THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE
BY THE LATE SIR J. NOËL PATON, R.S.A.
THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE.
By permission of Mr. Haydon Hare.
THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.—COL. iii. 2.
In the second part of the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan tells us how Christiana and her children came to the Interpreter's House, and were taken by the master of it into one of his Significant Rooms. In one of these there was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand; there stood also one over his head, with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor.
The late Sir Noël Paton has taken this as the subject of one of his most famous pictures. The canvas is a large one, and the figures in it are of life-size. That of the man with the muck-rake himself first arrests your eye, and chiefly draws your attention. He is an old man with a grey beard. His face is a handsome one, and you see that he has gifts and powers which might have made him wise and venerable in his old age, if only he had made a good use of them. But instead of the noble gravity which you might expect to find on such a face, there is nothing but an eager gleam and a senseless smile of perfectly childish and foolish delight. He wears on his head an old broad-rimmed hat, adorned with a gold chain and a peacock's feather. At his belt he has several bags full of gold, and also a dagger with which he is ready to defend his possessions. One of the bags has burst, and the coins are dropping on the ground. On his back he carries a wallet, crammed with old law-papers and straw. He kneels on one knee, and his whole body is bent downward. With his left hand he grasps the handle of a rake which has three long prongs. He is using the rake to draw towards him a lot of varied stuff that is littered about in front of him—more straw and papers, a broken necklace of beads, and a heart-shaped brooch, besides coins and feathers, and other such things. A large black beetle creeps near his feet. A little further in front of him more rubbish lies in a heap—a book of fashions, a fan, still more straw, some artificial roses and withered leaves, an old lamp, a skull, and a king's crown, all battered and bent and blood-stained. There is a toad crouching under the fan. Among the other things a snake is crawling, and blowing out of its mouth beautifully coloured bubbles, airy and unsubstantial. You can see one of them breaking as it touches a stone. It is on these bubbles that the eager, delighted gaze of the old man is fixed, and to grasp them he is stretching out his thin and trembling right hand. His left ankle is bound by a strong fetter of gold. When you have looked at the picture for a little while, you see that he is in a prison cell. A faint light glimmers through a grated window at the back, where steps come down into the cell by the side of a pillar. Beside the old man a lantern stands on the ground. Its glass sides are shaped like church windows, but the flame of the candle inside is guttering and going out. The straw on the floor is bursting into red flames and wreaths of smoke, and the whole pile of rubbish is on the point of being burned up.
Behind the man with the muck-rake is another Figure, tall and straight, yet bending down in pity. It is the Figure of Christ. He stands motionless, with a look of sorrowful patience on His face. One of His hands is laid on the old man's shoulder, and with the other He holds up a bright crown. It is a crown of thorns, the same which He wore Himself, but on the thorns are seven bright stars. They turn it into a crown of glory, and shed a radiance over all the picture. You can see that the Saviour's hands have been pierced, and that the thorns have left bleeding marks upon His brow.