net. He seemed,
indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether
in his own little province of art. A creature more unsullied by the
world it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in his
artistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me
greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but,
after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than
this high aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign of
conversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to reconcile
enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native mistrust for
intellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives.
As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildest
terms of approbation were "stupendous," "transcendent," and
"incomparable." The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for
a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was
personally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half-
professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left
something dimly ambiguous in the background. He was modest and proud,
and never spoke of his domestic matters. He was evidently poor; yet he
must have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make so
merry over the fact that his culture of ideal beauty had never brought
him a penny. His poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither
inviting me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts. We met either
in some public place or at my hotel, where I entertained him as freely as
I might without appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed always
hungry, and this was his nearest approach to human grossness. I made a
point of asking no impertinent questions, but, each time we met, I
ventured to make some respectful allusion to the _magnum opus_, to
inquire, as it were, as to its health and progress. "We are getting on,
with the Lord's help," he would say, with a grave smile. "We are doing
well. You see, I have the grand advantage that I lose no time. These
hours I spend with you are pure profit. They are _suggestive_! Just as
the truly religious soul is always at worship, the genuine artist is
always in labour. He takes his property wherever he finds it, and learns
some precious secret from every object that stands up in the light. If
you but knew the rapture of ob