t poets never are. Who can say that you, dear
unappreciated brother or sister, are not one of those whom it is left
for after times to discover among the wrecks of the past, and hold up to
the admiration of the world?

I have not thought it necessary to put in all the interpellations, as
the French call them, which broke the course of this somewhat extended
series of remarks; but the comments of some of The Teacups helped me to
shape certain additional observations, and may seem to the reader as of
more significance than what I had been saying.

Number Seven saw nothing but the folly and weakness of the "rhyming
cranks," as he called them. He thought the fellow that I had described
as blubbering over his still-born poems would have been better occupied
in earning his living in some honest way or other. He knew one chap that
published a volume of verses, and let his wife bring up the wood for
the fire by which he was writing. A fellow says, "I am a poet!" and he
thinks himself different from common folks. He ought to be excused
from military service. He might be killed, and the world would lose the
inestimable products of his genius. "I believe some of 'em think," said
Number Seven, "that they ought not to be called upon to pay their taxes
and their bills for household expenses, like the rest of us."

"If they would only study and take to heart Horace's 'Ars Poetica,'"
said the Professor, "it would be a great benefit to them and to the
world at large. I would not advise you to follow him too literally, of
course, for, as you will see, the changes that have taken place since
his time would make some of his precepts useless and some dangerous,
but the spirit of them is always instructive. This is the way, somewhat
modernized and accompanied by my running commentary, in which he
counsels a young poet:

"'Don't try to write poetry, my boy, when you are not in the mood
for doing it,--when it goes against the grain. You are a fellow of
sense,--you understand all that.

"'If you have written anything which you think well of, show it to
Mr.______, the well-known critic; to "the governor," as you call
him,--your honored father; and to me, your friend.'

"To the critic is well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out
of conceit with yourself,--it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the
governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what
you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as