"None whatever," he said, in answer to my question.
I thanked him and added, "To be sure I want to put your name to them."
"Oh, you can't do that," he said; "they are not mine, they are yours."
"Mine! Why, you know, I couldn't write verse to save my life."
"Ah, but you did; you sent me the substance and put it into blank verse."
"Blank verse!"—Blank was my astonishment, and I felt like the man in Molière when he was told he had been speaking prose all his life.
Well, we sat by the fireside in that drawing-room of his and discussed the matter, and he would have it that I was the author and that he had only put my idea into shape.
"If I had suggested alterations in your picture," he said, "or if I had advised you to introduce a coral-reef here and a dolphin there, would that have justified me in signing your picture?"
"No, perhaps not," I agreed, "but if you had laid on the last coat of paint, the one the public was to see, you certainly could have done so."
And so the skirmishing went on with varying fortunes, till, by some happy fluke, I hit upon an argument which settled the matter in my favour.