With or without such assistance, but certainly _con amore_, and with
the aid of his own genius, if of no other, Glover went to work: ere
long shouts of admiration were heard one evening in the kitchen, so
loud and of such long continuance that enquiry was made from the
parlour into the cause, and the reply was that Mrs. L.'s man was
brought home. Out we went, father, mother and daughters, (yourself
among them,—for you cannot have forgotten that memorable hour), My
Lady and the Venerabilis,—and Mrs. L. herself, as the person more
immediately concerned. Seldom as it happens that any artist can embody
with perfect success the conceptions of another, in this instance the
difficult and delicate task had been perfectly accomplished. But I
must describe the Man,—calling him by that name at present, the power,
_æon_ or intelligence which had incorporated itself with that ligneous
resemblance of humanity not having at that time been suspected.
Yet methinks more properly might he have been called youth than man,
the form and stature being juvenile. The limbs and body were slender,
though not so as to convey any appearance of feebleness, it was rather
that degree of slenderness which in elegant and refined society is
deemed essential to grace. The countenance at once denoted strength
and health and hilarity, and the incomparable carpenter had given it
an expression of threatful and alert determination, suited to the
station for which he was designed and the weapon which he bore. The
shape of the face was rather round than oval, resembling methinks the
broad harvest moon; the eyes were of the deepest black, the eyebrows
black also; and there was a blackness about the nose and lips, such as
might be imagined in the face of Hercules, while he was in the act of
lifting and strangling the yet unsubdued and struggling Antæus. On his
head was a little hat, low in the crown and narrow in the brim. His
dress was a sleeved jacket without skirts,—our ancestors would have
called it a gipion, _jubon_ it would be rendered if ever this
description were translated into Spanish, _gibão_ in Portuguese,
_jupon_ or _gippon_ in old French. It was fastened from the neck
downward with eight white buttons, two and two, and between them was a
broad white stripe, the colour of the gipion being brown: whether the
strype was to represent silver lace, or a white facing like that of
the naval uniform, is doubtful and of little consequence. The lower
part of his dress represented innominables and hose in one, of the
same colour as the gipion. And he carried a fowling-piece in his hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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