long-distance ride?' In that room (I frequented it on successive
days with this object) not a syllable did I hear regarding
Tennyson save the sentence faithfully recorded."

Poetry not beloved by any one Class.

Mr. Gissing, be it observed, speaks only of the class which he has
studied: but in talking of "demos," or, more loosely, of "democracy,"
we must be careful not to limit these terms to the "lower" and
"lower-middle" classes. For Poetry, who draws her priests and warders
from all classes of society, is generally beloved of none. The average
country magnate, the average church dignitary, the average
professional man, the average commercial traveller--to all these she
is alike unknown: at least, the insensibility of each is
differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to
make distinctions. A public school and university education does as
little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a
three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of
matron one comes upon at a _table d'hote_. Five minutes after hearing
the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street,
a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He
stared for a moment, and then murmured that he was sorry to hear it.
Clearly he did not wish to hurt my feelings by confessing that he
hadn't the vaguest idea who Browning might be. And if anybody think
this an extreme case, let him turn to the daily papers and read the
names of those who were at Newmarket on that same afternoon when our
great poet was laid in the Abbey with every pretence of national
grief. The pursuit of one horse by another is doubtless a more
elevating spectacle than "the pursuit of a flea by a 'lady,'" but on
that afternoon even a tepid lover of letters must have found an equal
incongruity in both entertainments.

I do not say that the General Public hates Poetry. But I say that
those who care about it are few, and those who know about it are
fewer. Nor do these assert their right of interference as often as
they might. Just once or twice in the last ten or fifteen years they
have pulled up some exceptionally coarse weed on which the General
Public had every disposition to graze, and have pitched it over the
hedge to Lethe wharf, to root itself and fatten there; and terrible as
those of Polydorus have been the shrieks of the avulsed root. But as a
rule they have sat and piped upon th