hose
sudden leap into the front rank has always laid a special hold on
my imagination. The name of the novel itself I cannot recall; but I
remember the name of the young poet--Aylmer Deane; and the forever
unforgettable title of his book of verse was POMENTS: BEING POEMS OF
THE MOOD AND THE MOMENT. What would I not give to possess a copy of that
work?

Though he had suffered, and though suffering is a sovereign preparation
for great work, I did not at the outset foresee that Aylmer Deane was
destined to wear the laurel. In real life I have rather a flair for
future eminence. In novels I am apt to be wise only after the event.
There the young men who do in due course take the town by storm have
seldom shown (to my dull eyes) promise. Their spoken thoughts have
seemed to me no more profound or pungent than my own. All that is best
in these authors goes into their work. But, though I complain of them on
this count, I admit that the thrill for me of their triumphs is the more
rapturous because every time it catches me unawares. One of the greatest
emotions I ever had was from the triumph of THE GIFT OF GIFTS. Of this
novel within a novel the author was not a young man at all, but an
elderly clergyman whose life had been spent in a little rural parish.
He was a dear, simple old man, a widower. He had a large family, a small
stipend. Judge, then, of his horror when he found that his eldest son,
'a scholar at Christminster College, Oxbridge,' had run into debt for
many hundreds of pounds. Where to turn? The father was too proud to
borrow of the neighbourly nobleman who in Oxbridge days had been his
'chum.' Nor had the father ever practised the art of writing. (We are
told that 'his sermons were always extempore.') But, years ago, 'he had
once thought of writing a novel based on an experience which happened to
a friend of his.' This novel, in the fullness of time, he now proceeded
to write, though 'without much hope of success.' He knew that he was
suffering from heart-disease. But he worked 'feverishly, night after
night,' we are told, 'in his old faded dressing-gown, till the dawn
mingled with the light of his candle and warned him to snatch a few
hours' rest, failing which he would be little able to perform the round
of parish duties that awaited him in the daytime.' No wonder he had
'not much hope.' No wonder I had no spark of hope for him. But what are
obstacles for but to be overleapt? What avails heart-disease, what avai