Lucian began to think things over. He remembered how his earlier work had been written--he recalled the free, joyous flush of thought, the impulse to write, the fertility and fecundity which had been his in those days, and he contrasted it all with the infinite pains which he had taken in polishing and revising the epic. It must have been the process of revision, he thought, which had sifted the fire and life out of the poem. He read and re-read passages of it--in spite of all that the critics said, they pleased him. He remembered the labour he had gone through, and valued the results by it. And finally, he put the whole affair away from him, feeling that he and his world were not in accord, and that he had better wrap himself in his cloak for a while. He spoke of the epic no more. But unfortunately for Lucian, there were monetary considerations at the back of the new volume, and when he discovered at the end of a month that the sales were small and already at a standstill, he felt a sudden, strange sinking at the heart. He looked at Mr. Robertson, who communicated this news to him, in a fashion which showed the publisher that he did not quite understand this apparently capricious neglect on the part of the public. Mr. Robertson endeavoured to explain matters to him. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘there is such a thing as a vogue, and the best man may lose it. I don’t say that you have lost yours, but here’s the fact that the book is at a standstill. The faithful bought as a religious duty as soon as we published; those of the outer courts won’t buy. For one thing, your poem is not quite in the fashion--what people are buying just now in poetry is patriotism up-to-date, with extension of the Empire, and Maxim-guns, and deification of the soldier and sailor, and so on.’ ‘You talk as if there were fashions in poetry as there are in clothes,’ said Lucian, with some show of scornful indignation. ‘So there are, my dear sir!’ replied the publisher. ‘If you lived less in the clouds and more in the world of plain fact you would know it. You, for instance, would think it strange, if you had ever read it, to find Pollok’s poem, _The Course of Time_, selling to the extent of thousands and tens of thousands, or of Tupper’s _Proverbial Philosophy_ making almost as prominent a figure in the middle-class household as the Bible itself. Of course there’s a fashion in poetry, as there is in everything else. Byron was once the fashion; Mrs. Hemans was once the fashion; even Robert Montgomery was once fashionable. You yourself were very fashionable for three years--you see, if you’ll pardon me for speaking plainly, you were an interesting young man. You had a beautiful face; you were what the women call “interesting”; you aroused all the town by your romantic marriage--you became a personality. I think you’ve had a big run of it,’ concluded Mr. Robertson. ‘Why, lots of men come up and go down within two years--you’ve had four already.’