"Young man, you must have respectable relations--go by their advice and counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be any thing in this city rather than poet by profession."
"And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Had _they_ other callings?"
"Read their biography, and then envy them!"
Leonard was silent a moment; but, lifting his head, answered loud and quickly,--"I _have_ read their biography. True, their lot poverty--perhaps hunger. Sir, I envy them!"
"Poverty and hunger are small evils," answered the bookseller, with a grave kind smile. "There are worse,--debt and degradation, and--despair."
"No, sir, no--you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all poets."
"Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their own. And for others, why, all who have put into a lottery have not drawn blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope of fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!" groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead authors lying like lead upon his shelves.
Leonard clutched his MSS. to his heart, and hurried away.
"Yes," he muttered, as Helen clung to him and tried to console--"yes, you were right: London is very vast, very strong, and very cruel;" and his head sank lower and lower yet upon his bosom.
The door was flung widely open, and in, unannounced, walked Dr Morgan.
The child turned to him, and at the sight of his face she remembered her father; and the tears that, for Leonard's sake, she had been trying to suppress, found way.
The good Doctor soon gained all the confidence of these two young hearts. And, after listening to Leonard's story of his paradise lost in a day, he patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, you will call on me on Monday, and we will see. Meanwhile, borrow these of me,"--and he tried to slip three sovereigns into the boy's hand. Leonard was indignant. The bookseller's warning flashed on him. Mendicancy! Oh no, he had not yet come to that! He was almost rude and savage in his rejection; and the Doctor did not like him the less for it.
"You are an obstinate mule," said the homoeopathist, reluctantly putting up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and prosy, and let the poetry rest awhile?"