LITMIR.BIZ

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or headsman waiting behind the door, upon the promised proviso that he should be translated, centuries afterwards, by Kings and Queens, and help indirectly to influence the minds of Northern barbarians, babbling about him in an alley, jostled by passers-by who never heard the name of Boethius, and who don't care a fig for philosophy. Your servant, sir – young man, come and talk."

      Burley hooked his arm within Leonard's, and led the boy passively away.

      "That is a clever man," said Harley L'Estrange. "But I am sorry to see yon young student, with his bright earnest eyes, and his lip that has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm, leaning on the arm of a guide who seems disenchanted of all that gives purpose to learning and links philosophy with use to the world. Who, and what is this clever man whom you call Burley?"

      "A man who might have been famous, if he had condescended to be respectable! The boy listening to us both so attentively interested me too – I should like to have the making of him. But I must buy this Horace."

      The shopman, lurking within his hole like a spider for flies, was now called out. And when Mr Norreys had bought the Horace, and given an address where to send it, Harley asked the shopman if he knew the young man who had been reading Boethius.

      "Only by sight. He has come here every day the last week, and spends hours at the stall. When once he fastens on a book, he reads it through."

      "And never buys?" said Mr Norreys.

      "Sir," said the shopman with a good-natured smile, "they who buy seldom read. The poor boy pays me twopence a-day to read as long as he pleases. I would not take it, but he is proud."

      "I have known men amass great learning in that way," said Mr Norreys. "Yes, I should like to have that boy in my hands. And now, my lord, I am at your service, and we will go to the studio of your artist."

      The two gentlemen walked on towards one of the streets out of Fitzroy Square.

      In a few minutes more Harley L'Estrange was in his element, seated carelessly on a deal table, smoking his cigar, and discussing art with the gusto of a man who honestly loved, and the taste of a man who thoroughly understood it. The young artist, in his dressing robe, adding slow touch upon touch, paused often to listen the better. And Henry Norreys, enjoying the brief respite from a life of great labour, was gladly reminded of idle hours under rosy skies; for these three men had formed their friendship in Italy, where the bands of friendship are woven by the hands of the Graces.

      CHAPTER V

      Leonard and Mr Burley walked on into the suburbs round the north road from London, and Mr Burley offered to find literary employment for Leonard – an offer eagerly accepted.

      Then they went into a public house by the wayside. Burley demanded a private room, called for pen, ink, and paper; and, placing these implements before Leonard, said, "Write what you please in prose, five sheets of letter paper, twenty-two lines to a page – neither more nor less."

      "I cannot write so."

      "Tut, 'tis for bread."

      The boy's face crimsoned.

      "I must forget that," said he.

      "There is an arbour in the garden under a weeping ash," returned Burley. "Go there, and fancy yourself in Arcadia."

      Leonard was too pleased to obey. He found out the little arbour at one end of a deserted bowling-green. All was still – the hedgerow shut out the sight of the inn. The sun lay warm on the grass, and glinted pleasantly through the leaves of the ash. And Leonard there wrote the first essay from his hand as Author by profession. What was it that he wrote? His dreamy impressions of London? an anathema on its streets, and its hearts of stone? murmurs against poverty? dark elegies on fate?

      Oh, no! little knowest thou true genius, if thou askest such questions, or thinkest that there, under the weeping ash, the taskwork for bread was remembered; or that the sunbeam glinted but over the practical world, which, vulgar and sordid, lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy tale – one of the loveliest you can conceive, with a delicate touch of playful humour – in a style all flowered over with happy fancies. He smiled as he wrote the last word – he was happy. In rather more than an hour Mr Burley came to him, and found him with that smile on his lips.

      Mr Burley had a glass of brandy and water in his hand; it was his third. He too smiled – he too looked happy. He read the paper aloud, and well. He was very complimentary. "You will do!" said he, clapping Leonard on the back. "Perhaps some day you will catch my one-eyed perch." Then he folded up the MS., scribbled off a note, put the whole in one envelope – and they returned to London.

      Mr Burley disappeared within a dingy office near Fleet Street, on which was inscribed – "Office of the Beehive," and soon came forth with a golden sovereign in his hand – Leonard's first-fruits. Leonard thought Peru lay before him. He accompanied Mr Burley to that gentleman's lodging in Maida Hill. The walk had been very long; Leonard was not fatigued. He listened with a livelier attention than before to Burley's talk. And when they reached the apartments of the latter, and Mr Burley sent to the cookshop, and their joint supper was taken out of the golden sovereign, Leonard felt proud, and for the first time for weeks he laughed the heart's laugh. The two writers grew more and more intimate and cordial. And there was a vast deal in Burley by which any young man might be made the wiser. There was no apparent evidence of poverty in the apartments – clean, new, well furnished; but all things in the most horrible litter – all speaking of the huge literary sloven.

      For several days Leonard almost lived in those rooms. He wrote continuously – save when Burley's conversation fascinated him into idleness. Nay, it was not idleness – his knowledge grew larger as he listened; but the cynicism of the talker began slowly to work its way. That cynicism in which there was no faith, no hope, no vivifying breath from Glory – from Religion. The cynicism of the Epicurean, more degraded in his stye than ever was Diogenes in his tub; and yet presented with such ease and such eloquence – with such art and such mirth – so adorned with illustration and anecdote, so unconscious of debasement.

      Strange and dread philosophy – that made it a maxim to squander the gifts of mind on the mere care for matter, and fit the soul to live but as from day to day, with its scornful cry, "A fig for immortality and laurels!" An author for bread! Oh, miserable calling! was there something grand and holy, after all, even in Chatterton's despair!

      CHAPTER VI

      The villanous Beehive! Bread was worked out of it, certainly; but fame, but hope for the future – certainly not. Milton's Paradise Lost would have perished without a sound, had it appeared in the Beehive.

      Fine things were there in a fragmentary crude state, composed by Burley himself. At the end of a week they were dead and forgotten – never read by one man of education and taste; taken simultaneously and indifferently with shallow politics and wretched essays, yet selling, perhaps, twenty or thirty thousand copies – an immense sale; – and nothing got out of them but bread and brandy!

      "What more would you have?" cried John Burley. "Did not stern old Sam Johnson say he could never write but from want?"

      "He might say it," answered Leonard; "but he never meant posterity to believe him. And he would have died of want, I suspect, rather than have written Rasselas for the Beehive! Want is a grand thing," continued the boy, thoughtfully. "A parent of grand things. Necessity is strong, and should give us its own strength; but Want should shatter asunder, with its very writhings, the walls of our prison-house, and not sit contented with the allowance the jail gives us in exchange for our work."

      "There is no prison-house to a man who calls upon Bacchus – stay – I will translate to you Schiller's Dithyramb. 'Then see I Bacchus – then up come Cupid and Phœbus, and all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'"

      Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric.

      "O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with him; and you would debase the gods to a gin palace."

      "Ho, ho!" cried Burley, with his giant laugh. "Drink, and you will understand

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