Surely he was better employed in plying the
trades of tinker and smith than in having recourse to vice, in
running after milk-maids, for example. Running after milk-maids is
by no means an ungenteel rural diversion; but let any one ask some
respectable casuist (the Bishop of London for example), whether
Lavengro was not far better employed, when in the country, at
tinkering and smithery than he would have been in running after all
the milk-maids in Cheshire, though tinkering is in general
considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better,
notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about
eight hundred years ago, reckons the latter among nine noble arts
which he possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the
harp, and ravelling runes, or as the original has it, "treading
runes"--that is, compressing them into a small compass by mingling
one letter with another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel
the Arabic letters, more especially those who write talismans.
"Nine arts have I, all noble;
I play at chess so free,
At ravelling runes I'm ready,
At books and smithery;
I'm skilled o'er ice at skimming
On skates, I shoot and row,
And few at harping match me,
Or minstrelsy, I trow."
But though Lavengro takes up smithery, which, though the Orcadian
ranks it with chess-playing and harping, is certainly somewhat of a
grimy art, there can be no doubt that, had he been wealthy and not
so forlorn as he was, he would have turned to many things,
honourable, of course, in preference.
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