"I will not offer you my hand," said he; "it is grimy with Cleopatra's
clay."
"No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human," answered Miriam.
"I have come to try whether there is any calm and coolness among
your marbles. My own art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of
agitation, for me to work at it whole days together, without intervals
of repose. So, what have you to show me?"
"Pray look at everything here," said Kenyon. "I love to have painters
see my work. Their judgment is unprejudiced, and more valuable than that
of the world generally, from the light which their own art throws on
mine. More valuable, too, than that of my brother sculptors, who never
judge me fairly,--nor I them, perhaps."
To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens in marble or
plaster, of which there were several in the room, comprising originals
or casts of most of the designs that Kenyon had thus far produced. He
was still too young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things.
What he had to show were chiefly the attempts and experiments, in
various directions, of a beginner in art, acting as a stern tutor to
himself, and profiting more by his failures than by any successes of
which he was yet capable. Some of them, however, had great merit; and
in the pure, fine glow of the new marble, it may be, they dazzled the
judgment into awarding them higher praise than they deserved. Miriam
admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got
entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the
pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the seaweeds, all of like value to
him now.
"The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,"
remarked she. "But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we
cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as
well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral
lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient
repose."
In another style, there was a grand, calm head of Milton, not copied
from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any of them,
because all known representations of the poet had been profoundly
studied, and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over the tomb in
Grey Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures, wherever to
be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work; wherein,
likewise, by long perusal and deep love of the Paradise Lost, the Comus,
the Lycidas, and L'Allegro, the sculptor had succeeded, even better than
he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And
this was a great thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the
dry bones and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man.