Reprinted Pieces

t of water and the absence of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and sparrows. Like the little man in the nursery-story, I live by myself, and all the b

etter of introduction. The reader is now acquainted with

couraged that disposition. In my ‘top set’ I hear the wind howl on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable

it in Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) from ten to four; and when

were too much talk and too much law — as if some grains of t

ent that what I am going to describe myself as ha

res in the world; my education and reading have been sufficiently general to possess me beforehand with a knowledge of most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely to have recourse; and,

forty Academical articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England

mprudently walked on board. It began to thunder and lighten immediately afterwards, and the rain poured down in torrents. The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I went below; but so ma

eheld the terrible Being, who is the

heat as fast as he got wet, was a shabby man in threadbare black, and with his hands

Fairy Queen, Tom Jones, the Decameron of Boccaccio, Tam O’Shanter, the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London? Why, when he bent one leg, and plac

f all four, I knew not; but I was impelled to seize him by the throat, and charge him with being, in some fell way, connected with the Primrose blood. He looked up at the rain, and then — oh Heaven! — he b

inexplicably linked to my distress, stood drying himself at the funnel; and ever, as the steam rose from his clothes, diffus

to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself

are

, hoarsely

at?’

bob a-hour.’ (All through this narrative I give his o

ion of my confidence in my own sanity, I cannot describe. I should have fallen

f his coat-cuff, ‘are the gentleman whom I have so frequently contemplated, in con

joined moodily, ‘and I w

f many beautiful young women;’ as in truth I had, and alway

ith warses of flowers, and any number of table-k

?’ s

’n’t stood in half the suits of armour as ever came out of Pratt’s shop: and sat, for weeks together, a-eating nothing, out of half th

t he would never have found an end for the last word. B

me — I find, on examining my mind, that I associate you with — that my recolle

t didn’t,’ he said. ‘Do yo

’ sa

ranted you was a painter, and was to work at my throat for a week together, I suppose you’d see a lot of lumps and bu

said I, su

obby, at last, as if they was the trunks of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs and throat on to another man’s body, and you’ll make a

,’ said I, with a

public know’d the wery nails in by this time — or to be putting on greasy old ‘ats and cloaks, and playing tambourines in the Bay o’ Naples, with Wesuvius a smokin’ according to pattern in the background, and the wines a bearin

y no!’

he indignant Model.

he muttered the last words, can never be ef

this desperate Being was resolved

in his meaning. With a scornful la

D, MARK MY WORDS,

trembling hand. I conclude that something supernatural happened to the steamboat

t period, I found myself making my way home to the Temple, one night, in precisely such another storm of thunder and lightning as that by which I had bee

ry brick and stone in the place seemed to have an echo of its own for the thunder. The waterspouts we

under the staircase lamp on my landing, in order that I might light my candle there, whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins invariably disregarding all instr

been dry since our last meeting, stood the mysterious Being whom I had encountered on the steam

ed, in a hollow voice, ‘and I

re, what have you

’ was his reply, ‘i

And had he been so successful that he

sita

ome in?’

lower part of his face was tied up, in what is commonly called a Belcher handkerchief. He slowly removed this bandage, and expose

imed involuntarily, ‘an

host of Art

nder-storm at midnight, was appalling in the last de

d he, ‘and threw me out of brea

e jagged with his hands,

ver

d. It was

aning both hands on the staff of a carpet-broom

evol

t was entirely in the beard. The man might

d did ev

ble, and with that action of his h

death!’

eiling, cocked his beard a little awry; at t

vow of vengeanc

king his upper lip very bulky w

character,

s twist in the air, and informed me that he was carousing. He made it shaggy with his fingers — and it was

a-day now, and more when it’s longer! Hai

ND I’VE GROWN IT, AND

he never walked down or ran down. I looked over

his genius,) it fills my soul with terror at the British Institution, it lures young artists on to their destruction. Go where I will, the Ghost of Art, eter