“I was already out—” he began, but as we all manifested the greatest confusion at the beginning of this confession, he stopped and turned red. “I mean I was—I was——”
“You were beginning, I think,” I interrupted, “to open a new subscription.”
“Thank you, Miss Kitty,” he replied. “I was—as soon as I left the Ru—I mean, as soon as I could, I went round among my patrons with my project. This lady immediately bought all my previous poems, including the translation of ‘Lucretius,’ which the rascal publisher declared had been his ruin, when he went bankrupt, and presented me with a hundred guineas, with which I was enabled”—here he surveyed his person with satisfaction, and raised one leg to get a better view of his stockings and shoe-buckles—“I was enabled to procure garments more suitable to a personage of ambition, and to present myself to the honourable company assembled at Epsom on a footing of easy equality.”
“But a hundred guineas will not last for ever,” I said, thinking of the sums of money which I had already spent on frocks and ribbons since we came from London.
“That is not all,” he said; “I have my new volume of poems, which has been subscribed by Lady Tamarind and her friends. This is a change, is it not, Miss Kitty? Formerly, when I was in the Ru—I mean, before my good fortune came—a sixpenny ordinary was beyond me: I have lived upon half-a-crown for a week: I have written lines on a ‘Christian’s Joys’ when starving: and I have composed the ‘Lamentations of a Sinner’ when contemplating suicide as the only relief from my troubles. Now—now—how different! Fortune’s wheel has turned—Fame is mine. And as for poems, I can write as many as I please to give the world, and always find a subscription list ready to my hand. This brain, Miss Kitty, like the Fountain of Helicon, will run for ever: that is, while life and Lady Tamarind remain.”
“The stream may get muddy sometimes,” said Sir Miles, with a smile.
Fate, which condemns poets to poverty, also compensates them with hope. If they are in present sunshine, it will last for ever: if in cold neglect, the future will give what the past has refused: posterity will continue to wave the censing-pot and send up wreaths of spicy smoke, a continual flow, grateful to the blessed Spirit above: so that, fortunate or in neglect, they dwell in a perpetual dream, which keeps them ever happy.
Then the sanguine bard drew forth his new subscription list.
“I call it,” he said, “by the modest title of a ‘Project for the Publication of a New Collection of Odes and Heroic Pieces,’ by Solomon Stallabras, Esquire. I am aware that my birth gives no warrant for the assumption of the rank of Esquire, but Lady Tamarind is good enough to say that the possession of genius lifts a man to the level of the gentry, if not the nobility of the country.”
“It does, Solomon; it does,” said Sir Miles.