"An idle rogue," said the mayor; "I sent him packing out of my countinghouse."
"A fellow afraid of the sea," said another. "He might have become a supercargo by this time."
"Yet not without some tincture of Greek," said the schoolmaster; "to do him justice, he loved books."
"He made us subscribe a guinea each for his poems," said the vicar. "Trash, gentlemen, trash! My copy is uncut."
"Yet," observed the curate of St. Nicholas, "in some sort perhaps, a child of Parnassus. One of those, so to speak, born out of wedlock, and, I fear me, of uncertain parentage among the Muses and unacknowledged by any. There are many such as Sam Semple on that inhospitable hill. Is the young man starving, doctor? Doth he solicit more subscriptions for another volume? It is the way of the distressed poet."
The doctor looked from one to the other with patience and even resignation. They would be sorry immediately that they had offered so many interruptions. When it seemed as if every one had said what he wished to say, the doctor held up his hand and so commanded silence.
CHAPTER IV
THE GRAND DISCOVERY
"Mr. Sam Semple," the doctor continued, with emphasis on the prefix to which, indeed, the poet was not entitled in his native town, "doth not ask for help: he is not starving: he is prosperous: he has gained the friendship, or the patronage, of certain persons of quality. This is the reward of genius. Let us forget that he was the son of a customhouse servant, and let us admit that he proved unequal to the duties—for which he was unfitted—of a clerk. He has now risen—we will welcome one whose name will in the future add lustre to our town."
The vicar shook his head. "Trash," he murmured, "trash."