One of the few such appropriate transactions I remember was Queen Elizabeth’s buying a poem from Sir Philip Sidney, literally, with a lock of her ‘gowden hair.’  Poem and lock now lie together at Wilton, both untouched of time.  Or was it that Sir Philip Sidney paid for the lock with his poem?  However it was, the exchange was appropriate.  The ratio between the thing sold and the price given was fairly equal.  And, at all times, it is far less absurd for a poet to pay for the earthly thing with his poem (thus leaving us to keep the change), than that we should think to pay him for his incorruptible with our corruptible.  There would, no doubt, be a subtle element of absurdity in a poet consenting to pay his tailor for a suit with a sonnet, while it would obviously be beyond all proportion monstrous for a tailor to think to buy a sonnet with a suit.  Yet a poet might, perhaps, be brought to consider the transaction, if he chanced to be of a gentle disposition.

Yes, the true, the tasteful way to pay a poet is by the exchange of some other beautiful thing:  by beautiful praise, by a beautiful smile, by a well-shaped tear, by a rose.  It is thus that a poet—­frequently, I am bound to confess—­finds his highest reward.

At the same time, there is a subtle ironic pleasure in taking the world’s money for poetry—­even though one pays it over to a charity immediately—­for one feels that the world, for some reason or another, has been persuaded to buy something which it didn’t really want, and which it will throw away so soon as we are round the corner.  If the reader has ever published a volume of verse, he must often have chuckled with an unnatural glee over the number of absolutely unpoetic good souls who, from various motives—­the unhappy accident of relationship, perhaps—­have ‘subscribed.’  Most of us have sound unpoetic uncles.  Of course, you make them buy you—­in large-paper too.  Have you ever gloatingly pictured their absolute bewilderment as, with a stern sense of family pride, they sit down to cut your pages?  Think of the poor souls thus ’moving about in worlds not realised.’

A perfect instance of this cruelty to the Philistine occurs to me.  The poet in question is one whose forte is children’s poetry.  Very tender some of his poems are.  You will find them now and again in St. Nicholas, and he is not unknown in this country.  With a heart like a lamb for children, he is like a hawk upon the Philistine.  I remember an occasion, before he published a volume, when we were together in a tavern in a country-town, a tavern thronged with farmers on market-days.  The poet had some prospectuses in his pocket.  Suddenly a great John Bull would come bumping in like a cockchafer, and call for his pint.  ‘Just you watch,’ the poet would say, and away he crossed over to his victim.  ’Good morning, Mr. Oats!’ ‘Why, good morning, sir.  How-d’ye-do; I hardly know’d thee.’  Then presently the voice of the charmer unto the farmer—­’Mr.