me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please,
say 'more's the shame,' and bid both parties 'decamp to the crows,' in
Greek phrase, and _yet_ go very lighthearted back to a garden-full of
rose-trees, and a soul-full of comforts. If they had bought my greens
I should have been able to buy the last number of _Punch_, and go
through the toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge, and give the blind
clarionet-player a trifle, and all without changing my gold. If they
had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of
this and the other 'favourable critique,' and--at least so folks
hold--I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds,
whereas--but you see! Indeed I force myself to say ever and anon, in
the interest of the market-gardeners regular, and Keatses proper,
'It's nothing to _you_, critics, hucksters, all of you, if I _have_
this garden and this conscience--I might go die at Rome, or take to
gin and the newspaper, for what _you_ would care!' So I don't quite
lay open my resources to everybody. But it does so happen, that I have
met with much more than I could have expected in this matter of kindly
and prompt recognition. I never wanted a real set of good hearty
praisers--and no bad reviewers--I am quite content with my share.
No--what I laughed at in my 'gentle audience' is a sad trick the real
admirers have of admiring at the wrong place--enough to make an
apostle swear. _That_ does make me savage--_never_ the other kind of
people; why, think now--take your own 'Drama of Exile' and let _me_
send it to the first twenty men and women that shall knock at your
door to-day and after--of whom the first five are the Postman, the
seller of cheap sealing-wax, Mr. Hawkins Junr, the Butcher for orders,
and the Tax-gatherer--will you let me, by Cornelius Agrippa's
assistance, force these five and these fellows to read, and report on,
this 'Drama'--and, when I have put these faithful reports into fair
English, do you believe they would be better than, if as good, as, the