_bourgeois_--which, indeed, as Omar Khayyám says, heeds 'as the sea's self
should heed a pebble-cast'--is one of the most melancholy of recent
literary phenomena. It was not so the great masters treated the common
man, nor any full-blooded age. But the torch of taste has for the moment
fallen into the hands of little men, anæmic and atrabilious, with neither
laughter nor pity in their hearts.

Besides, how easy it is to misjudge your so-called 'common man'! That fat,
undistinguished-looking Briton in the corner of the omnibus is as likely
as not Mr. So-and-So, the distinguished poet; and who but those with the
divining-rod of a kind heart know what refined sensibility and nobility of
character may lurk under an extremely _bourgeois_ exterior?

We live in an age of every man his own priest and his own lawyer. At a
pinch we can very well be every man his own poet. If the whole
supercilious crew of modern men of letters, artists, and critics were
wiped off the earth to-morrow, the world would be hardly conscious of the
loss. Nay, if even the entire artistic accumulation of the past were to be
suddenly swallowed up, it would be little worse off. For the world is more
beautiful and wonderful than anything that has ever been written about it,
and the most glorious picture is not so beautiful as the face of a spring
morning.




APOLLO'S MARKET


The question is sometimes asked 'how poets sell.' One feels inclined