"But inspire them."

"I do not think so. Models may form our taste as critics, but do not
excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense
of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate.
'Look in thy heart and write,' said an old English writer,* who did not,
however, practise what he preached. And you, Signor--"

* Sir Philip Sidney.

"Am nothing, and would be something," said the young man, shortly and
bitterly.

"And how does that wish not realise its object?"

"Merely because I am Italian," said Cesarini. "With us there is no
literary public--no vast reading class--we have dilettanti and literati,
and students, and even authors; but these make only a coterie, not a
public. I have written, I have published; but no one listened to me. I
am an author without readers."

"It is no uncommon case in England," said Maltravers.

The Italian continued: "I thought to live in the mouths of men--to stir
up thoughts long dumb--to awaken the strings of the old lyre! In vain.
Like the nightingale, I sing only to break my heart with a false and
melancholy emulation of other notes."

"There are epochs in all countries," said Maltravers, gently, "when
peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when no genius can