“I should be an ungrateful brute if I was, sir.  I can bear anything from you.  I ought to, for I owe everything to you; but—­”

“But, my dear boy—­’better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.’”

John Briggs tapped his foot on the ground impatiently.  “I cannot help it, sir.  It will drive me mad, I think at times,—­this contrast between what I might be, and what I am, I can bear it no longer—­mixing medicines here, when I might be educating myself, distinguishing myself—­for I can do it; have you not said as much yourself to me again and again?”

“I have, of course; but—­”

“But, sir, only hear me.  It is in vain to ask me to command my temper while I stay here.  I am not fit for this work; not fit for the dull country.  I am not appreciated, not understood; and I shall never be, till I can get to London,—­till I can find congenial spirits, and take my rightful place in the great parliament of mind.  I am Pegasus in harness, here!” cried the vain, discontented youth.  “Let me but once get there,—­amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men like that old Mermaid Club, to hear and to answer—­

                                 ’words,
  So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
  As one had put his whole soul in a jest;’—­

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them too!” And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

“Do you remember the devil’s temptation of our Lord—­’Cast thyself down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee?”

“I do; but what has that to do with me?”

“Throw away the safe station in which God has certainly put you, to seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander one for yourself?  Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,—­ay, in every fallen leaf,—­to employ all your powers, considerable as I believe them to be?  Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?”

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse.  “Too slow—­too slow for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of obscurity, misconception, ridicule.  No.  What I have, I must have at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton—­if only, like Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men.”