The Antiquary Part 17

"O, the same--the same. He has enough of practical knowledge to speak scholarly and wisely to those of whose intelligence he stands in awe; and, to say the truth, this faculty, joined to his matchless impudence, imposed upon me for some time when I first knew him. But I have since understood, that when he is among fools and womankind, he exhibits himself as a perfect charlatan--talks of the magisterium--of sympathies and antipathies--of the cabala--of the divining-rod--and all the trumpery with which the Rosicrucians cheated a darker age, and which, to our eternal disgrace, has in some degree revived in our own. My friend Heavysterne knew this fellow abroad, and unintentionally (for he, you must know, is, G.o.d bless the mark! a sort of believer) let me into a good deal of his real character. Ah! were I caliph for a day, as Honest Abon Ha.s.san wished to be, I would scourge me these jugglers out of the commonwealth with rods of scorpions. They debauch the spirit of the ignorant and credulous with mystical trash, as effectually as if they had besotted their brains with gin, and then pick their pockets with the same facility. And now has this strolling blackguard and mountebank put the finis.h.i.+ng blow to the ruin of an ancient and honourable family!"

"But how could he impose upon Sir Arthur to any ruinous extent?"

"Why, I don't know. Sir Arthur is a good honourable gentleman; but, as you may see from his loose ideas concerning the Pikish language, he is by no means very strong in the understanding. His estate is strictly entailed, and he has been always an embarra.s.sed man. This rapparee promised him mountains of wealth, and an English company was found to advance large sums of money--I fear on Sir Arthur's guarantee. Some gentlemen--I was a.s.s enough to be one--took small shares in the concern, and Sir Arthur himself made great outlay; we were trained on by specious appearances and more specious lies; and now, like John Bunyan, we awake, and behold it is a dream!"

"I am surprised that you, Mr. Oldbuck, should have encouraged Sir Arthur by your example."

"Why," said Oldbuck, dropping his large grizzled eyebrow, "I am something surprised and ashamed at it myself; it was not the lucre of gain--n.o.body cares less for money (to be a prudent man) than I do--but I thought I might risk this small sum. It will be expected (though I am sure I cannot see why) that I should give something to any one who will be kind enough to rid me of that slip of womankind, my niece, Mary M'Intyre; and perhaps it may be thought I should do something to get that jackanapes, her brother, on in the army. In either case, to treble my venture, would have helped me out. And besides, I had some idea that the Phoenicians had in former times wrought copper in that very spot.

That cunning scoundrel, Dousterswivel, found out my blunt side, and brought strange tales (d--n him) of appearances of old shafts, and vestiges of mining operations, conducted in a manner quite different from those of modern times; and I--in short, I was a fool, and there is an end. My loss is not much worth speaking about; but Sir Arthur's engagements are, I understand, very deep, and my heart aches for him and the poor young lady who must share his distress."

Here the conversation paused, until renewed in the next CHAPTER.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.

If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne, And all this day, an unaccustomed spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

Romeo and Juliet.

The account of Sir Arthur's unhappy adventure had led Oldbuck somewhat aside from his purpose of catechising Lovel concerning the cause of his residence at Fairport. He was now, however, resolved to open the subject. "Miss Wardour was formerly known to you, she tells me, Mr.

Lovel?"

"He had had the pleasure," Lovel answered, "to see her at Mrs. Wilmot's, in Yorks.h.i.+re."

"Indeed! you never mentioned that to me before, and you did not accost her as an old acquaintance."

"I--I did not know," said Lovel, a good deal embarra.s.sed, "it was the same lady, till we met; and then it was my duty to wait till she should recognise me."

"I am aware of your delicacy: the knight's a punctilious old fool, but I promise you his daughter is above all nonsensical ceremony and prejudice. And now, since you have, found a new set of friends here, may I ask if you intend to leave Fairport as soon as you proposed?"

"What if I should answer your question by another," replied Lovel, "and ask you what is your opinion of dreams?"

"Of dreams, you foolish lad!--why, what should I think of them but as the deceptions of imagination when reason drops the reins? I know no difference betwixt them and the hallucinations of madness--the unguided horses run away with the carriage in both cases, only in the one the coachman is drunk, and in the other he slumbers. What says our Marcus Tullius--Si insanorum visis fides non est habenda, cur credatur somnientium visis, quae multo etiam perturbatiora sunt, non intelligo."

"Yes, sir; but Cicero also tells us, that as he who pa.s.ses the whole day in darting the javelin must sometimes. .h.i.t the mark, so, amid the cloud of nightly dreams, some may occur consonant to future events."

"Ay--that is to say, you have hit the mark in your own sage opinion?

Lord! Lord! how this world is given to folly! Well, I will allow for once the Oneirocritical science--I will give faith to the exposition of dreams, and say a Daniel hath arisen to interpret them, if you can prove to me that that dream of yours has pointed to a prudent line of conduct."

"Tell me, then," answered Lovel, "why when I was hesitating whether to abandon an enterprise, which I have perhaps rashly undertaken, I should last night dream I saw your ancestor pointing to a motto which encouraged me to perseverance?--why should I have thought of those words which I cannot remember to have heard before, which are in a language unknown to me, and which yet conveyed, when translated, a lesson which I could so plainly apply to my own circ.u.mstances?"

The Antiquary burst into a fit of laughing. "Excuse me, my young friend--but it is thus we silly mortals deceive ourselves, and look out of doors for motives which originate in our own wilful will. I think I can help out the cause of your vision. You were so abstracted in your contemplations yesterday after dinner, as to pay little attention to the discourse between Sir Arthur and me, until we fell upon the controversy concerning the Piks, which terminated so abruptly;--but I remember producing to Sir Arthur a book printed by my ancestor, and making him observe the motto; your mind was bent elsewhere, but your ear had mechanically received and retained the sounds, and your busy fancy, stirred by Grizel's legend I presume, had introduced this sc.r.a.p of German into your dream. As for the waking wisdom which seized on so frivolous a circ.u.mstance as an apology for persevering in some course which it could find no better reason to justify, it is exactly one of those juggling tricks which the sagest of us play off now and then, to gratify our inclination at the expense of our understanding."

"I own it," said Lovel, blus.h.i.+ng deeply;--"I believe you are right, Mr.

Oldbuck, and I ought to sink in your esteem for attaching a moment's consequence to such a frivolity;--but I was tossed by contradictory wishes and resolutions, and you know how slight a line will tow a boat when afloat on the billows, though a cable would hardly move her when pulled up on the beach."

"Right, right," exclaimed the Antiquary. "Fall in my opinion!--not a whit--I love thee the better, man;--why, we have story for story against each other, and I can think with less shame on having exposed myself about that cursed Praetorium--though I am still convinced Agricola's camp must have been somewhere in this neighbourhood. And now, Lovel, my good lad, be sincere with me--What make you from Wittenberg?--why have you left your own country and professional pursuits, for an idle residence in such a place as Fairport? A truant disposition, I fear."

"Even so," replied Lovel, patiently submitting to an interrogatory which he could not well evade. "Yet I am so detached from all the world, have so few in whom I am interested, or who are interested in me, that my very state of dest.i.tution gives me independence. He whose good or evil fortune affects himself alone, has the best right to pursue it according to his own fancy."

"Pardon me, young man," said Oldbuck, laying his hand kindly on his shoulder, and making a full halt--"sufflamina--a little patience, if you please. I will suppose that you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life--that you cannot look back to those to whom you owe grat.i.tude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection; but it is no less inc.u.mbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty--for your active exertions are due not only to society, but in humble grat.i.tude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to serve yourself and others."

"But I am unconscious of possessing such powers," said Lovel, somewhat impatiently. "I ask nothing of society but the permission of walking innoxiously through the path of life, without jostling others, or permitting myself to be jostled. I owe no man anything--I have the means of maintaining, myself with complete independence; and so moderate are my wishes in this respect, that even these means, however limited, rather exceed than fall short of them."

"Nay, then," said Oldbuck, removing his hand, and turning again to the road, "if you are so true a philosopher as to think you have money enough, there's no more to be said--I cannot pretend to be ent.i.tled to advise you;--you have attained the acme'--the summit of perfection. And how came Fairport to be the selected abode of so much self-denying philosophy? It is as if a wors.h.i.+pper of the true religion had set up his staff by choice among the multifarious idolaters of the land of Egypt.

There is not a man in Fairport who is not a devoted wors.h.i.+pper of the Golden Calf--the mammon of unrighteousness. Why, even I, man, am so infected by the bad neighbourhood, that I feel inclined occasionally to become an idolater myself."

"My princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nts being literary," answered Lovel, "and circ.u.mstances which I cannot mention having induced me, for a time at least, to relinquish the military service, I have pitched on Fairport as a place where I might follow my pursuits without any of those temptations to society which a more elegant circle might have presented to me."

"Aha!" replied Oldbuck, knowingly,--"I begin to understand your application of my ancestor's motto. You are a candidate for public favour, though not in the way I first suspected,--you are ambitious to s.h.i.+ne as a literary character, and you hope to merit favour by labour and perseverance?"

Lovel, who was rather closely pressed by the inquisitiveness of the old gentleman, concluded it would be best to let him remain in the error which he had gratuitously adopted.

"I have been at times foolish enough," he replied, "to nourish some thoughts of the kind."

"Ah, poor fellow! nothing can be more melancholy; unless, as young men sometimes do, you had fancied yourself in love with some trumpery specimen of womankind, which is indeed, as Shakspeare truly says, pressing to death, whipping, and hanging all at once."

He then proceeded with inquiries, which he was sometimes kind enough to answer himself. For this good old gentleman had, from his antiquarian researches, acquired a delight in building theories out of premises which were often far from affording sufficient ground for them; and being, as the reader must have remarked, sufficiently opinionative, he did not readily brook being corrected, either in matter of fact or judgment, even by those who were princ.i.p.ally interested in the subjects on which he speculated. He went on, therefore, chalking out Lovel's literary career for him.

"And with what do you propose to commence your debut as a man of letters?--But I guess--poetry--poetry--the soft seducer of youth. Yes! there is an acknowledging modesty of confusion in your eye and manner. And where lies your vein?--are you inclined to soar to the higher regions of Parna.s.sus, or to flutter around the base of the hill?"

"I have hitherto attempted only a few lyrical pieces," said Lovel.

"Just as I supposed--pruning your wing, and hopping from spray to spray.

But I trust you intend a bolder flight. Observe, I would by no means recommend your persevering in this unprofitable pursuit--but you say you are quite independent of the public caprice?"

"Entirely so," replied Lovel.

"And that you are determined not to adopt a more active course of life?"

"For the present, such is my resolution," replied the young man.

"Why, then, it only remains for me to give you my best advice and a.s.sistance in the object of your pursuit. I have myself published two essays in the Antiquarian Repository,--and therefore am an author of experience, There was my Remarks on Hearne's edition of Robert of Gloucester, signed Scrutator; and the other signed Indagator, upon a pa.s.sage in Tacitus. I might add, what attracted considerable notice at the time, and that is my paper in the Gentleman's Magazine, upon the inscription of OElia Lelia, which I subscribed OEdipus. So you see I am not an apprentice in the mysteries of author-craft, and must necessarily understand the taste and temper of the times. And now, once more, what do you intend to commence with?"

"I have no instant thoughts of publis.h.i.+ng."

"Ah! that will never do; you must have the fear of the public before your eyes in all your undertakings. Let us see now: A collection of fugitive pieces; but no--your fugitive poetry is apt to become stationary with the bookseller. It should be something at once solid and attractive--none of your romances or anomalous novelties--I would have you take high ground at once. Let me see: What think you of a real epic?--the grand old-fas.h.i.+oned historical poem which moved through twelve or twenty-four books. We'll have it so--I'll supply you with a subject--The battle between the Caledonians and Romans--The Caledoniad; or, Invasion Repelled;--let that be the t.i.tle--it will suit the present taste, and you may throw in a touch of the times."

"But the invasion of Agricola was not repelled."

"No; but you are a poet--free of the corporation, and as little bound down to truth or probability as Virgil himself--You may defeat the Romans in spite of Tacitus."

"And pitch Agricola's camp at the Kaim of--what do you call it," answered Lovel, "in defiance of Edie Ochiltree?"

"No more of that, an thou lovest me--And yet, I dare say, ye may unwittingly speak most correct truth in both instances, in despite of the toga of the historian and the blue gown of the mendicant."

"Gallantly counselled!--Well, I will do my best--your kindness will a.s.sist me with local information."