Marshal of France, she condescended to invite me. The
Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won't it be exciting to
meet one's two flames at the same table?"

"Two flames!--two heaps of burnt-out cinders," Warrington said. "Are
both the beauties in this book?"

"Both, or something like them," Pen said. "Leonora, who marries the
Duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the Duke from Magnus Charters, with
whom I was at Oxford; it's a little like him; and Miss Amory is Neaera.
By gad, that first woman! I thought of her as I walked home from Lady
Whiston's in the moonlight; and the whole early scenes came back to me
as if they had been yesterday. And when I got home, I pulled out the
story which I wrote about her and the other three years ago: do you
know, outrageous as it is, it has some good stuff in it, and if Bungay
won't publish it, I think Bacon will."

"That's the way of poets," said Warrington. "They fall in love, jilt, or
are jilted; they suffer and they cry out that they suffer more than any
other mortals: and when they have experienced feelings enough they note
them down in a book, and take the book to market. All poets are humbugs,
all literary men are humbugs; directly a man begins to sell his feelings
for money he's a humbug. If a poet gets a pain in his side from too good
a dinner, he bellows Ai Ai louder than Prometheus."

"I suppose a poet has a greater sensibility than another man," said Pen,
with some spirit. "That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that he
sees and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak, of what he
feels and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading articles when
you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in the
House. Paley, who does not care for anything else in the world, will
talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the privilege
which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and let him
be what nature has made him. Why should not a man sell his sentimental
thoughts as well as you your political ideas, or Paley his legal
knowledge? Each alike is a matter of experience and practice. It is not
money which causes you to perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue a point;
but a natural or acquired aptitude for that kind of truth: and a poet
sets down his thoughts and experiences upon paper as a painter does
a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of his ability, and
according to his particular gift. If ever I think I ha