good host stands he who doesn't want to see anything
of any one; far to the right, he who wants a horde of people to be
always seeing something of him. I conjecture that the figure on the
left, just discernible through my field-glasses, is that of old Corin's
master. His name was never revealed to us, but Corin's brief account of
his character suffices. 'Deeds of hospitality' is a dismal phrase that
could have occurred only to the servant of a very dismal master. Not
less tell-tale is Corin's idea that men who do these 'deeds' do them
only to save their souls in the next world. It is a pity Shakespeare did
not actually bring Corin's master on to the stage. One would have
liked to see the old man genuinely touched by the charming eloquence
of Rosalind's appeal for a crust of bread, and conscious that he would
probably go to heaven if he granted it, and yet not quite able to grant
it. Far away though he stands to the left of the good host, he has
yet something in common with that third person discernible on the
right--that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that
we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl
of Arden. It does not appear that he had a single friend, nor that he
wished for one. His lavishness was indiscriminate except in that he
entertained only the rich. One would have liked to dine with him, but
not even in the act of digestion could one have felt that he had a
heart. One would have acknowledged that in all the material resources
of his art he was a master, and also that he practised his art for
sheer love of it, wishing to be admired for nothing but his mastery, and
cocking no eye on any of those ulterior objects but for which some of
the most prominent hosts would not entertain at all. But the very fact
that he was an artist is repulsive. When hospitality becomes an art it
loses its very soul. With this reflection I look away from Lucullus and,
fixing my gaze on the middle ground, am the better able to appreciate
the excellence of the figure that stands before me--the figure of Old
Wardle. Some pride and egoism in that capacious breast, yes, but a
great heart full of kindness, and ever a warm spontaneous welcome to the
stranger in need, and to all old friends and young. Hark! he is shouting
something. He is asking us both down to Dingley Dell. And you have
shouted back that you will be delighted. Ah, did I not suspect from the
first that you too were perhaps a gues