“masterful” stanza contains a prurient suggestion. It suits the purpose of the Superannuated to compare his two “discoveries,” Podgers and Stodgers, and to work them against each other in those quarters of the Press he controls, like the “toy millers” one buys for children. It is a case of “Podgers come up and Stodgers come down,” as fits his humour and digestion. Meanwhile the vital test of the whole matter is that notwithstanding all this energetic “hawking about” of the Little Poets by the Superannuated, neither Podgers nor Stodgers _sell_. Everything is done to secure for them this desired result; unavailingly. And it is not as if they came out in a “common” way, Podgers and Stodgers. No publishing-firm with a simple name such as Messrs. Smith or Brown would suit the Little Poets. They must come out singularly, and apart from others. So they elect a publisher who, as it were, puts up a sign, as though he were a Tavern. “Published at the Dragon’s Mouth” or “At the Sign of the Flagon” would seem to be more convincing than “Published by Messrs. So and So.” Now Podgers’s little book has a fanciful title-page stating that it is published at the “Goose and Gridiron.” Stodgers, we find, bursts upon the world at “The Blue Boar.” There is something very delusive about all this. A flavour of ale and mulled wine creeps insidiously into the air, and we are moved to yearn for good warm drinks, whereas we only get indifferent cold verse. Now if the proprietors of the “Goose and Gridiron” and the “Blue Boar” would only sell inspiring liquids instead of uninspired rhymes, how their trade would improve! No longer would they bend, lean and furrowed, over their account-books--no longer would they have to scheme and puzzle over the “making” of Little Poets; because it must not be imagined that the Superannuated “discoverer” is the only one concerned in the business. “Goose and Gridiron” and “Blue Boar” have to deal in many small tricks of trade to compass it. Of course it is understood that the Little Poets get no money out of their productions. What they stipulate for with “Blue Boar” and likewise with “Goose and Gridiron” is a “hearing.” This “hearing” is obtained variously. Podgers got it in this way, as followeth: His verses, which had appeared from time to time in Sunday papers and magazines, were issued in a “limited edition.” Such “limited edition” was at once dispersed among booksellers in different parts of the country “on sale or return,” and while thus doubtfully awaiting purchasers, “Goose and Gridiron” tipped the trade-wink and perhaps something else more substantial besides, to the Superannuated,--who straightway seized his pen and wrote: “We hear that the first edition of Mr. Podgers’s poems is exhausted, and that original copies are already at a premium.” This done, and “passed” through many papers, the publisher followed it up with an advertisement to the effect that “The first edition of Mr. Podgers’s poems being exhausted, a Second