"Sir, I know there is a distinction. Many poets of the present day, considered very good, are uncommonly bad verse-makers. For my part, I could more readily imagine them to be good poets if they did not make verses at all. But can I not hear the rest of the ballad?" "Alas! the rest of the ballad is not yet made. It is rather a long subject, and my flights are very brief." "That is much in their favour, and very unlike the poetry in fashion. You do not belong, I think, to this neighbourhood. Are you and your dog travelling far?" "It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the summer. I am travelling far, for I travel till September. Life amid summer fields is a very joyous thing." "Is it indeed?" said Kenelm, with much /naivete/. "I should have thought that long before September you would have got very much bored with the fields and the dog and yourself altogether. But, to be sure, you have the resource of verse-making, and that seems a very pleasant and absorbing occupation to those who practise it,--from our old friend Horace, kneading laboured Alcaics into honey in his summer rambles among the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal Richelieu, employing himself on French rhymes in the intervals between chopping off noblemen's heads. It does not seem to signify much whether the verses be good or bad, so far as the pleasure of the verse-maker himself is concerned; for Richelieu was as much charmed with his occupation as Horace was, and his verses were certainly not Horatian." "Surely at your age, sir, and with your evident education--" "Say culture; that's the word in fashion nowadays." "Well, your evident culture, you must have made verses." "Latin verses, yes; and occasionally Greek. I was obliged to do so at school. It did not amuse me." "Try English." Kenelm shook his head. "Not I. Every cobbler should stick to his last." "Well, put aside the verse-making: don't you find a sensible enjoyment in those solitary summer walks, when you have Nature all to yourself,--enjoyment in marking all the mobile evanescent changes in her face,--her laugh, her smile, her tears, her very frown!" "Assuming that by Nature you mean a mechanical series of external phenomena, I object to your speaking of a machinery as if it were a person of the feminine gender,--/her/ laugh, /her/ smile, etc. As well talk of the laugh and smile of a steam-engine. But to descend to common-sense. I grant there is some pleasure in solitary rambles in fine weather and amid varying scenery. You say that it is a holiday excursion that you are enjoying. I presume, therefore, that you have some practical occupation which consumes the time that you do not devote to a holiday?" "Yes; I am not altogether an idler. I work sometimes, though not so hard as I ought. 'Life is earnest,' as the poet says. But I and my dog are rested now, and as I have still a long walk before me I must wish you good-day."