KENELM.—"I have asked my friend Tom Bowles to come a little later, because I wished you to be of use to him, and, in order to be so, I should suggest how."
THE MINSTREL.—"Pray do."
KENELM.—"You know that I am not a poet, and I do not have much reverence for verse-making merely as a craft."
THE MINSTREL.—"Neither have I."
KENELM.—"But I have a great reverence for poetry as a priesthood. I felt that reverence for you when you sketched and talked priesthood last evening, and placed in my heart—I hope forever while it beats—the image of the child on the sunlit hill, high above the abodes of men, tossing her flower-ball heavenward and with heavenward eyes."
The singer's cheek coloured high, and his lip quivered: he was very sensitive to praise; most singers are.
Kenelm resumed, "I have been educated in the Realistic school, and with realism I am discontented, because in realism as a school there is no truth. It contains but a bit of truth, and that the coldest and hardest bit of it, and he who utters a bit of truth and suppresses the rest of it tells a lie."
THE MINSTREL (slyly).—"Does the critic who says to me, 'Sing of beefsteak, because the appetite for food is a real want of daily life, and don't sing of art and glory and love, because in daily life a man may do without such ideas,'—tell a lie?"
KENELM.—"Thank you for that rebuke. I submit to it. No doubt I did tell a lie,—that is, if I were quite in earnest in my recommendation, and if not in earnest, why—"
THE MINSTREL.—"You belied yourself."