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AUTHOR AND ARTIST.

A Sketch.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "IN THE SHADOW of God," etc.

ABOUT eight o'clock on a fine summer sweep before the door. As they approached,

morning, a vigorous hand swung open the handsome iron gate of Plas Wydllan, North Wales, and a couple of anglers, one of them bearing a basket of trout, entered the long avenue. Both were young; but there may have been some five years' difference between them. The mood of the elder was quiet and rather silent, as became a brother of the gentle craft; but the younger seemed excited, at one moment pleasurably, at the next rather painfully; sometimes he broke into a snatch of song, then relapsed into silence; sometimes he was disposed to rally his companion for his gravity, then as suddenly grew grave himself. The dress of both was suited to the hour and the occupation; but the younger had evidently bestowed thought and care upon his, as if he wished, and had a strong motive for wishing, to look his best and make a favourable impression. He was an author, but the name of Frank Merton was as yet unknown to fame; and, happily, he did not altogether depend upon fame for daily bread. His holiday companion and intimate friend, Charles Wiseheart, was a landscape painter, not famous, but farther advanced in his profession by at least three years of honest, earnest toil. Both looked upon the public for whose recognition they were labouring in hope, as they looked upon the stately mansion, now becoming visible through the trees, where they expected to find a cordial greeting and pleasant friends, and to sit down by-and-by as welcome guests at a well-spread board. They had a general invitation from the owner of Plas Wydllan, to "turn in" any morning their sport led them in that direction.

"I suppose, Frank," said Charles as they approached the house, "you hardly expect me to lounge about here all day. What is sport to one man may be death to another. You are the friend of the family; they only make me welcome for your sake. So, if all goes as you wish, I shall leave the field clear for you soon after breakfast, walk round by the shaking bridge, and finish that sketch I began on Monday. We can meet at the inn for dinner."

"All right," said Frank, with the air of one who added mentally, "I hope it may be all right."

They had now come to the wide gravelled

Frank's nervousness of manner increased. Glancing anxiously upwards at the bedroom windows, he observed that they were closed. "I don't like the look of things, Charlie," he said.

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Oh, we anglers, who rise at four, are apt to grow vague in our notions of time. It may be earlier than we thought."

"What if it were?" returned Frank with more sharpness than was quite necessary. "The family-the young ladies, at least, are all early risers, I know."

"Well, we shall soon see. The bell is at your side."

Frank rang, and more loudly than he intended; indeed, so loudly that he was startled by the sound. "Eh, that's too well done," he said. 'They will think me a tyrant in embryo."

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'They will not think about you till they hear your name and see your spoils," said Charles, unbuckling the strap which fastened the trout basket to his friend's shoulder.

"Capital trout, these,-how lucky we have been!"

"Say you; I'm not cool enough for an angler.

"The door is open."

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"The

Frank made a brief inquiry. "All away, sir," was the answer. family left this yesterday, for Switzerland.” "Left yesterday for Switzerland!” Frank echoed in tones of despair, while his bronzed face whitened visibly. After that, he said no more. Charles expressed their regret and vexation more calmly; and they turned away. In perfect silence they retraced their steps down the long avenue. But when they passed out of the gate, Charles said, "Let us go home across the moor."

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'Don't care if we do." Another silence; then Frank broke out impetuously, as his friend knew he was sure to do sooner or later, "Those three days' rain have undone me, spoiled everything! Had we but been here on Tuesday-ay, Wednesday even-all would have been right then, I am sure of it. Don't take that comfort from me, at least. A man knows his own chance, and, since the day of the picnic, I have known mine. Too late now! First Switzerland, then the London season-with all it brings to one like her. Next year?-you may as well say

next century—by next year she will be out of my reach, far as the Koh-i-noor. It's hard, hard to be the sport of fate in this way-to have one's whole life set wrong because the rain happens to fall one day rather than another. There is neither sense, nor reason, nor meaning in it all. Don't say a word to me about it, Charlie-words are no use. What's this Carlyle tells us about consuming our own smoke? At all events, I need not make you the victim of my worry and vexation. Let us talk of other things."

And Frank walked along proudly, with head erect and feet that almost spurned the ground, as if determined to trample down all personal considerations, and to afford his friend the sublime spectacle of a brokenhearted man heroically resigned and selfforgetful. Even in his keenest pain there was a touch of the self-consciousness fostered by the habit of analyzing and describing feeling; but there was also the sensitiveness and intensity of the true imaginative temperament.

Had any one told Charles that he was "managing" his friend, "playing him" skilfully, after the manner of anglers, he might have resented the accusation; and yet as a fact his knowledge of his character and his moods, a knowledge quickened by love, gave him, in dealing with him, that unconscious art which is really the perfection of art. He did not attempt consolation or remonstrance, but said presently, in a common-place tone, "We may as well relieve ourselves of the contents of our basket. The old man who showed us the way across that ugly bit of bog the other day, said he lived in a cabin down this lane. He seems very poor, and may be glad of our trout, either to eat or sell."

"He is welcome to my share. I hate the sight of them," said Frank bitterly.

It took them a few minutes to find the cottage, and some time longer to make themselves understood by the old man and his daughter, whose stock of English was limited. A neighbour's child, a stout rosy-cheeked lad, on his way to school, was stopped and pressed into the service; and Frank, who was fond of children, roused himself for a quiet joke with the stolid-looking, but not really unintelligent little Welshman. Altogether, half an hour had passed before the young men found themselves on the straight path across the moor and conversation was resumed.

Said the artist to the author, “I have often wanted to ask you, Frank, did you

intend from the beginning that Tom Saunders (don't be angry if I call him the villain of your story-not quite the traditional stage villain, I allow) should lose his life in that railway accident, or was it an after-thought at the end?"

Now the author, especially the young author, who does not meet an intelligent question about his mode of working halfway, must be more heavy of heart than even Frank Merton. Moreover, Frank was very fond of the theory of his art, and much given to expounding it.

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"I intended it," he said, "throughout. Don't you remember, in the very first scene, how he bullies his poor, timid little wife for being afraid to travel on those dreadful railways'? An author should have his whole plot in his mind before he puts pen to paper. The reader should not be able to forecast the issue, yet should know, when he discovers it, that the author knew it throughout, and was working for it, and up to it, from the first page."

"I have heard that some of the very best authors have not known the end from the beginning."

"That was the imperfection of their art," said Frank with the dogmatism of threeand-twenty. "They ought to have known. But the best things are not always the most faultless in construction. 'A diamond with a flaw is better than a pebble without one.' A comparatively commonplace work may be formally correct, and have a well-constructed plot, while a real work of genius may be badly arranged. Nay, the very force and vitality of the characters, the spirit of life in them, by which they prove themselves real creations, not mere qualities going about with labels on their backs, may sometimes prove too strong for their maker, and they may break from his control. Thackeray said, when asked why he married two of his characters, 'I did not do it; they did it themselves.'"

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"I understand. Then suppose an artist really perfect in his craft-an ideal artist. He would unite the strongest creative power with the greatest self-control and the largest faculty for arrangement."

"Pardon me, I think it is all creative power from first to last. The plot, or plan, should be a perfect, harmonious whole, a real 'mystery' in the true sense of that much-abused word; not a hopeless puzzle, but a secret kept for a time and with a purpose, then revealed to the full satisfaction of all. No one should discover it beforehand, but when

revealed, every one should recognise it, as
the one right and natural thing.
"Stop a minute, Frank. There is a
thought working in my mind that I want to
tell you.
One understands a thing better in
trying to do it than in any other way-is it

not so?"

"Yes; as my worthless little sketches help me to see all there is in your pictures." These two friends believed thoroughly each in the other.

the fortune that enables him to marry your heroine; brings out the self-forgetting courage hidden under the quiet, shy exterior of the reputed dunce Lockton; and, not least, points the moral of your whole book, which is a voice crying in the wilderness against the hurry and strain of our modern civilisation, the 'setting the how much before the how,' the rushing about at railway speed, which too often involves railway catas trophes."

"Couldn't have put it better myself," admitted candidly the gratified author.

"And my own 'worthless little sketches,' as in comparison they may truly be called, have given me a new sense-have awakened "Thus your great idea, planned at the bemy heart and opened my eyes as nothing else ginning, is developed gradually, and worked could have done to the wonders of His work-out finally to your own satisfaction and that ing who has painted the glories of the sun- of your readers." shine, the bright clouds with their matchless lights and shadows, the mountains, the trees, the rivers and brooks of water, and all this magnificent world. Yet I think your art has a secret or two of His ways to teach which even mine cannot reveal. The very name you give it, and not wrongly, the name of creative art, witnesses that it is an outcome of the instinct of the child, ever prompting him to mimic the Father's work."

"Go on. I should like to see how you work that out. Though there's a deal of romance in you, Charlie." "Well, then

'God Himself is the true poet,

And the real is His song.'

"A very strange song!" Frank broke in bitterly. "And with scant harmony. Indeed with none, that I can perceive. Come now, Charlie, don't go and take a fellow up. You know I mean no harm. But wherever I look, whether at the concerns of the big world, the infinitely great, or at my own, the infinitely small, it seems a precious muddle. That's all I say."

"My own satisfaction? Halt there, Charlie." "Don't think I forget for a moment that your ideal must transcend your actual, and that its ceasing to do so would be the surest sign of decay and death; for aspiration is the very life of creative art, as indeed it must be, if my dream hold true. The kind of satisfaction I mean now is quite a lower thing, just a feeling that you have wrought out your plan, and there it remains; you have had a word to say, and you have said it. Meanwhile, what you do for the whole you do for each part, and the more perfectly the more perfect your work. Say you have ten, twenty characters, 'persons' in the true dramatic sense (and you might have many more), each stands distinct in his or her own individuality, each is the object of your special care, each acted upon by every influence you bring forward; it may be the same influence, the same event, yet to one it is life, to another death; to one joy, to another sorrow; just as you intend, and as they need for their proper development. Does not this help you to see a little way-a very little way, truly-into the methods of the great Artist's working? Of the grand revelation that shall take place in that day when the mystery of God is finished,' we may not speak now, since, by the very nature of things, we know not, and we cannot know, what it shall be. But I am well content to wait. I know it will be worthy of Him. I know, moreover, that there is in the universe one man who knows it already, and He is satisfied.”

"Ought that to surprise you, disciple of the Maker's craft? The more consummate the artist, the more complicated the nexus, -the plot or plan of his work-the more bewildering the puzzle he gives us. We toil at it in vain; while he, knowing the end from the beginning, holds every thread firm and distinct in his own grasp, and will, at last, resolve apparent confusion into order, discord into harmony. And what is true of the work as a whole is true of every part of it. In a perfect story, each character is dealt "One man?" Frank repeated musing. with carefully on its own merits and in its "But the dead are many. 'Gone over to own individuality. One is not sacrificed to the majority,' used the ancients say." another. Take your own, for example: the "I do not speak of many, but of One, who same accident that kills Saunders (to every-liveth and was dead,'" said Charles with a body's relief) gives your hero, by his death, low thrill in his voice.

"But let that rest

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for the present. Come with me a step farther. What the Great Artist does for the whole, that does He as carefully for each. Each life-story is complete, as if God and that one soul existed alone in the universe, and all things were ordered with reference to it."

"Oh, I begin to understand! You think that we makers are in some sort a providence to the beings we create, and that ought to help us to receive what you would call the doctrine of a particular providence."

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"Just so. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?' Incomprehensible to us, of course, and yet we can comprehend that it must be so in the infinite mind of God, because He is infinite."

"Then you would have me believe that even an accident seemingly trivial-nay, a thing that must affect thousands of other people as well as me, such as a rainy day, for example, has its special meaning and message for me?that God sent it into my life with a purpose, that he thought of me, planned for me?"

"I do mean that, Frank."

"But--"Frank paused, his eyes full of an unspoken doubt and pain-" but I do the best I can for my characters-the best I know."

"What is your best?

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By the way, Frank, do you not love the persons of your story?"

"Don't ask me," said Frank, half laughing. "I'm sure I have bored you often enough with them to make you hate them."

"Then why not deal with them as with persons you love in real life? There is Gertrude, your heroine, a sweet girl too. One would think you would fly to the world's end to save her the least pain or sorrow; but, on the contrary, you plunge her into a sea of troubles one after the other-one worse than the other."

"Whom the poet loves he allows to suffer," Frank quoted.

"While those we love in real life we would not allow to suffer at all, could we help it, even by suffering in their stead," Charles continued. "What makes the difference? Is it that, after all, your creations are not real to you?"

"No, a thousand times! The more real my creation becomes, the more intensely I love-well, say Gertrude, for example-the more I am content, nay, in a strange sense, glad, that she should suffer because it makes her so beautiful.

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'The sweet work grows Beneath my hand, unfolding, as a rose, Leaf after leaf to beauty.'

Or rather, like the statue beneath the sculptor's chisel. Who grudges the blows that fall upon it, knowing them necessary to its perfection? When we love our characters, we love the best that is in them, and that best we will bring out, exalt, purify, never heeding their pain, or our own for them, while we see it doing. Not that there is no pain, Charles-far from it: I went with Gertrude through everything she suffered with an intensity of feeling that was almost agony. Still, I would not spare one drop of the cup, one touch of the chisel; for I so loved her, and I wished every one to love her as I did." "Well, Frank, and what if God loves like that ?"

Frank made no answer, and they walked on in silence. At last he said quite suddenly, Charlie, I see a tremendous difference." "Where?"

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"Gertrude could not refuse the training I meant for her, set up her will against minein fact, fight with her maker."

"You have just hit the point where my whole comparison breaks down, as every comparison must, somewhere or other. The poet or maker, however great his genius, can only make shadows, not real things. When all is done, and after all, he is but a 'mimic,' as we said, a little child playing at his father's handicraft, and making believe' that he makes real things,-coats, houses, what not,—as father does. But it is making believe, and he knows it. It is only God whose thoughts are living souls."" "Well?"

"Don't you see? That terrible possibility which exists for us and not for our mimic creations is the birthright of the living soul.

'Able, His own Word saith, to grieve Him,

But able to glorify Him too.'

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For they had just come out upon the high road again. Near them was a little stone quarry, and on the other side of the road a row of neat, substantial cottages, built for the accommodation of the quarrymen.

"Willingly," said Charles.

we gave away our fish."

"I am sorry

66 Silver fish will do as well, I dare say. Come now, which shall we try ?"

"This one," Charles decided, coming to a halt. "There are flowers in the window."

"And therefore the occupants are likely to be better than their neighbours? Eh, disciple of Ruskin? Come along then."

He drew near the small half-open door, but Charles pulled him back. "Look at that 'interior,'" he whispered, with an artist's pleasure in his tone. The neat kitchen was in shadow, except for one sunbeam that leaves that obscured the little window. But struggled through the rose and geranium the fire was burning clearly, filling half the room with a warm, soft glow. Two children were playing on the floor; they were not remarkably pretty, yet they came well into unconscious grace of their attitudes. the picture, with their golden hair and the young girl sat in an arm-chair by the fire, and a homely pitcher on a small table near her held a nosegay of rare hot-house flowers which awakened Frank's curiosity, while they supplied Charles with a spot of intense scarlet, another of purest blue, and some tender rose-pinks and purples to complete his satisfaction with the whole.

A

Presently a woman appeared from an inner room and came towards the door. The hungry anglers accosted her, explained their necessity and preferred their request. She responded good-naturedly, and invited them in. Her husband and two sons were at work in the quarry, she said, as she placed chairs for them, and sent the children out of the way, and that was her eldest daughter.

In

The same thought, the same feeling, struck the hearts of both the young men, though neither betrayed it by word or sign. entering that lowly dwelling, they had entered the presence of a great King, to whom none refuse their reverence, their awe. Death was there before them. That pale slender girl, propped by pillows in the one arm-chair the cottage contained, was evidently in almost the last stage of consump tion. It was characteristic of both that Frank instinctively sought the chair farthest from the invalid, whilst Charles sat down contentedly, perhaps designedly, beside her.

Bread and bacon and beer were quickly

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