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- they applaud the poet as they applaud the clown? No! They would hoot me,
and call me doting or mad. Then what does this prove? Your infatuation
or their insensibility? Perhaps both; but indubitably the first. But why
wail? Do you seek admiration from the admirers of a buffoon? Call to
mind the saying of the Athenian, who, when the people vociferously
applauded in the forum, asked his friend in a whisper, what foolish
thing had he said?
Again my eye swept the circus, and fell on the ruddy radiance of the
countenance of Hautboy. But its clear honest cheeriness disdained my
disdain. My intolerant pride was rebuked. And yet Hautboy dreamed not
what magic reproof to a soul like mine sat on his laughing brow. At the
very instant I felt the dart of the censure, his eye twinkled, his hand
waved, his voice was lifted in jubilant delight at another joke of the
inexhaustible clown.
Circus over, we went to Taylor’s. Among crowds of others, we sat down to
our stews and punches at one of the small marble tables. Hautboy sat
opposite to me. Though greatly subdued from its former hilarity, his
face still shone with gladness. But added to this was a quality not so
prominent before; a certain serene expression of leisurely, deep good
sense. Good sense and good humour in him joined hands. As the
conversation proceeded between the brisk Standard and him--for I said
little or nothing--I was more and more struck with the excellent
judgment he evinced. In most of his remarks upon a variety of topics
Hautboy seemed intuitively to hit the exact line between enthusiasm and
apathy. It was plain that while Hautboy saw the world pretty much as it
was, yet he did not theoretically espouse its bright side nor its dark
side. Rejecting all solutions, he but acknowledged facts. What was sad
in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he
did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable,
he gratefully took to his heart. It was plain, then--so it seemed at
that moment, at least--that his extraordinary cheerfulness did not arise
either from deficiency of feeling or thought.
Suddenly remembering an engagement, he took up his hat, bowed
pleasantly, and left us.
‘Well, Helmstone,’ said Standard, inaudibly drumming on the slab, ‘what
do you think of your new acquaintance?’
The two last words tingled with a peculiar and novel significance.
‘New acquaintance indeed,’ echoed I. ‘Standard, I owe you a thousand
thanks for introducing me to one of the most singular men I have ever
seen. It needed the optical sight of such a man to believe in the
possibility of his existence.’
‘You rather like him, then,’ said Standard, with ironical dryness.
‘I hugely love and admire him, Standard. I wish I were Hautboy.’
‘Ah? That’s a pity now. There’s only one Hautboy in the world.’
This last remark set me to pondering again, and somehow it revived my
dark mood.
‘His wonderful cheerfulness, I suppose,’ said I, sneering with spleen,
‘originates not less in a felicitous fortune than in a felicitous
temper. His great good sense is apparent; but great good sense may exist
without sublime endowments. Nay, I take it, in certain cases, that good
sense is simply owing to the absence of those. Much more, cheerfulness.
Unpossessed of genius, Hautboy is eternally blessed.’
‘Ah? You would not think him an extraordinary genius, then?’
‘Genius? What! such a short, fat fellow a genius! Genius, like Cassius,
is lank.’
‘Ah? But could you not fancy that Hautboy might formerly have had
genius, but luckily getting rid of it, at last fatted up?’
‘For a genius to get rid of his genius is as impossible as for a man in
the galloping consumption to get rid of that.’
‘Ah? You speak very decidedly.’
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