound along if
you can; if not, on hands and knees follow it, perish in it, if needful;
but ye need not fear that; no one ever yet died in the true path of his
calling before he had attained the pinnacle. Turn into other paths, and
for a momentary advantage or gratification ye have sold your inheritance,
your immortality. Ye will never be heard of after death.

"My father has given me a hundred and fifty pounds," said my brother to
me one morning, "and something which is better--his blessing. I am going
to leave you."

"And where are you going?"

"Where? to the great city; to London, to be sure."

"I should like to go with you."

"Pooh," said my brother, "what should you do there? But don't be
discouraged, I dare say a time will come when you too will go to London."

And, sure enough, so it did, and all but too soon.

"And what do you purpose doing there?" I demanded.

"Oh, I go to improve myself in art, to place myself under some master of
high name, at least I hope to do so eventually. I have, however, a plan
in my head, which I should wish first to execute; indeed, I do not think
I can rest till I have done so; every one talks so much about Italy, and
the wondrous artists which it has produced, and the wondrous pictures
which are to be found there; now I wish to see Italy, or rather Rome, the
great city, for I am told that in a certain room there is contained the
grand miracle of art."

"And what do you call it?"

"The Transfiguration, painted by one Rafael, and it is said to be the
greatest work of the greatest painter which the world has ever known. I
suppose it is because everybody says so, that I have such a strange
desire to see it. I have already made myself well acquainted with its
locality, and think that I could almost find my way to it blindfold. When
I have crossed the Tiber, which, as you are aware, runs through Rome, I
must presently turn to the right, up a rather shabby street, which
communicates with a large square, the farther end of which is entirely
occupied by the front of an immense church, with a dome, which ascends
almost to the clouds, and this church they call St. Peter's."

"Ay, ay," said I, "I have read about that in Keysler's Travels."

"Before the church, in the square, are two fountains, one on either side,
casting up water in showers; between them, in the midst, is an obelisk,
brought from Egypt, and covered with mysterious writing; on your right
rises an edifice, not beautiful nor grand, but huge and bulky, where
lives a strange kind of priest whom men call the Pope, a very horrible
old individual, who would fain keep Christ in leading-strings, calls the
Virgin Mary the Queen of Heaven, and himself God's Lieutenant-General
upon earth."

"Ay, ay," said I, "I have read of him in Fox's Book of Martyrs."

"Well, I do not go straight forward up the flight of steps conducting
into the church, but I turn to the right, and, passing under the piazza,
find myself in a court of the huge bulky house; and then ascend various
staircases, and pass along various corridors and galleries, all of which
I could describe to you, though I have never seen them; at last a door is
unlocked, and we enter a room rather high, but not particularly large,
communicating with another room, into which, however, I do not go, though
there are noble things in that second room--immortal things, by immortal
artists; amongst others, a grand piece of Corregio; I do not enter it,
for the grand picture of the world is not there: but I stand still
immediately on entering the first room, and I look straight before me,
neither to the right nor left, though there are noble things both on the
right and left, for immediately before me at the farther end, hanging
against the wall, is a picture which arrests me, and I can see nothing
else, for that picture at the farther end hanging against the wall is the
picture of the world . . ."

Yes, go thy way, young enthusiast, and, whether to London town or to old
Rome, may success attend thee; yet strange fears assail me and misgivings
on thy account. Thou canst not rest, thou say'st, till thou hast seen
the picture in the chamber at old Rome hanging over against the wall; ay,
and thus thou dost exemplify thy weakness--thy strength too, it may
be--for the one idea, fantastic yet lovely, which now possesses thee,
could only have originated in a genial and fervent brain. Well, go, if
thou must go; yet it perhaps were better for thee to bide in thy native
land, and there, with fear and trembling, with groanings, with straining
eyeballs, toil, drudge, slave, till thou hast made excellence thine own;
thou wilt scarcely acquire it by staring at the picture over against the
door in the high chamber of old Rome. Seekest thou inspiration? thou
needest it not, thou hast it already; and it was never yet found by
crossing the sea. What hast thou to do with old Rome, and thou an
Englishman? "Did thy blood never glow at the mention of thy native
land?" as an artist merely? Yes, I trow, and with reason, for thy native
land need not grudge old Rome her "pictures of the world;" she has
pictures of her own, "pictures of England;" and is it a new thing to toss
up caps and shout--England against the world? Yes, against the world in
all, in all; in science and in arms, in minstrel strain, and not less in
the art "which enables the hand to deceive the intoxicated soul by means
of pictures." {95} Seek'st models? to Gainsborough and Hogarth turn, not
names of the world, may be, but English names--and England against the
world? A living master? why, there he comes! thou hast had him long, he
has long guided thy young hand towards the excellence which is yet far
from thee, but which thou canst attain if thou shouldst persist and
wrestle, even as he has done, midst gloom and despondency--ay, and even
contempt; he who now comes up the creaking stair to thy little studio in
the second floor to inspect thy last effort before thou departest, the
little stout man whose face is very dark, and whose eye is vivacious;
that man has attained excellence, destined some day to be acknowledged,
though not till he is cold, and his mortal part returned to its kindred
clay. He has painted, not pictures of the world, but English pictures,
such as Gainsborough himself might have done; beautiful rural pieces,
with trees which might well tempt the little birds to perch upon them:
thou needest not run to Rome, brother, where lives the old Mariolater,
after pictures of the world, whilst at home there are pictures of
England; nor needest thou even go to London, the big city, in search of a
master, for thou hast one at home in the old East Anglian town who can
instruct thee whilst thou needest instruction: better stay at home,
brother, at least for a season, and toil and strive 'midst groanings and
despondency till thou hast attained excellence even as he has done--the
little dark man with the brown coat and the top-boots, whose name will
one day be considered the chief ornament of the old town, and whose works
will at no distant period rank amongst the proudest pictures of
England--and England against the world!--thy master, my brother, thy, at
present, all too little considered master--Crome.

CHAPTER XXII.

Desire for Novelty--Lives of the Lawless--Countenances--Old Yeoman and
Dame--We Live near the Sea--Uncouth-looking Volume--The Other
Condition--Draoitheac--A Dilemma--The Antinomian--Lodowick
Muggleton--Almost Blind--Anders Vedel.

But to proceed with my own story; I now ceased all at once to take much
pleasure in the pursuits which formerly interested me, I yawned over Ab
Gwilym; even as I now in my mind's eye perceive the reader yawning over
the present pages. What was the cause of this? Constitutional
lassitude, or a desire for novelty? Both it is probable had some
influence in the matter, but I rather think that the latter feeling was
predominant. The parting words of my brother had sunk into my mind. He
had talked of travelling in strange regions and seeing strange and
wonderful objects, and my imagination fell to work and drew pictures of
adventures wild and fantastic, and I thought what a fine thing it must be
to travel, and I wished that my father would give me his blessing, and
the same sum that he had given my brother, and bid me go forth into the
world; always forgetting that I had neither talents nor energies at this
period which would enable me to make any successful figure on its stage.

And then I again sought up the book which had so captivated me in my
infancy, and I read it through; and I sought up others of a similar
character, and in seeking for them I met books also of adventure, but by
no means of a harmless description, lives of wicked and lawless men,
Murray and Latroon--books of singular power, but of coarse and prurient
imagination--books at one time highly in vogue; now deservedly forgotten,
and most difficult to be found.

And when I had gone through these books, what was my state of mind? I
had derived entertainment from their perusal, but they left me more
listless and unsettled than before, and I really knew not what to do to
pass my time. My philological studies had become distasteful, and I had
never taken any pleasure in the duties of my profession. I sat behind my
desk in a state of torpor, my mind almost as blank as the paper before
me, on which I rarely traced a line. It was always a relief to hear the
bell ring, as it afforded me an opportunity of doing something which I
was yet capable of doing, to rise and open the door and stare in the
countenances of the visitors. All of a sudden I fell to studying
countenances, and soon flattered myself that I had made considerable
progress in the science.

"There is no faith in countenances," said some Roman of old; "trust
anything but a person's countenance." "Not trust a man's countenance?"
say some moderns, "why, it is the only thing in many people that we can
trust; on which account they keep it most assiduously out of the way.
Trust not a man's words if you please, or you may come to very erroneous
conclusions; but at all times place implicit confidence in a man's
countenance, in which there is no deceit; and of necessity there can be
none. If people would but look each other more in the face, we should
have less cause to complain of the deception of the world; nothing so
easy as physiognomy nor so useful." Somewhat in this latter strain I
thought, at the time of which I am speaking. I am now older, and, let us
hope, less presumptuous. It is true that in the course of my life I have
scarcely ever had occasion to repent placing confidence in individuals
whose countenances have prepossessed me in their favour; though to how
many I may have been unjust, from whose countenances I may have drawn
unfavourable conclusions, is another matter.

But it had been decreed by that Fate which governs our every action, that
I was soon to return to my old pursuits. It was written that I should
not yet cease to be Lav-engro, though I had become, in my own opinion, a
kind of Lavater. It is singular enough that my renewed ardour for
philology seems to have been brought about indirectly by my
physiognomical researches, in which had I not indulged, the event which I
am about to relate, as far as connected with myself, might never have
occurred. Amongst the various countenances which I admitted during the
period of my answering the bell, there were two which particularly
pleased me, and which belonged to an elderly yeoman and his wife, whom
some little business had brought to our law sanctuary. I believe they
experienced from me some kindness and attention, which won the old
people's hearts. So, one day, when their little business had been
brought to a conclusion, and they chanced to be alone with me, who was
seated as usual behind the deal desk in the outer room, the old man with
some confusion began to tell me how grateful himself and dame felt for
the many attentions I had shown them, and how desirous they were to make
me some remuneration. "Of course," said the old man, "we must be
cautious what we offer to so fine a young gentleman as yourself; we have,
however, something we think will just suit the occasion, a strange kind
of thing which people say is a book, though no one that my dame or myself
have shown it to can make anything out of it; so as we are told that you
are a fine young gentleman, who can read all the tongues of the earth and
stars, as the Bible says, we thought, I and my dame, that it would be
just the thing you would like; and my dame has it now at the bottom of
her basket."

"A book," said I, "how did you come by it?"

"We live near the sea," said the old man; "so near that sometimes our
thatch is wet with the spray; and it may now be a year ago that there was
a fearful storm, and a ship was driven ashore during the night, and ere
the morn was a complete wreck. When we got up at daylight, there were
the poor shivering crew at our door; they were foreigners, red-haired
men, whose speech we did not understand; but we took them in, and warmed
them, and they remained with us three days; and when they went away they
left behind them this thing, here it is, part of the contents of a box
which was washed ashore."

"And did you learn who they were?"

"Why, yes; they made us understand that they were Danes."

Danes! thought I, Danes! and instantaneously, huge and grizzly, appeared
to rise up before my vision the skull of the old pirate Dane, even as I
had seen it of yore in the pent-house of the ancient church to which,
with my mother and my brother, I had wandered on the memorable summer
eve.

And now the old man handed me the book; a strange and uncouth-looking
volume enough. It was not very large, but instead of the usual covering
was bound in wood, and was compressed with strong iron clasps. It was a
printed book, but the pages were not of paper, but vellum, and the
characters were black, and resembled those generally termed Gothic.

"It is certainly a curious book," said I; "and I should like to have it,
but I can't think of taking it as a gift, I must give you an equivalent,
I never take presents from anybody."

The old man whispered with his dame and chuckled, and then turned his
face to me, and said, with another chuckle, "Well, we have agreed about
the price; but, may be, you will not consent."

"I don't know," said I; "what do you demand?"

"Why, that you shake me by the hand, and hold out your cheek to my old
dame, she has taken an affection to you."

"I shall be very glad to shake you by the hand," said I, "but as for the
other condition it requires consideration."

"No consideration at all," said the old man, with something like a sigh;
"she thinks you like her son, our only child, that was lost twenty years
ago in the waves of the North Sea."

"Oh, that alters the case altogether," said I, "and of course I can have
no objection."

And now, at once, I shook off my listlessness, to enable me to do which
nothing could have happened more opportune than the above event. The
Danes, the Danes! And I was at last to become acquainted, and in so
singular a manner, with the speech of a people which had as far back as I
could remember exercised the strongest influence over my imagination, as
how should they not!--in infancy there was the summer-eve adventure, to
which I often looked back, and always with a kind of strange interest,
with respect to those to whom such gigantic and wondrous bones could
belong as I had seen on that occasion; and, more than this, I had been in
Ireland, and there, under peculiar circumstances, this same interest was
increased tenfold. I had mingled much whilst there, with the genuine
Irish--a wild, but kind-hearted race, whose conversation was deeply
imbued with traditionary lore, connected with the early history of their
own romantic land, and from them I heard enough of the Danes, but nothing
commonplace, for they never mentioned them but in terms which tallied
well with my own preconceived ideas. For at an early period the Danes
had invaded Ireland, and had subdued it, and, though eventually driven
out, had left behind them an enduring remembrance in the minds of the
people, who loved to speak of their strength and their stature, in
evidence of which they would point to the ancient raths or mounds, where
the old Danes were buried, and where bones of extraordinary size were
occasionally exhumed. And as the Danes surpassed other people in
strength, so, according to my narrators, they also excelled all others in
wisdom, or rather in Draoitheac, or Magic, for they were powerful
sorcerers, they said, compared with whom the fairy men of the present day
knew nothing at all, at all; and, amongst other wonderful things, they
knew how to make strong beer from the heather that grows upon the bogs.
Little wonder if the interest, the mysterious interest, which I had early
felt about the Danes, was increased tenfold by my sojourn in Ireland.

And now I had in my possession a Danish book, which, from its appearance,
might be supposed to have belonged to the very old Danes indeed; but how
was I to turn it to any account? I had the book, it is true, but I did
not understand the language, and how was I to overcome that difficulty?
hardly by poring over the book; yet I did pore over the book, daily and
nightly, till my eyes were dim, and it appeared to me every now and then
I encountered words which I understood--English words, though strangely
disguised; and I said to myself, courage! English and Danish are cognate
dialects, a time will come when I shall understand this Danish; and then
I pored over the book again, but with all my poring I could not
understand it; and then I became angry, and I bit my lips till the blood
came; and I occasionally tore a handful from my hair, and flung it upon
the floor, but that did not mend the matter, for still I did not
understand the book, which, however, I began to see was written in
rhyme--a circumstance rather difficult to discover at first, the
arrangement of the lines not differing from that which is employed in
prose; and its being written in rhyme made me only the more eager to
understand it.

But I toiled in vain, for I had neither grammar nor dictionary of the
language; and when I sought for them could procure neither; and I was
much dispirited, till suddenly a bright thought came into my head, and I
said, although I cannot obtain a dictionary or grammar, I can perhaps
obtain a Bible in this language, and if I can procure a Bible, I can
learn the language, for the Bible in every tongue contains the same
thing, and I have only to compare the words of the Danish Bible with
those of the English, and, if I persevere, I shall in time acquire the
language of the Danes; and I was pleased with the thought, which I
considered to be a bright one, and I no longer bit my lips, or tore my
hair, but took my hat, and, going forth, I flung my hat into the air.

And when my hat came down, I put it on my head and commenced running,
directing my course to the house of the Antinomian preacher, who sold
books, and whom I knew to have Bibles in various tongues amongst the
number, and I arrived out of breath, and I found the Antinomian in his
little library, dusting his books; and the Antinomian clergyman was a
tall man of about seventy, who wore a hat with a broad brim and a shallow
crown, and whose manner of speaking was exceedingly nasal; and when I saw
him, I cried, out of breath, "Have you a Danish Bible?" and he replied,
"What do you want it for, friend?" and I answered, "to learn Danish by;"
"and may be to learn thy duty," replied the Antinomian preacher. "Truly,
I have it not; but, as you are a customer of mine, I will endeavour to
procure you one, and I will write to that laudable society which men call
the Bible Society, an unworthy member of which I am, and I hope by next
week to procure what you desire."

And when I heard these words of the old man, I was very glad, and my
heart yearned towards him, and I would fain enter into conversation with
him; and I said, "Why are you an Antinomian? For my part, I would rather
be a dog than belong to such a religion." "Nay, friend," said the
Antinomian, "thou forejudgest us; know that those who call us Antinomians
call us so despitefully, we do not acknowledge the designation." "Then
you do not set all law at nought?" said I. "Far be it from us," said the
old man, "we only hope that, being sanctified by the Spirit from above,
we have no need of the law to keep us in order. Did you ever hear tell
of Lodowick Muggleton?" "Not I." "That is strange; know then that he
was the founder of our poor society, and after him we are frequently,
though opprobriously, termed Muggletonians, for we are Christians. Here
is his book, which, perhaps, you can do no better than purchase, you are
fond of rare books, and this is both curious and rare; I will sell it
cheap. Thank you, and now be gone, I will do all I can to procure the
Bible."

And in this manner I procured the Danish Bible, and I commenced my task;
first of all, however, I locked up in a closet the volume which had
excited my curiosity, saying, "Out of this closet thou comest not till I
deem myself competent to read thee," and then I sat down in right
earnest, comparing every line in the one version with the corresponding
one in the other; and I passed entire nights in this manner, till I was
almost blind, and the task was tedious enough at first, but I quailed
not, and soon began to make progress: and at first I had a misgiving that
the old book might not prove a Danish book, but was soon reassured by
reading many words in the Bible which I remembered to have seen in the
book; and then I went on right merrily, and I found that the language
which I was studying was by no means a difficult one, and in less than a
month I deemed myself able to read the book.

Anon, I took the book from the closet, and proceeded to make myself
master of its contents; I had some difficulty, for the language of the
book, though in the main the same as the language of the Bible, differed
from it in some points, being apparently a more ancient dialect; by
degrees, however, I overcame this difficulty, and I understood the
contents of the book, and well did they correspond with all those ideas
in which I had indulged connected with the Danes. For the book was a
book of ballads, about the deeds of knights and champions, and men of
huge stature; ballads which from time immemorial had been sung in the
North, and which some two centuries before the time of which I am
speaking had been collected by one Anders Vedel, who lived with a certain
Tycho Brahe, and assisted him in making observations upon the heavenly
bodies, at a place called Uranias Castle, on the little island of Hveen,
in the Cattegat.