would be for Rickman an unspeakable benefit at this
critical stage of his career.

The chastening and controlling were difficult. Rickman's phrases were
frequently more powerful than polite. Like many young writers of
violent imagination he was apt to be somewhat vividly erotic in his
metaphors. And he had little ways that were very irritating to
Jewdwine. He was wasteful with the office paper and with string; he
would use penny stamps where halfpenny ones would have served his
purpose; he had once permitted himself to differ with Jewdwine on a
point of scholarship in the presence of the junior clerk. There were
times when Jewdwine longed to turn him out and have done with him; and
yet Rickman stayed on. When all was said and done there was a charm
about him. Jewdwine in fact had proved the truth of Lucia's saying; he
could rely absolutely on his devotion. He could not afford to let him
go. Though Rickman tampered shamelessly with the traditions of the
review, it could not be said that as yet he had injured its
circulation. His contributions were noticed with approval in rival
columns; and they had even been quoted by Continental critics with
whom _The Museion_ passed as being the only British review that had
the true interests of literature at heart.

But though Rickman helped to bring fame to _The Museion_, _The
Museion_ brought none to him. The identity of its contributors was
merged in that of its editor, and those brilliant articles were never
signed.

The spring of ninety-three, which found Jewdwine comfortably seated
on the summit of his ambition, saw Rickman almost as obscure as in the
spring of ninety-two. His poems had not yet appeared. Vaughan
evidently regarded them as so many sensitive plants, and, fearing for
them the boisterous seasons of autumn and spring, had kept them back
till the coming May, when, as he expressed it, the market would be
less crowded. This delay gave time to that erratic artist, Mordaunt
Crawley, to complete the remarkable illustrations on which Vaughan
relied chiefly for success. Vaughan had spared no expense, but
naturally it was the artist and the printer, not the poet, whom he
paid.

Rickman, however, had not thought of his _Saturnalia_ as a source of
revenue. It had been such a pleasure to write them that the wonder was
he had not been called upon to pay for that. Happily for him he was by
this time independent. As sub-editor and contributor to _The Museion_,
he was drawing