This Mortal Coil | Page 4

all a mere matter of rhymes and refrains, of epithets and prettinesses. What touches our hearts lies deeper than mere expression, I'm certain. It lies in the very core and fiber of the man. There are passages even in your own poems though you're a great deal too cynical to admit it now that came straight out of the depths of your own heart, I venture to conjecture those 'Lines on a Lock of Hair,' for example. Aha, cynic! there I touched you on the raw. But if you think so lightly of poetry as a pursuit, as you say, I wonder why you ever came to take to it."
"Take to it, my dear fellow! What an Arcadian idea! As if men nowadays chose their sphere in life deliberately. Why, what on earth makes any of us ever take to anything, I should like to know, in this miserable workaday modern world of ours? Because we're simply pitchforked into it by circumstances. Does the crossing-sweeper sweep crossings, do you suppose, for example, by pure preference for the profession of a sweep? Does the milkman get up at five in the morning because he sees in the purveying of skim-milk to babes and sucklings a useful, important, and even necessary industry to the rising generation of this great Metropolis? Does the dustman empty the domestic bin out of disinterested regard for public sanitation? or the engine-driver dash through rain and snow in a drear-nighted December like a Comtist prophet, out of high and noble enthusiasm of humanity?" He snapped his fingers with an emphatic negative. "We don't choose our places in life at all, my dear boy," he went on after a pause: "we get tumbled into them by pure caprice of circumstances. If I'd chosen mine, instead of strictly meditating the thankless Muse, I'd certainly have adopted the exalted profession of a landed proprietor, with the pleasing duty of receiving my rents (by proxy) once every quarter, and spending them royally with becoming magnificence, in noble ways, like the Greek gentleman one reads about in Aristotle. I always admired that amiable Greek gentleman the ' megaloprepcs, I think Aristotle calls him. His berth would suit me down to the ground. He had nothing at all of any sort to do, and he did it most gracefully with princely generosity on a sufficient income."
"But you must write poetry for something or other, Massinger; for if it isn't rude to make the suggestion, you can hardly write it, you know, for a livelihood."
Massinger's dark face flushed visibly. "I write for fame," he answered majestically, with a lordly wave of his long thin hand. "For glory--for honor--for time--for eternity. Or, to be more precisely definite, if you prefer the phrase, for filthy lucre. In the coarse and crude phraseology of political economists, poetry takes rank nowadays, I humbly perceive, as a long investment. I'm a journalist by trade--a mere journeyman journalist; the gushing penny-a-liner of a futile and demoralized London press. But I have a soul within me above penny-a-lining; I aspire ultimately to a pound a word. I don't mean to live and die in Grub Street. My soul looks forward to immortality, and a footman in livery. Now, when once a man has got pitchforked by fate into the rank and file of contemporary journalism, there are only two ways possible for him to extricate himself with peace and honor from his unfortunate position. One way is to write a successful novel. That's the easiest, quickest, and most immediate short-cut from Grub Street to Eaton Place and affluence that I know of anywhere. But unhappily it's crowded, immensely overcrowded vehicular traffic for the present entirely suspended. Therefore, the only possible alternative is to take up poetry. The Muse must descend to feel the pulse of the market. I'm conscious of the soul of song within me; that is to say, I can put 'Myrrha' to rhyme with 'Pyrrha,' and alliterate ps and qs and ws with any man living (bar Algernon) in all England. Now, poetry's a very long road round, I admit like going from Kensington to the City by Willesden Junction; but in the end, if properly worked, it lands you at last by a circuitous route in fame and respectability. To be Poet Laureate is eminently respectable. A rnl-.n can live on journalism meanwhile; but if he keep.3 pegging away at his Pegasus in his spare moments, without intermission, like a costermonger at his' donkey, Pegasus will raise himself after many days to the top of Parnassus, where he can build himself a commodious family residence, lighted throughout with electric lights, and commanding a magnificent view in every direction over the Yale of Tempe and the surrounding country. Tennyson's done it already at Aid worth; why shouldn't I.