depth and
slyness. And as the good man has seldom the opportunity of making a
joke, or of procuring an auditor who can understand one, the dewy
glitter of his eyes, as you sit opposite him, and his heartfelt
enjoyment of the matter in hand, are worth going a considerable way to
witness. It is not, however, in the professions that the vagabond is
commonly found. Over these that awful and ubiquitous female, Mrs.
Grundy--at once Fate, Nemesis, and Fury--presides. The glare of her
eye is professional danger, the pointing of her finger is professional
death. When she utters a man's name, he is lost. The true vagabond is
to be met with in other walks of life,--among actors, poets, painters.
These may grow in any way their nature directs. They are not required
to conform to any traditional pattern. With regard to the
respectabilities and the "minor morals," the world permits them to be
libertines. Besides, it is a temperament peculiarly sensitive, or
generous, or enjoying, which at the beginning impels these to their
special pursuits; and that temperament, like everything else in the
world, strengthens with use, and grows with what it feeds on. We look
upon an actor, sitting amongst ordinary men and women, with a certain
curiosity,--we regard him as a creature from another planet, almost.
His life and his world are quite different from ours. The orchestra,
the foot-lights, and the green baize curtain, divide us. He is a
monarch half his time--his entrance and his exit proclaimed by flourish
of trumpet. He speaks in blank verse, is wont to take his seat at
gilded banquets, to drink nothing out of a pasteboard goblet. The
actor's world has a history amusing to read, and lines of noble and
splendid traditions, stretching back to charming Nelly's time, and
earlier. The actor has strange experiences. He sees the other side of
the moon. We roar at Grimaldi's funny face: he sees the lines of pain
in it. We hear Romeo wish to be "a glove upon that hand that he might
touch that cheek:" three minutes afterwards he beholds Romeo refresh
himself with a pot of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely,
but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial bolster: he sees them
sit down to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the
stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets
of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their
brethren in Johnson's time, who were, a