He will not run into debt for clothes or
lodgings, which he might do without any scandal to gentility; he
will not receive money from Francis Ardry, and go to Brighton with
the sister of Annette Le Noir, though there is nothing ungenteel in
borrowing money from a friend, even when you never intend to repay
him, and something poignantly genteel in going to a watering-place
with a gay young Frenchwoman; but he has no objection, after
raising twenty pounds by the sale of that extraordinary work
"Joseph Sell," to set off into the country, mend kettles under
hedge-rows, and make pony and donkey shoes in a dingle. Here,
perhaps, some plain, well-meaning person will cry--and with much
apparent justice--how can the writer justify him in this act? What
motive, save a love for what is low, could induce him to do such a
thing? Would the writer have everybody who is in need of
recreation go into the country, mend kettles under hedges, and make
pony shoes in dingles? To such an observation the writer would
answer, that Lavengro had an excellent motive in doing what he did,
but that the writer is not so unreasonable as to wish everybody to
do the same. It is not everybody who can mend kettles. It is not
everybody who is in similar circumstances to those in which
Lavengro was.
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