e has to
perform the honest drudgery which another can do for him quite as well.
And it is just so with the poet, though he were only finishing an
epigram; you must no more meddle roughly with him than you would shake a
bottle of Chambertin and expect the "sunset glow" to redden your glass
unclouded. On the other hand, it may be said that poetry is not an
article of prime necessity, and potatoes are. There is a disposition in
many persons just now to deny the poet his benefit of clergy, and to hold
him no better than other people. Perhaps he is not, perhaps he is not so
good, half the time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you must pay
for him, by not trying to make a drudge of him while he is all his
lifetime struggling with the chills and heats of his artistic
intermittent fever.

There may have been some lesser interruptions during the talk I have
reported as if it was a set speech, but this was the drift of what I said
and should have said if the other man, in the Review I referred to, had
not seen fit to meddle with the subject, as some fellow always does, just
about the time when I am going to say something about it. The old Master
listened beautifully, except for cutting in once, as I told you he did.
But now he had held in as long as it was in his nature to contain
himself, and must have his say or go off in an apoplexy, or explode in
some way.--I think you're right about the poets,--he said.--They are to
common folks what repeaters are to ordinary watches. They carry music in
their inside arrangements, but they want to be handled carefully or you
put them out of order. And perhaps you must n't expect them to be quite
as good timekeepers as the professional chronometer watches that make a
specialty of being exact within a few seconds a month. They think too
much of themselves. So does everybody that considers himself as having a
right to fall back on what he calls his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man has such
a right, and it is no easy thing to adjust the private claim to the fair
public demand on him. Suppose you are subject to tic douloureux, for
instance. Every now and then a tiger that nobody can see catches one
side of your face between his jaws and holds on till he is tired and lets
go. Some concession must be made to you on that score, as everybody can
see. It is fair to give you a seat that is not in the draught, and your
friends ought not to find fault with you if you do not care to join a
pa