st certainly never would have tendered him a word of thanks, even
if they had. When that important question, "Which is the greatest foe
to the public weal--the miser or the spendthrift?" is discussed at the
artisans' debating club, the spendthrift has all the eloquence on his
side--the miser all the votes. The miser's advocate is nowhere, and he
pleads the cause of his client with only half his heart. In the
theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and Joseph Surface is hissed.
The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to
Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but
deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and
Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour
and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over.
Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were
shabby fellows both, and were treated a great deal too well. But there
are other vagabonds whom I love, and whom I do well to love. With what
affection do I follow little Ishmael and his broken-hearted mother out
into the great and terrible wilderness, and see them faint beneath the
ardours of the sunlight! And we feel it to be strict poetic justice
and compensation that the lad so driven forth from human tents should
become the father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities is
poison, who work without any tool, and on whose limbs no conqueror has
ever yet been able to rivet shackle or chain. Then there are Abraham's
grandchildren, Jacob and Esau--the former, I confess, no favourite of
mine. His, up at least to his closing years, when parental affection
and strong sorrow softened him, was a character not amiable. He lacked
generosity, and had too keen an eye on his own advancement. He did not
inherit the noble strain of his ancestors. He was a prosperous man;
yet in spite of his increase in flocks and herds,--in spite of his
vision of the ladder, with the angels ascending and descending upon
it,--in spite of the success of his beloved son,--in spite of the
weeping and lamentation of the Egyptians at his death,--in spite of his
splendid funeral, winding from the city by the pyramid and the
sphinx,--in spite of all these things, I would rather have been the
hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, bankrupt in the promise,
rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds
with him an essentially noble nat