Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/129

 "'Why, you see, sir, the times are bad, and I am no speculator. I have a wife and family, and a man with a wife and family must be just before he is generous.**I appeal to your feelings, sir, whether you would drive a hard bargain with a man in my situation?'

"'I leave it entirely to yourself,' replied Maynard, despondingly.

"'Sir, I will run the risk of publishing your volume. Paper and printing are terrible things; I wish books could do without them; but I will venture. I heard you highly spoken of yesterday; we will share what profits there are, and your list of subscribers will ensure us against loss.'

"It did far more, by-the-bye, to say nothing of Sir Jasper Meredith’s secret guarantee.

"'And now business being over,' said Lintot, 'will you dine with me?'

"Walter declined the invitation, precisely because he wanted a dinner. He was also conscious that he had made a very bad bargain; but how could he chaffer and dispute about things so precious as the contents of those pages, which were the very outpourings of his heart? There were recorded dreams glorious with the future, and feelings soft and musical with the past.***He walked along those crowded streets alive but to one delicious hope; and amid poverty, labour and discouragement, still steeped to the lip in poetry.

"The fanciful fables of fairy land are but allegories of the young poet's mind when the sweet spell is upon him. Some slight thing calls up the visionary world, and all the outward and actual is for the time forgotten. It is a fever ethereal and lovely; but, like all other fevers, leaving behind weakness and exhaustion: I believe there is nothing that causes so