"But what is the natural history of the boy? How came he to write
poetry? What do you suppose he means by it?"
"That isn't so easy to say. As to his natural history, he lives with
his mother in a tumbledown, unpainted wooden house in the deepest
fastness of Willoughby Pastures. Lucy and I used to drive by it and
wonder what kind of people inhabited that solitude. There were milk-
cans scattered round the door-yard, and the Monday we were there a
poverty-stricken wash flapped across it. The thought of the place
preyed upon me till one day I asked about it at the post-office, and
the postmistress told me that the boy was quite a literary
character, and read everything he could lay his hands on, and 'sat
up nights' writing poetry. It seemed to me a very clear case of
genius, and the postmistress's facts rankled in my mind till I
couldn't stand it any longer. Then I went to see him. I suppose Lucy
has told you the rest?"
"Yes, Mrs. Sewell has told me the rest. But still I don't see how he
came to write poetry. I believe it doesn't pay, even in extreme
cases of genius."
"Ah, but that's just what this poor fellow didn't know. He must have
read somewhere, in some deleterious newspaper, about the sale of
some large edition of a poem, and have had his own wild hopes about
it. I don't say his work didn't show sense; it even showed some rude
strength, of a didactic, satirical sort, but it certainly didn't
show poetry.
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