tratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet
Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged,
until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and
the lips that murmured, patient forever!

'So angels walked unknown on earth,
But when they flew were recognized!'

What if my poor story is stale and flat beside the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Sir
Walter Scott's genius? Barry, there is a little bird in our New-England
woods known only by its pleasant chirp; yet who would break its amber bill
because the nightingales in eastern lands warble so deliciously?"

Barry laughed.

"There you come, Ralph, with your bird-conceits! You flap the wings of some
thread-bare metaphor in my face, and I cannot see for the feathers! You are
not a man to argue with. Poetical men never are: they make up in sentiment
what they lack in sense; and very often it happens that a bit of poetry is
more than a match for a piece of logic. 'No more of that, Hal, an' thou
lovest me.' Your book is a miserable one. All your voluble ingenuity
cannot controvert _that_."

Barry's better nature had slipped out of him for a moment into the
sunshine, like a turtle's head; but it slipped back again, and the speech
that commenced with a laugh ended with a snarl.

"It shows," he said, rumpling the manuscript with a careless hand, "a want
of Art. The construction of the tale is crude: the characters are all old
friends with new names--broken down stage-horses with new harnesses--and
the prose throughout is uneven. How can it be otherwise, since it is only
an intolerable echo of Hood, Dickens, and Charles Reade? Your want of
artistic genius is shown in taking three chapters to elaborate "little
Bell," who has no kind of influence in working out the plot, and who dies
conveniently at Chapter III. Your imitative proclivities are prominent in
the chapter headed 'A Few Specimens of Humanity.' Was ever anything more
like the author of 'The Old Curiosity Shop?' Your short, jerky sentences
are modeled after Reade's 'Peg Woffington,' and 'Christie Johnstone,' or
any of Dumas' thefts. As to the plot, _that_ is altogether too improbable
and silly for serious criticism. And then the title, 'Daisy's
Necklace'--'Betsy's Garter!'"

"Ah, Barry, this is only Fadladeen and Feramorz over again! Do you
remember that after all the strictures of the eastern _savant_, Feramorz
turned out to be not only a Poet but a Prince? I cou