‘The lord’s name?’ said Gower.
‘Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it pleases him to spend his money!’
‘He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a patron of Literature as well. His mother was a South Wales woman.’
‘Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?’ Mr. Woodseer said at once.
‘No man more likely.’
‘If you see him, suggest it.’
‘Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They’re in our blood. They spring to tie knots in the head. They push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive times: but they—or the trick of the mind engendered by them—trip my steps along the lines of composition. I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets. It’ll come right. At present I ‘m so bent to pick and perfect, polish my phrase, that I lose my survey. As a consequence, my vocabulary falters.’
‘Ah,’ Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. ‘This Literature is to be your profession for the means of living?’
‘Nothing else. And I’m so low down in the market way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an independent fifty.’
‘To whom are you crying, Gower?’