Is gone from me....

But that does not impair the magnificent funniness.

* * * * *

From his tenderest years Wordsworth succeeded in combining the virtues of Milton and of Punch in a manner that no other poet has approached.  Thus, at the age of eighteen, he could write: 

Now while the solemn evening shadows sail, On slowly-waving pinions, down the vale; And fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines Its darkening boughs....

Which really is rather splendid for a boy.  And he could immediately follow that, speaking of a family of swans, with: 

    While tender cares and mild domestic loves
    With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,
    The female with a meeker charm succeeds....

Wordsworth richly atoned for his unconscious farcicalness by a multitude of single lines that, in their pregnant sublimity, attend the Wordsworthian like a shadow throughout his life, warning him continually when he is in danger of making a fool of himself.  Thus, whenever through mere idleness I begin to waste the irrecoverable moments of eternity, I always think of that masterly phrase (from, I think, the “Prelude,” but I will not be sure): 

    Unprofitably travelling towards the grave.

This line is a most convenient and effective stone to throw at one’s languid friends.  Finally let me hail Mr. Nowell Smith as a benefactor.

NOVELISTS AND AGENTS

[20 June ’08]

A bad publishing season is now drawing to a close, and in the air are rumours of a crisis.  Of course the fault is the author’s.  It goes without saying that the fault is the author’s.  In the first place, he will insist on producing mediocre novels. (For naturally the author is a novelist; only novelists count when crises loom.  Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edward Carpenter, Robert Bridges, Lord Morley—­these types have no relation to crises.) It appears that the publishers have been losing money over the six-shilling novel, and that they are not going to stand the loss any longer.  It is stated that never in history were novels so atrociously mediocre as they are to-day.  And in the second place, the author will insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this scoundrel every time the two meet.  Already I have heard that one publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his country house, has been obliged to reduce the horticultural staff to eighteen.