Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an eloquent enthusiasm on the joy of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius; you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me--because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in the skies.' Is this true?" "Yes, very true!" "What can rob us of this joy! The bookseller will not buy, the public will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the angels--we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such good-tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from them, when one knows what one's-self is worth, and what they are. They are just worth the coin one can extract from them, in order to live. Our life--_that_ is worth so much to us. And then their joys, so vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose Burns drinking at the ale-house with his boors around him, was drinking, like them, only beer and whisky? No, he was drinking nectar--he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts--shaking with the laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to unlock his spirit from the clay--take it from jerkin and corduroys, and wrap it in the 'singing robes' that floated wide in the skies: the beer or the whisky needed but for that, and then it changed at once into the drink of Hebé. But come, you have not known this life--you have not seen it. Come, give me this night. I have moneys about me--I will fling them abroad as liberally as Alexander himself, when he left to his share but hope. Come!" "Whither?" "To my throne. On that throne last sate Edmund Kean--mighty mime. I am his successor. We will see whether in truth these wild sons of genius, who are cited but 'to point a moral and adorn a tale,' were objects of compassion. Sober-suited cits to lament over a Savage and a Morland--a Porson and a Burns!--" "Or a Chatterton," said Leonard, gloomily. "Chatterton was an impostor in all things; he feigned excesses that he never knew. _He_ a bacchanalian--a royster! HE!--No. We will talk of him. Come!" Leonard went. CHAPTER XXI.