sieged by Harrow boys, and
probably beset by small attorneys, is to show myself as keen an observer
as ... the Harrow boys. But these young gentlemen (with a more becoming
modesty) were content to pluck Dancer by the coat-tails; they did not
suppose they had surprised his secret or could put him living in a book:
and it is there my error would have lain. Or say that in the same
romance--I continue to call these books romances, in the hope of giving
pain--say that in the same romance, which now begins really to take
shape, I should leave to speak of Dancer, and follow instead the Harrow
boys; and say that I came on some such business as that of my
lantern-bearers on the links; and described the boys as very cold, spat
upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they
were; and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was. I
might upon these lines, and had I Zola's genius, turn out, in a page or
so, a gem of literary art, render the lantern-light with the touches of
a master, and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love; and
when all was done, what a triumph would my picture be of shallowness and
dulness! how it would have missed the point! how it would have belied
the boys! To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly and
indecent; but ask the boys themselves, and they are discussing (as it is
highly proper they should) the possibilities of existence. To the eye of
the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask
themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the
ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern.

III

For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. It may
hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside,
like Dancer's, in the mysterious inwards of psychology. It may consist
with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase. It has
so little bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles in his
note-book) that it may even touch them not; and the man's true life, for
which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The
clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer
sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts: all leading
another life, plying another trade from that they chose; like the poet's
housebuilder, who, after all, is cased in stone,

"By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts,
Rebuilds it to his lik