It is true that these deficiences of attire were gradually ameliorated, and Joseph Addison appeared in the linen and jackets of our friend, to which, however, this hopeless and abominable ale-house ornament managed to impart a debauched and dissipated air. Of this Carter saw nothing. Nor did he consider it extraordinary that the unsightly incubus should drink his brandy at eleven o’clock in the morning, or that he should smoke his Latakia out of his favourite pipes. All these little familiarities he set down as being so many eccentricities of genius.
“What’s a bottle of brandy to me if it makes Joseph talk! I tell you I have heard that man emit epigrams by the hour. He’s a little shy before strangers. But you should hear him when we’re alone. By the lord Harry, Rochfoucauld isn’t in it with him.”
And so Felix Carter, a man of taste, refinement, culture, and genius, worshipped this idol of mud, this tavern sponge, this bar-soiled, gin-soddened impostor. So Titania was enamoured of an ass.
Although it was perfectly true that Joseph Addison never ventured on any epigrams before Carter’s friends, he committed some of them to writing, for the benefit of posterity. These wonderful sentiments Addison’s hand had traced with charcoal on the white-washed walls of the studio, and Carter would point them out with genuine enthusiasm as though they were
—jewels five words long
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle for ever.
Respect and love for Carter induced his associates to affect a great belief in the value of these jewels of thought scrawled on the walls in the most vulgar hand imaginable. That there may be no doubt as to the literary and philosophical value of the gems, I will reproduce them here. On one wall—just where Carter could see it as he painted, was inscribed the legend—
God Loves the Worker.
Opposite the entrance to the studio appeared in characters of greater magnitude the intimation—
Labour is Prayer.
While above the mantel-piece, between two beautiful “studies” from the nude, ran the inscription—