I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had attached
to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that He
disapproved of it, or at any rate that He did not set much store by it
nor wish to encourage it.
He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, who only got 5
pounds for 'Paradise Lost.'"
"And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. "I would have given
him twice as much myself not to have written it at all."
Ernest was a little shocked. "At any rate," he said laughingly, "I don't
write poetry."
This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, written in
rhyme. So I dropped the matter.
After a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of his
getting 300 pounds a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and
said he would try to find some employment which should bring him in
enough to live upon.
I laughed at this but let him alone. He tried and tried very hard for a
long while, but I need hardly say was unsuccessful. The older I grow,
the more convinced I become of the folly and credulity of the public; but
at the same time the harder do I see it is to impose oneself upon that
folly and credulity.
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