alf-unconscious act you had that moment been answering for the first
time the helm of an almost forgotten resolution? Ah me, blessed is it to
see the prow strongly sweeping up against the sky at last!

'Send not a poet to London,' said Heine, and it was a true word. At
least, send him not till his thews are laced and his bones set. He may
miss somewhat, of course; there is no gain without a loss. He may be in
ignorance of the last _nuance_, and if he deserves fame he must gain it
unaided of the vulgar notoriety which, if he have a friend or two in the
new journalism, they will be so eager to bestow; but he will have kept
his soul intact, which, after all, is the main matter. It is sweet,
doubtless, to be one of those same mushroom-men, sweet to be placarded
as 'the new' this or that, to step for a day into the triumphal car of
newspaper renown, drawn by teams of willing paragraph-men--who, does it
never strike you? are but doing it all for hire, and earning their bread
by their bent necks. Yet for those to whom it is denied there is solid
comfort; for it is not fame, and, worse still, it is not life, 'tis but
to be 'a Bourbon in a crown of straws.'

If one could only take poor foolish Cockneydom right away outside this
poor vainglorious city, and show them how the stars are smiling to
themselves above it, nudging each other, so to say, at the silly lights
that ape their shining--for such a little while!

Yes, that is one danger of the poet in London, that he should come to
think himself 'somebody'; though, doubtless, in proportion as he is a
poet, the other danger will be the greater, that he should deem himself
'nobody.' Modest by nature, credulous of appearances, the noisy
pretensions of the hundred and one small celebrities, and the din of
their retainers this side and that, in comparison with his own
unattended course, what wonder if his heart sinks and he gives up the
game; how shall his little pipe, though it be of silver, hope to be
heard in this land of bassoons? To take London seriously is death both
to man and artist. Narcissus had sufficient success there to make this a
temptation, and he fell. He lost his hold of the great things of life,
he forgot the stars, he forgot his love, and what wonder that his art
sickened also. For a few months life was but a feverish clutch after
varied sensation, especially the dear tickle of applause; he caught the
facile atheistic flippancy of that poor creature, the 'modern