doubtfully, 'when they're little'uns.' 'Well, you know I'm what they call
a poet.' To this Mr. Oats would respond with a good round laugh, as of a
man enjoying a good thing. This was very subtle of the poet, for it put
the farmer on good terms with himself. He wondered, as he had his laugh
over again, how a man could choose to be a poet, when he might have been a
farmer. 'Well, I'm bringing out a book of poems all about children--here
is one of them!' and the poet would read some humorous thing, such as
'Breeching Tommy.' Then another--such simple pictures of humanity at the
age of two, that the farmer could not but be moved to that primary
artistic delight, the recognition of the familiar. Then the farmer would
grow grave, as he always did at any approach to a purchase, however small,
while the poet would rapidly speak of the fitness of the volume as a
present to the old woman: 'Women cared for such things,' he would add
pityingly. Then the farmer would cautiously ask the price, and blow his
cheeks out in surprise on hearing that it was five shillings. He had never
given so much for a book in his life. The poet would then insidiously
suggest that by subscribing before publication he would save a discount.
This would arouse the farmer's instinct for getting things cheap; and so,
finally, with a little more 'playing,' Mr. Timothy Oats, of Clod Hall,
Salop, was landed high and dry on the subscription list--a list, by the
way, which already included all the poet's tradesmen! This is one example
of 'how poets sell.'

Yet over and above what we may term these forced sales, the demand for
verse, we are assured, is growing. The impression to the contrary on the
part of the Philistine is a delusion, a false security. And the demand, a
well-known publisher has told us, is an intelligent one, for poetry of the
markedly idealistic, or markedly realistic, kind; but to writers of the
merely sentimental he can offer no hope. Their golden age, a pretty long
one while it lasted, has probably gone for ever.