True! ... How easy to praise the poor, deaf, stirless clay when sense and spirit have fled from it forever! No fear to spoil a corpse by flattery,--the heavily sealed-up eyes can never more unclose to lighten with glad hope or fond ambition; the quiet heart cannot leap with gratitude or joy at that "word spoken in due season" which aids its noblest aspirations to become realized! The DEAD poet?--Press the cold clods of earth over him, and then rant above his grave,--tell him how great he was, what infinite possibilities were displayed in his work, what excellence, what merit, what subtlety of thought, what grace of style! Rant and rave!--print reams of acclaiming verbosity, pronounce orations, raise up statues, mark the house he lived and starved in, with a laudatory medallion, and print his once-rejected stanzas in every sort of type and fashion, from the cheap to the costly,--teach the multitude how worthy he was to be loved, and honored,--and never fear that he will move from his rigid and chill repose to be happy for once in his life, and to learn with amazement that the world he toiled so patiently for is actually learning to be grateful for his existence! Once dead and buried he can be safely made glorious,--he cannot affront us either with his superior intelligence, or make us envy the splendors of his fame!
Some such thoughts as these passed through Alwyn's mind as he dreamily gazed into the red hollows of the fire, and reconsidered all that his friend had told him. He had no personal acquaintances on the press,--no literary club or clique to haul him up into the top-gallant mast of renown by persistent puffery; he was not related, even distantly, to any great personage, either statesman, professor, or divine--he had not the mysterious recommendation of being a "university man"; none of the many "wheels" within wheels which are nowadays so frequently set in motion to make up a momentary literary furore, were his to command,--and yet--the Parthenon had praised him! ... Wonder of wonders! The Parthenon was a singularly obtuse journal, which glanced at the whole world of letters merely through the eyes of three or four men of distinctly narrow and egotistical opinions, and these three or four men kept it as much as possible to themselves, using its columns chiefly for the purpose of admiring one another. As a consequence of this restricted arrangement, very few outsiders could expect to be noticed for their work, unless they were in the "set," or at least had occasionally dined with one of the mystic Three or Four, . . and so it had chanced that Alwyn's first venture into literature had been totally disregarded by the Parthenon. In fact, that first venture, being a small and unobtrusive book, had, most probably, been thrown into the waste-paper basket, or sold for a few pence to the second-hand dealer. And now,--now because he had been imagined DEAD,--the Parthenon's leading critic had singled him out and held him up for universal admiration!