Did I say to the artist?  What fell words were those, expressive of what a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery!  I—­I—­I—­am the artist.  I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the real artist of the Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-subjects which daily and nightly arouse your admiration.  I do ’em, and I let ’em out.  The man you behold with the papers of chalks and the rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of the writing and shading off the salmon, the man you give the credit to, the man you give the money to, hires—­yes! and I live to tell it!—­hires those works of art of me, and brings nothing to ’em but the candles.

Such is genius in a commercial country.  I am not up to the shivering, I am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the wanting-employment-in-an-office move; I am only up to originating and executing the work.  In consequence of which you never see me; you think you see me when you see somebody else, and that somebody else is a mere Commercial character.  The one seen by self and Mr. Click in the Waterloo Road can only write a single word, and that I taught him, and it’s MULTIPLICATION—­which you may see him execute upside down, because he can’t do it the natural way.  The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber—­if very hard put upon making a show—­but he could no more come the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most celebrated effects.

To conclude as I began:  if there’s a blighted public character going, I am the party.  And often as you have seen, do see, and will see, my Works, it’s fifty thousand to one if you’ll ever see me, unless, when the candles are burnt down and the Commercial character is gone, you should happen to notice a neglected young man perseveringly rubbing out the last traces of the pictures, so that nobody can renew the same.  That’s me.

CHAPTER IV—­HIS WONDERFUL END

It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing writings.  From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the inference will, ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add, the gentle reader?) that I sold them to One who never yet—­{2}

Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms,—­for, in opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placing myself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another, {2,}—­resumed my usual functions.  But I too soon discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within.

It were superfluous to veil it,—­the brow to which I allude is my own.