The youngsters will soon forget all about it, as is the fashion of boys with their lessons; but something, I think, will remain in the mind, though half obscured by time. And when they come to the vast affairs of which Westminster is the theatre, the object-lesson of the two crabs will not be without service to them.
Bribery, I take it, should not be taught except in the point of degree, for it comes naturally enough to all men both to give and to take bribes, and all that you need fix in the young mind is the double importance of avoiding avarice upon the one side and lavishness upon the other. For the _taking_ of a bribe no art or training whatsoever is required, but in the _giving_ of bribes it is of some importance not to give too much, and of absolutely vital importance not to offer too little. It is upon this last point that many a noble career has made shipwreck.
I have in mind one poor fellow whose father had left him a few millions. He was perpetually putting down, with all manner of hesitation, sums just insufficient to purchase the object of his desires. In the long run he had disbursed what should easily have commanded a high administrative position in the Cabinet, a Viceroyalty or a first-class Embassy. Yet he had nothing to show for it all but one private secretaryship, two chairmanships of committee, and a baronetcy: and this last only because he was childless.
That is true. But a friend having remarked to me that Cash was more than kind hearts, I put the thing down in a formula for myself, thus,
and sat gazing at it for a long time, until it awoke other thoughts in me.
And the first was this: "'Kind hearts are more than Coronets.' What an intolerably bad line! What a shocking line--or rather, half-line! What an outrage!"
When verse is concerned one must not mince matters. It is too sacred. One must have no reservations. One must ride roughshod over one's nearest and dearest, and proclaim bad verse aloud, and say, "Aroint! Honi!"
No reverend name, no illustrious label half-mixed with the State itself, should deter one. Nothing should impede the truth on bad verse save a substantial offer of money--and where is the chance of that in such a galley?
No! It is prime duty. Having the thing before you, having seen it, whether your opinion is asked or no, speak out at once and say: "Madam, this is not poetry, it is verse. It is not good verse; it is bad verse."