Jeffray laughed shyly, and lay back with his hands clasped behind his head. The painter had unfolded the roll, and, holding it before him, with a quaint and sententious pride, read the three opening stanzas of the poem.
“There is life for you,” he said, warmly. “The divine utterance, the gushing out of song.”
Jeffray’s face was still red under his waving hair. He laughed, the quiet, pleased laugh of aspiring yet incredulous youth, and looked at Wilson with affectionate amusement.
“I am glad you like the work, Dick,” he said. “Heaven knows, I have copied nobody, and yet my lines seem childish when set beside Pope’s or Dryden’s.”
“Childish, sir, and if they are childish, you should thank Heaven for their innocence. As for Pope, he’s nothing but a pedant setting prose on stilts, and trying to make her tread a stately measure. Why, sir, his poetry is like a respectable old lady knitting epigrams together on her needles. Dash his preciseness, and his pompous and ponderous conceit! Set him beside Will Shakespeare, and you will hear an artificial waterfall trying to thunder against the sea.”
Jeffray smiled, and stretched out his hand for the manuscript. He glanced at the neat and sensitive writing with satisfaction, moving his lips the while as though reading certain of his favorite passages over to himself.
“But what would the critics say of them?” he asked.
“Critics, sir!”
“Yes.”
Wilson blew his nose with great vigor, and grimaced as though he had swallowed vinegar. He reached for a volume of the Annual Register, that was lying on the table beside Jeffray’s chair, and opened the book at the place dedicated to verse.