er, and even the
poet at last wear the smug regimentals of mediocrity and mammon. Ye
younger choir especially have a care, for, though you sing with the
tongues of men and angels, and wear not a silk hat, it shall avail you
nothing. Neither Time, which is Mudie, nor Eternity, which is Fame, will
know you, and your verses remain till doom in an ironical _editio
princeps_, which not even the foolish bookman shall rescue from the
threepenny box. It is very unlikely that you will escape as did
Narcissus, for though, indeed,

'He swept a fine majestic sweep
Of toga Tennysonian,
Wore strange soft hat, that such as you
Would tremble to be known in,'

nevertheless, he somehow won happier fates, on which, perhaps, it would
be unbecoming in so close a friend to dilate.

The 'true' poet is, first of all, a gentleman, usually modest, never
arrogant, and only assertive when pushed. He does not by instinct take
himself seriously, as the 'poet-ape' doth, though if he meets with
recognition it becomes, of course, his duty to acknowledge his faculty,
and make good Scriptural use of it.

He is probably least confident, however, when praised; and never, except
in rare moments, especially of eclipse, has he a strong faith in the
truth that is in him. Therefore crush him, saith the Philistine, as we
crush the vine; strike him, as one strikes the lyre. When young, he
imagines the world to be filled with one ambition; later on, he finds
that so indeed it is--but the name thereof is not Poesy. Strange! sighs
he. And if, when he is seventeen, he writes a fluent song, and his
fellow-clerk admire it, why, it is nothing; surely the ledger-man hath
such scraps in his poke, or at least can roll off better. 'True bards
believe all able to achieve what they achieve,' said Naddo. But lo! that
ambition is a word that begins with pounds and ends with pence--like
life, quoth the ledger-man, who, after all, had but card-scores, a
tailor's account, and the bill for his wife's confinement in his pocket.

All through his life he loves his last-written most, and no honey of
Hybla is so sweet as a new rhyme. Let no maid hope to rival it with her
lips--she but interrupts: for the travail of a poet is even as that of
his wife--after the pain comes that dear joy of a new thing born into
the world, which doting sipping dream beware to break. Fifty repetitions
of the new sweetness, fifty deliberate rollings of it under the tongue,
is, I understand