said the dapper-looking man, "great poet, but
unhappy."

Unhappy? yes, I had heard that he had been unhappy; that he had roamed
about a fevered, distempered man, taking pleasure in nothing--that I had
heard; but was it true? was he really unhappy? was not this unhappiness
assumed, with the view of increasing the interest which the world took in
him? and yet who could say? He might be unhappy, and with reason. Was
he a real poet after all? might he not doubt himself? might he not have a
lurking consciousness that he was undeserving of the homage which he was
receiving? that it could not last? that he was rather at the top of
fashion than of fame? He was a lordling, a glittering, gorgeous
lordling: and he might have had a consciousness that he owed much of his
celebrity to being so; he might have felt that he was rather at the top
of fashion than of fame. Fashion soon changes, thought I, eagerly to
myself--a time will come, and that speedily, when he will be no longer in
the fashion; when this idiotic admirer of his, who is still grinning at
my side, shall have ceased to mould his style on Byron's; and this
aristocracy, squirearchy, and what not, who now send their empty
carriages to pay respect to the fashionable corpse, shall have
transferred their empty worship to some other animate or inanimate thing.
Well, perhaps after all it was better to have been mighty Milton in his
poverty and blindness--witty and ingenious Butler consigned to the tender
mercies of bailiffs, and starving Otway; they might enjoy more real
pleasure than this lordling; they must have been aware that the world
would one day do them justice--fame after death is better than the top of
fashion in life. They have left a fame behind them which shall never
die, whilst this lordling--a time will come when he will be out of
fashion and forgotten. And yet I don't know; didn't he write Childe
Harold and that ode? Yes, he wrote Childe Harold and that ode. Then a
time will scarcely come when he will be forgotten. Lords, squires, and
cockneys may pass away, but a time will scarcely come when Childe Harold
and that ode will be forgotten. He was a poet, after all, and he must
have known it; a real poet, equal to . . . to . . . what a destiny! Rank,
beauty, fashion, immortality,--he could not be unhappy; what a difference
in the fate of men! I wish I could think he was unhappy . . .

I turned away.

"Great poet, sir," said the dapper man, turning aw