"I suppose Reggy will be leaving us all for London soon," said Dick enviously.
"Lucky Reginald," sighed Ferdinand, "I wish I were going to London."
"What, with a bundle of poems in your pocket?" said Reginald laughing. "I'm afraid you wouldn't set the Thames on fire--poetry doesn't pay."
"Nor literature of any sort," observed Dick, "at least, so I understand."
"Then you understand wrong," said Beaumont coolly, "you go by Scott's saying, I presume--that literature is a good staff but a bad crutch--all that is altered now."
"No--not as regards poetry certainly, but success in literature greatly depends on the tact of a writer; if a young man goes to London with a translation of Horace or Lucian in his pocket he will find his goods are not wanted; if Milton went to Paternoster Row at the present time, with the MS. of 'Paradise Lost' in his hand, I don't believe he would find a publisher. We talk a great deal of noble poems and beautiful thoughts, but it's curious what unsaleable articles even the best of them are."
"Anything that pleases the public--a sensational novel--a sparkling Society poem--a brilliant magazine article--a witty play--you'll get plenty of chances to make money with these things; you see people live so rapidly now that they have no time to study in their play hours, therefore they want the very froth and foam of the time served up to them for their reading, so as to take their thoughts off their work. We praise 'Tom Jones' and 'Clarissa' immensely, but who reads them when they can skim the last three volume novel or the latest pungent article on the state of Europe?--no one wants to be instructed now-a-days, but they do want to be amused."
"How do people live in London?" asked Pumpkin, who, being an unsophisticated country maiden, was absolutely ignorant of anything connected with the great metropolis.
"They live with a hansom cab at the door and their watch in their hand," retorted Beaumont cynically; "they give two minutes to one thing, five minutes to another, and think they are enjoying themselves--get a smattering of all things and a thorough knowledge of nothing--the last play, the last book, the last scandal, the latest political complication--they know all these things well enough to chatter about them, but alas for the deep thinker who puts his views before the restless world of London--he will have a very small circle of readers indeed, because no one has any time to ponder over his thoughtful prose."