MR. BURLEY.—"It would look better in the churchyard."
LEONARD.—"So I was thinking. And you are an author!"
MR. BURLEY.—"Ah, I said you had a quick sense of allegory. And so you think an author looks better in a churchyard, when you see him but as a muffled urn under the moonshine, than standing beneath the gas-lamp in a white hat, and with a red tip to his nose. Abstractedly, you are right. But, with your leave, the author would rather be where he is. Let us walk on." The two men felt an interest in each other, and they walked some yards in silence.
"To return to the urn," said Mr. Burley,—"you think of fame and churchyards. Natural enough, before illusion dies; but I think of the moment, of existence,—and I laugh at fame. Fame, sir—not worth a glass of cold-without! And as for a glass of warm, with sugar—and five shillings in one's pocket to spend as one pleases—what is there in Westminster Abbey to compare with it?"
"Talk on, sir,—I should like to hear you talk. Let me listen and hold my tongue." Leonard pulled his hat over his brows, and gave up his moody, questioning, turbulent mind to his new acquaintance.
And John Burley talked on. A dangerous and fascinating talk it was,— the talk of a great intellect fallen; a serpent trailing its length on the ground, and showing bright, shifting, glorious hues, as it grovelled,—a serpent, yet without the serpent's guile. If John Burley deceived and tempted, he meant it not,—he crawled and glittered alike honestly. No dove could be more simple.
Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an eloquent enthusiasm on the joy of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius; you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me, because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in the skies.' Is this true?"
"Yes, very true!"
"What can rob us of this joy? The bookseller will not buy; the public will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the angels, —we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such good- tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from them, when one knows what one's self is worth, and what they are. They are just worth the coin one can extract from them, in order to live.
"Our life—that is worth so much to us. And then their joys, so vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose Burns drinking at the alehouse, with his boors around him, was drinking, like them, only beer and whiskey? No, he was drinking nectar; he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts,—shaking with the laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to unlock his spirit from the clay,— take it from jerkin and corduroys, and wrap it in the 'singing robes' that floated wide in the skies: the beer or the whiskey needed but for that, and then it changed at once into the drink of Hebe. But come, you have not known this life,—you have not seen it. Come, give me this night. I have moneys about me,—I will fling them abroad as liberally as Alexander himself, when he left to his share but hope. Come!"