Oats, you care for children, don’t you?’ ‘Ay, ay,’ would answer the farmer, a little doubtfully, ‘when they’re little’uns.’  ’Well, you know I’m what they call a poet.’  To this Mr. Oats would respond with a good round laugh, as of a man enjoying a good thing.  This was very subtle of the poet, for it put the farmer on good terms with himself.  He wondered, as he had his laugh over again, how a man could choose to be a poet, when he might have been a farmer.  ’Well, I’m bringing out a book of poems all about children—­here is one of them!’ and the poet would read some humorous thing, such as ‘Breeching Tommy.’  Then another—­such simple pictures of humanity at the age of two, that the farmer could not but be moved to that primary artistic delight, the recognition of the familiar.  Then the farmer would grow grave, as he always did at any approach to a purchase, however small, while the poet would rapidly speak of the fitness of the volume as a present to the old woman:  ‘Women cared for such things,’ he would add pityingly.  Then the farmer would cautiously ask the price, and blow his cheeks out in surprise on hearing that it was five shillings.  He had never given so much for a book in his life.  The poet would then insidiously suggest that by subscribing before publication he would save a discount.  This would arouse the farmer’s instinct for getting things cheap; and so, finally, with a little more ‘playing,’ Mr. Timothy Oats, of Clod Hall, Salop, was landed high and dry on the subscription list—­a list, by the way, which already included all the poet’s tradesmen!  This is one example of ‘how poets sell.’

Yet over and above what we may term these forced sales, the demand for verse, we are assured, is growing.  The impression to the contrary on the part of the Philistine is a delusion, a false security.  And the demand, a well-known publisher has told us, is an intelligent one, for poetry of the markedly idealistic, or markedly realistic, kind; but to writers of the merely sentimental he can offer no hope.  Their golden age, a pretty long one while it lasted, has probably gone for ever.

This is good news for those engaged in growing dreams for the London market.

THE ‘GENIUS’ SUPERSTITION

It must be very painful to the sentimentalist to notice what common sense is beginning to prevail on one of his pet subjects:  that of the ancient immunities of ‘genius.’  Of course, to a great many good people genius continues still to be accepted as payment in full for every species of obligation, and if a man were a great poet he might probably still ruin a woman’s life, and some, in secret at least, would deem that he did God service.  There are perhaps even more women than ever nowadays who would, as Keats put it, like to be married to an epic, and given away by a three-volume novel.  Such an attitude, however, is more and more taking its place among the superstitions, and the divine right of genius to ride rough-shod over us is at a discount.