'words,
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As one had put his whole soul in a jest;'--

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them
too!" And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and
chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

"Do you remember the devil's temptation of our Lord--'Cast thyself
down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge
over thee?"

"I do; but what has that to do with me?"

"Throw away the safe station in which God has certainly put you, to
seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander
one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry
enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,--ay, in
every fallen leaf,--to employ all your powers, considerable as I
believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which
such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?"

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse. "Too slow--too slow
for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of
obscurity, misconception, ridicule. No. What I have, I must have
at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton--if only, like
Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world
confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men."

Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a
certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant.
Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we
not all, while we are going through our course of Shelley, talked very
much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest
fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was
patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our
self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us?
But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and
dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's
feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a
little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly,
a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books,
corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and
humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from runn