CHAPTER XXIII.
Cannot I create,
Cannot I form, cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe?--KEATS.
The next morning Clarence, in his way out of town, directed his
carriage (the last and not the least acceptable present from Talbot)
to stop at Warner's door. Although it was scarcely sunrise, the aged
grandmother of the artist was stirring, and opened the door to the
early visitor. Clarence passed her with a brief salutation, hurried
up the narrow stairs, and found himself in the artist's chamber. The
windows were closed, and the air of the room was confined and hot. A
few books, chiefly of history and poetry, stood in confused disorder
upon some shelves opposite the window. Upon a table beneath them lay
a flute, once the cherished recreation of the young painter, but now
long neglected and disused; and, placed exactly opposite to Warner, so
that his eyes might open upon his work, was the high-prized and
already more than half-finished picture.
Clarence bent over the bed; the cheek of the artist rested upon his
arm in an attitude unconsciously picturesque; the other arm was tossed
over the coverlet, and Clarence was shocked to see how emaciated it
had become. But ever and anon the lips of the sleeper moved
restlessly, and words, low and inarticulate, broke out. Sometimes he
started abruptly, and a bright but evanescent flush darted over his
faded and hollow cheek; and once the fingers of the thin hand which
lay upon the bed expanded and suddenly closed in a firm and almost
painful grasp; it was then that for the first time the words of the
artist became distinct.
"Ay, ay," he said, "I have thee, I have thee at last. Long, very long
thou hast burnt up my heart like fuel, and mocked me, and laughed at
my idle efforts; but now, now, I have thee. Fame, Honour,
Immortality, whatever thou art called, I have thee, and thou canst not
escape; but it is almost too late!" And, as if wrung by some sudden
pain, the sleeper turned heavily round, groaned audibly, and awoke.
"My friend," said Clarence, soothingly, and taking his hand, "I have
come to bid you farewell. I am just setting off for the Continent,
but I could not leave England without once more seeing you. I have
good news, too, for you." And Clarence proceeded to repeat Talbot's
wish that Warner should bring the picture to his house on the
following Thursday, that Sir Joshua might inspect it. He added also,
in terms the flattery of which his friendship could not resist
exaggerating, Talbot's desire to become the purchaser of the picture.
"Yes," said the artist, as his eye glanced delightedly over his
labour; "yes, I believe when it is once seen there will be many
candidates!"
"No doubt," answered Clarence; "and for that reason you cannot blame
Talbot for wishing to forestall all other competitors for the prize;"
and then, continuing the encouraging nature of the conversation,
Clarence enlarged upon the new hopes of his friend, besought him to
take time, to spare his health, and not to injure both himself and his
performance by over-anxiety and hurry. Clarence concluded by
retailing Talbot's assurance that in all cases and circumstances he
(Talbot) considered himself pledged to be Warner's supporter and
friend.
With something of impatience, mingled with pleasure, the painter
listened to all these details; nor was it to Linden's zeal nor to
Talbot's generosity, but rather to the excess of his own merit, that
he secretly attributed the brightening prospect offered him.
The indifference which Warner, though of a disposition naturally kind,
evinced at parting with a friend who had always taken so strong an
interest in his behalf, and whose tears at that moment contrasted
forcibly enough with the apathetic coldness of his own farewell, was a
remarkable instance how acute vividness on a single point will deaden
feeling on all others. Occupied solely and burningly with one intense
thought, which was to him love, friendship, health, peace, wealth,
Warner could not excite feelings, languid and exhausted with many and
fiery conflicts, to objects of minor interest, and perhaps he inwardly
rejoiced that his musings and his study would henceforth be sacred
even from friendship.
Deeply affected, for his nature was exceedingly unselfish, generous,
and susceptible, Clarence tore himself away, placed in the
grandmother's hand a considerable portion of the sum he had received
from Talbot, hurried into his carriage, and found himself on the high
road to fortune, pleasure, distinction, and the Continent.
But while Clarence, despite of every advantage before him, hastened to
a court of dissipation and pleasure, with feelings in which regretful
affection for those he had left darkened his worldly hopes and mingled
with the sanguine anticipations of youth, Warner, poor, low-born,
wasted with sickness, destitute of friends, shut out by his
temperament from the pleasures of his age, burned with hopes far less
alloyed than those of Clarence, and found in them, for the sacrifice
of all else, not only a recompense, but a triumph.
Thursday came. Warner had made one request to Talbot, which had with
difficulty been granted: it was that he himself might unseen be the
auditor of the great painter's criticisms, and that Sir Joshua should
be perfectly unaware of his presence. It had been granted with
difficulty, because Talbot wished to spare Warner the pain of hearing
remarks which he felt would be likely to fall far short of the
sanguine self-elation of the young artist; and it had been granted
because Talbot imagined that, even should this be the case, the pain
would be more than counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might
produce. Alas! vanity calculates but poorly upon the vanity of
others! What a virtue we should distil from frailty; what a world of
pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness
to be the measure of theirs!
Thursday came: the painting was placed by the artist's own hand in the
most favourable light; a curtain, hung behind it, served as a screen
for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, surrendered his heart
to delicious forebodings of the critic's wonder and golden
anticipations of the future destiny of his darling work. Not a fear
dashed the full and smooth cup of his self-enjoyment. He had lain
awake the whole of the night in restless and joyous impatience for the
morrow. At daybreak he had started from his bed, he had unclosed his
shutters, he had hung over his picture with a fondness greater, if
possible, than he had ever known before! like a mother, he felt as if
his own partiality was but a part of a universal tribute; and, as his
aged relative, turning her dim eyes to the painting, and, in her
innocent idolatry, rather of the artist than his work, praised and
expatiated and foretold, his heart whispered, "If it wring this
worship from ignorance, what will be the homage of science?"
He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim that diffidence is the
companion of genius knew very little of the workings of the human
heart. True, there may have been a few such instances, and it is
probable that in this maxim, as in most, the exception made the rule.
But what could ever reconcile genius to its sufferings, its
sacrifices, its fevered inquietudes, the intense labour which can
alone produce what the shallow world deems the giant offspring of a
momentary inspiration: what could ever reconcile it to these but the
haughty and unquenchable consciousness of internal power; the hope
which has the fulness of certainty that in proportion to the toil is
the reward; the sanguine and impetuous anticipation of glory, which
bursts the boundaries of time and space, and ranges immortality with a
prophet's rapture? Rob Genius of its confidence, of its lofty self-
esteem, and you clip the wings of the eagle: you domesticate, it is
true, the wanderer you could not hitherto comprehend, in the narrow
bounds of your household affections; you abase and tame it more to the
level of your ordinary judgments, but you take from it the power to
soar; the hardihood which was content to brave the thundercloud and
build its eyrie on the rock, for the proud triumph of rising above its
kind, and contemplating with a nearer eye the majesty of heaven.
But if something of presumption is a part of the very essence of
genius, in Warner it was doubly natural, for he was still in the heat
and flush of a design, the defects of which he had not yet had the
leisure to examine; and his talents, self-taught and self-modelled,
had never received either the excitement of emulation or the chill of
discouragement from the study of the masterpieces of his art.
The painter had not been long alone in his concealment before he heard
steps; his heart beat violently, the door opened, and he saw, through
a small hole which he had purposely made in the curtain, a man with a
benevolent and prepossessing countenance, whom he instantly recognized
as Sir Joshua Reynolds, enter the room, accompanied by Talbot. They
walked up to the picture, the painter examined it closely, and in
perfect silence. "Silence," thought Warner, "is the best homage of
admiration;" but he trembled with impatience to hear the admiration
confirmed by words,--those words came too soon.
"It is the work of a clever man, certainly," said Sir Joshua; "but"
(terrible monosyllable) "of one utterly unskilled in the grand
principles of his art--look here, and here, and here, for instance;"
and the critic, perfectly unconscious of the torture he inflicted,
proceeded to point out the errors of the work. Oh! the agony, the
withering agony of that moment to the ambitious artist! In vain he
endeavoured to bear up against the judgment,--in vain he endeavoured
to persuade himself that it was the voice of envy which in those cold,
measured, defining accents, fell like drops of poison upon his heart.
He felt at once, and as if by a magical inspiration, the truth of the
verdict; the scales of self-delusion fell from his eyes; by a hideous
mockery, a kind of terrible pantomime, his goddess seemed at a word, a
breath, transformed into a monster: life, which had been so lately
concentrated into a single hope, seemed now, at once and forever,
cramped, curdled, blistered into a single disappointment.
"But," said Talbot, who had in vain attempted to arrest the criticisms
of the painter (who, very deaf at all times, was, at that time in
particular, engrossed by the self-satisfaction always enjoyed by one
expatiating on his favourite topic),--"but," said Talbot, in a louder
voice, "you own there is great genius in the design?"
"Certainly, there is genius," replied Sir Joshua, in a tone of calm
and complacent good-nature; "but what is genius without culture? You
say the artist is young, very young; let him take time: I do not say
let him attempt a humbler walk; let him persevere in the lofty one he
has chosen, but let him first retrace every step he has taken; let him
devote days, months, years, to the most diligent study of the immortal
masters of the divine art, before he attempts (to exhibit, at least)
another historical picture. He has mistaken altogether the nature of
invention: a fine invention is nothing more than a fine deviation
from, or enlargement on, a fine model: imitation, if noble and
general, insures the best hope of originality. Above all, let your
young friend, if he can afford it, visit Italy."
"He shall afford it," said Talbot, kindly, "for he shall have whatever
advantages I can procure him; but you see the picture is only half-
completed: he could alter it!"
"He had better burn it!" replied the painter, with a gentle smile.
And Talbot, in benevolent despair, hurried his visitor out of the
room. He soon returned to seek and console the artist, but the artist
was gone; the despised, the fatal picture, the blessing and curse of
so many anxious and wasted hours, had vanished also with its creator.
