to draw upon it in need, as he has upon a banker in
whose hands he has placed a sum; Lavengro turns to advantage, under
particular circumstances, a certain resource which he has, but people who
are not so forlorn as Lavengro, and have not served the same
apprenticeship which he had, are not advised to follow his example.
Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith
than in having recourse to vice, in running after milk-maids for example.
Running after milk-maids is by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but
let any one ask some respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for
example), whether Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the
country, at tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running
after all the milkmaids in Cheshire, though tinkering is in general
considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better,
notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about eight
hundred years ago, reckons the latter amongst nine noble arts which he
possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the harp, and
ravelling runes, or as the original has it 'treading runes'--that is
compressing them into a small compass by mingling one letter with
another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel the Arabic letters, more
especially those who write talismans.

'Nine arts have I, all noble;
I play at chess so free,
At ravelling runes I'm ready,
At books and smithery;
I'm skill'd o'er ice at skimming
On skates, I shoot and row,
And few at harping match me,
Or minstrelsy, I trow.'

But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian ranks
it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a grimy art,
there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not so forlorn as he
was, he would have turned to many things, honourable, of course, in
preference. He has no objection to ride a fine horse when he has the
opportunity: he has his day-dream of making a fortune of two hundred
thousand pounds by becoming a merchant and doing business after the
Armenian fashion; and there can be no doubt that he would have been glad
to wear fine clothes, provided he had had sufficient funds to authorize
him in wearing them. For the sake of wandering the country and plying
the hammer and tongs he would not have refused a commission in the
service of that illustrious monarch George the Fourth, provided he had
thought that he