Ingram drooped, and became a dependent on charity, in an hospital for six weeks; and then the kind gentleman and his wife followed his corpse to the grave, which was dug beside that of their daughter—the beloved of the unfortunate young man of genius!
Will the story prevent or check romance and adventure in others? Ah! no: more Chattertons will perish, more Otways be choked with a crust, unless human nature becomes unlike its former and present self; ay, and more Shakespeares will prosper, in the ages to come, or, otherwise, the true glory and vigour of the human mind have all gone by, and the future must feed on its dregs!
THE LAD WHO FELT LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER.
Diggory Lawson was not fond of his baptismal name, and often wondered what in the world had put it into his father's head to give him such a one. But where was the use of grumbling, now the name was inevitably his own?—was a sensible thought which often passed through the brain of Dig (for his mother used to shorten the awkward name into that still more awkward one of three letters), where was the use of grumbling about it? His name could not mend him if Nature had marred him, nor could it mar him if Nature had made him fit for any good and useful purpose of existence.
With such thoughts, though but a very little lad, Diggory used to ramble, when school was up, about pleasant Nottingham, where he was born, and about its charming neighbourhood. His father was only a poor lace-weaver; but an affectionate and almost overweening fondness for their only child rendered his parents prompt to sacrifice any personal comfort, in order to secure him a respectable portion of education. The lad was, therefore, kept steadily at school. But his father mingled no little of the eccentric in his constitution, as may be guessed from the name he gave his child, for he had no "family reason" for it; and so it happened, which was not at all the worse, that the lad was not left to gather his knowledge simply from the dry and barren teaching of a day-school. His father was a dabbler in the mathematics, in astronomy, in dialling, in botany and floriculture, in history and antiquities; and so Dig Lawson caught a tincture of each of these knowledges, at such seasons as his father felt disposed to communicate what he knew of them.
Nor did the irregularity of communication in his father's fragmentary hints prevent the lad's mind and its stores from taking a regular form. That form was somewhat unique, perhaps, but a true philosopher would have thought it symmetrical. The lad did not forget his humble condition: he was never proud: but his thinkings were far more exalted than those of the majority of the children who were, at times, his playmates. The greater part of his leisure was spent in lonely wanderings. And if any locality in England can tend to elevate the sentiments of its young habitants, one would think it to be Nottingham. Such was its effect, however, on the mind of young Dig Lawson: he became a vehicle of noble, though somewhat romantic thinkings, while wandering in the meadows by the beautiful Trent, and watching, alternately, the ripple of the stream, or the unfolding of some beautiful flower that grew on its border; or rambling over the wildernesses of the Forest-ground, so classically English, and giving himself up, for the nonce, to day-dreams of Robin Hood, till he half imagined he saw the merry band tripping over the hill-side among the furze and stunted trees, clad in their Lincoln green, and heard the real sound of bold Robin's bugle; or climbing the rocks that project round the beautiful park, and looking up at "Mortimer's Hole" in the castled cliff, and picturing the chivalrous attack on the concealed traitor by the mailed bands of the third Edward; or creeping among the strange-looking Druid caves on the border of the silver Lene, and conjuring up in his imagination the white-bearded priests crowned with oak, and bearing the "mistletoe bough," and chanting the hymn to the sun or moon, while a crowd of painted Britons struck up the chorus "Derry-down." Less florid but more substantial thinkings often occupied him, when he watched the last rays of the setting sun tint up the windows of the modern building called "the Castle" (the unruly Radicals had not blackened it then,) and remembered how, on its memorable rock, the fated Stuart first unfurled the standard of war against his own people and parliament, and how unweariedly the high-souled and incorruptible Hutchinson sustained the harassments of petty faction so long on the same spot. These more weighty thoughts, especially, visited him as his boyhood began to ripen into youth. And as soon as his understanding began to mature, and he became capable of combining the useful with the comely, in his delights and preferences, he could derive almost as much pleasure from a walk round the splendid area of the market-place of his native town, as from a stroll in the park, or by the Trent. He was often told there was no market-place like it in England; and he felt as proud of its superb space and neat ornamental piazzas, as if he were a man, and owner of half the buildings round it. Diggory Lawson, therefore, had not yet become "the lad who felt like a fish out of water."
Neither did Dig at all resemble such an unfortunate animal for the three years, that is to say, from fourteen to seventeen, that he passed at his father's humble trade. Every leisure season was spent in literature; and he had not only read some hundreds of volumes by the time that he had reached the age of seventeen, but he had made some attempts at original composition that were by no means contemptible. The lad was happy enough, and was likely to make a happy and useful man, had "Luck"—that spirit with so questionable a name—kept out of his father's way, and thereby prevented the father from placing himself in Dig's way.
The brilliant but evanescent "Bobbin-net" speculation sprung up, like a forest of mushrooms—with an immense surface of promise, but very slender stalk for continuance—in the town of Nottingham. Diggory's father was just the man to jump into a new scheme; and he really jumped into the bobbin-net speculation to some purpose, apparently, for he realised a thousand pounds' profit in twelve months. Such "luck," of course, determined him to continue in the pursuit of money, in the same line; but he was seized, alas! with a vehement resolution to make Dig into a gentleman!
The large admixture of whimsicality in his father's composition, however, left Diggory's destiny in a very nondescript condition for some time; since his ideas of the exactest, best, and fittest way of making his lad into the thing he thought of were none of the clearest, and most fixed. One step, and one only, could Dig's father determine upon—and that was—that Dig should work no more! No: he could work himself, and could make as much money as ever Dig would want as long as he lived: but Dig shouldn't work; and his mother said, "No, that he shouldn't," when she heard her husband say so; and so Dig was compelled, as the neighbours said, to "drop it"—and to lay aside his every-day clothes, and put on his Sunday ones, and to consider that, from that day forth, he had done working with his hands—to the end of his life.