And yet you call yourself a sculptor, sir? You with your tape a-trailing to and fro, Jotting down figures, frowning when I stir, Measuring me across the shoulders, so! And yet you are an artist, they aver, Heir to the crown of Michelangelo? I cannot think--eh, what? I ought to think? How will you have me? Shall I sit at ease, Staring at nothing thro' the eyelids' chink, Coining new words for old philosophies? Aye, so I sit until the pale stars wink And vanish ere the early morning breeze. Sculpture is dead, I say! We have no men To match the mighty masters of the past: I've read, I've seen their works; the acumen Of Learning on their triumph I have cast. Divine! Colossal! Tongue nor pen Can tell their beauty, O Iconoclast! Ah, now you're modelling--in the soft clay! In that prosaic task where is the glow Of genius, as in great Lorenzo's day, When, solitary in his studio, Buonarotti, in his "terrible way," Smote swift and hard the marble, blow on blow? One moment while I ask you, earnestly, Where is the splendour of the Dorian gone, The genius of him whose mastery Outshines the classic grace of Sicyon, Whose art can show Death lock'd with Life, the cry, The shuddering moan of poor Laocoön? _The Sculptor continues to model swiftly while the sitter remains motionless, watching him._ That's good, sir, good! I'll wait till you have done: We men of letters are a crabbéd race; Often we're blind with staring at the sun; And when the evening stars begin their race, We miss their beauty, we, who creep and run Like beetles o'er a buried Greek god's face. I am reluctant to explain one of the main _motifs_ of this young man's life as "an unfortunate love affair." Indeed, apart from his frank avowal of the wandering fever in his blood, I am grown to believe that it was the very reverse of unfortunate for him. It brought him, as such things do, face to face with Realities, and showed him, sharply enough, that at a certain point in a man's life there is a Gate, guarded by the Fates, whose questions he must answer truthfully, or turn sadly aside into the vague thickets of an aimless existence. And never did there live a youth more sincere in his thought. I know nothing more typical of him than his resolute refusal to sit for his portrait until he had _done_ something memorable. "What!" he would cry. "Why, the milk-man, who, I heard, has just had twins, is more worthy of that high honour than I. He has _done_ something in the world!"