different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet. "No
Feverel has ever written poetry."

"I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked. "He rhymes
very prettily to me."

A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry,
quieted Sir Austin's fears.

The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty;
and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced
several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to
him. Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at
his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing:
he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin
manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, "Poor
boy!"

Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in
his Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to
destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason
cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of
abhorrent despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under it. A strange
man had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his skull
with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an
infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was making him feel such
an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw
in its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man
having departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner,
stated that it would give him pleasure to see those same precocious,
utterly valueless, scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining
mental blossoms spontaneously fell away. Richard's spirit stood bare.
He protested not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay
a minute in doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a
drawer in his room, and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected
by Sir Austin, the secretive youth drew out bundle after bundle: each
neatly tied, named, and numbered: and pitched them into flames. And so
Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence
between Father and Son.

CHAPTER XIII

It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the Age
of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is dangerous, and
to see it, a communication of the disease. People at Raynham were put on
their guard by the ba