of them, done in
the true spirit of work, is every bit as dignified as the writing of
poetry, and often, I am afraid, a great deal more so. This scorn of the
common man is but another instance of the poet's ignorance of the facts of
life and the relations of things. The hysterical bitterness with which
certain sections of modern people of taste are constantly girding at the
_bourgeois_--which, indeed, as Omar Khayyam says, heeds 'as the sea's self
should heed a pebble-cast'--is one of the most melancholy of recent
literary phenomena. It was not so the great masters treated the common
man, nor any full-blooded age. But the torch of taste has for the moment
fallen into the hands of little men, anaemic and atrabilious, with neither
laughter nor pity in their hearts.

Besides, how easy it is to misjudge your so-called 'common man'! That fat,
undistinguished-looking Briton in the corner of the omnibus is as likely
as not Mr. So-and-So, the distinguished poet; and who but those with the
divining-rod of a kind heart know what refined sensibility and nobility of
character may lurk under an extremely _bourgeois_ exterior?

We live in an age of every man his own priest and his own lawyer. At a
pinch we can very well be every man his own poet. If the whole
supercilious crew of modern men of letters, artists, and critics were
wiped off the earth to-morrow, the world would be hardly conscious of the
loss. Nay, if even the entire artistic accumulation of the past were to be
suddenly swallowed up, it would be little worse off. For the world is more
beautiful and wonderful than anything that has ever been written about it,
and the most glorious picture is not so beautiful as the face of a spring
morning.

APOLLO'S MARKET

The question is sometimes asked 'how poets sell.' One feels inclined
idealistically to ask, 'Ought poets to sell?' What can poets want with
money?--dear children of the rainbow, who from time immemorial

... on honeydew have fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Have you never felt a sort of absurdity in paying for a rose--especially
if you paid in copper? To pay for a thing of beauty in coin of extreme
ugliness! There is obviously no equality of exchange in the transaction.
In fact, it is little short of an insult to the flower-girl to pretend
that you thus satisfy the obligation. Far better let her give it you--for
the love of beauty--as very likely, if you explained the incongruity, she