ccording to Lord Macaulay,
hunted by bailiffs and familiar with sponging-houses, and who, when
hospitably entertained, were wont to disturb the household of the
entertainer by roaring for hot punch at four o'clock in the morning.
Since that period the poets have improved in the decencies of life:
they wear broadcloth, and settle their tailors' accounts even as other
men. At this present moment Her Majesty's poets are perhaps the most
respectable of Her Majesty's subjects. They are all teetotallers; if
they sin, it is in rhyme, and then only to point a moral. In past days
the poet flew from flower to flower, gathering his honey; but he bore a
sting, too, as the rude hand that touched him could testily. He freely
gathers his honey as of old, but the satiric sting has been taken away.
He lives at peace with all men--his brethren excepted. About the true
poet still there is something of the ancient spirit,--the old "flash
and outbreak of the fiery mind,"--the old enthusiasm and dash of
humourous eccentricity. But he is fast disappearing from the catalogue
of vagabonds--fast getting commonplace, I fear. Many people suspect
him of dulness. Besides, such a crowd of well-meaning, amiable, most
respectable men have broken down of late years the pales of Parnassus,
and become squatters on the sacred mount, that the claim of poets to be
a peculiar people is getting disallowed. Never in this world's history
were they so numerous; and although some people deny that they are
poets, few are cantankerous enough or intrepid enough to assert that
they are vagabonds. The painter is the most agreeable of vagabonds.
His art is a pleasant one: it demands some little manual exertion, and
it takes him at times into the open air. It is pleasant, too, in this,
that lines and colours are so much more palpable than words, and the
appeal of his work to his practised eye has some satisfaction in it.
He knows what he is about. He does not altogether lose his critical
sense, as the poet does, when familiarity stales his subject, and takes
the splendour out of his images. Moreover, his work is more profitable
than the poet's. I suppose there are just as few great painters at the
present day as there are great poets; yet the yearly receipts of the
artists of England far exceed the receipts of the singers. A picture
can usually be painted in less time than a poem can be written. A
second-rate picture has a certain market value,--its frame i