most polite of all fellows imaginable, who is a bit of a poet himself, begin to work himself up into a kind of frenzy over that first page, you would have understood, old man, far more clearly than I can hope to make you understand, how hopeless it is to get any publisher--I don’t care who--to undertake poor Luney’s effort on his own responsibility.” The aged father of the dying poet gave a groan of despair. He lifted up his feeble arms, which seemed to be smitten with palsy, and uttered a high quavering cry of imprecation. “Are these the tidings we must bear to the dying Achilles!” he cried. “Must we thus affront that mighty warrior who lies all spent and broken from his great labours!” “Well, old man,” said Dodson, who could not forbear to pity such a distress as this, yet whose robust common-sense in the crisis they had reached had never been so valiant, “well, old man, there is only one thing we can do if we are to bring poor Luney’s poem to the public notice. We must print it and publish it at our own expense.” “Yes, yes,” said the old man eagerly, “of course we must do that. And we must do it immediately because the sands of life are running out.” “Yes, I have thought of all that,” said Dodson, “and I have made some inquiries of the firm. But of course it is going to cost money.” “Money!” said the old man. “A lot of money. I have talked to Octavius about it. I am on very good terms with Octavius, and as a sort of special favour to me, Octavius says Crumpett and Hawker will break through their invariable rule of not publishing on commission; and they are prepared to place their imprint--their very valuable imprint--on poor Luney’s poem, providing it is written grammatically--you know Crumpett and Hawker would not publish the Laureate himself if he failed to write grammatically--and also, providing that its tendency is not too agnostic, that is to say, agnosticism impinging on paganism, that is to say that it contains a definite idea of God--these are Octavius’s own words I am using--and further that it is not open to the charge of immorality in any shape or form, in other words, as Octavius says, that it is the kind of thing that any young girl may place in the hands of her grandmother. Well, now, everything being all right, Crumpett and Hawker are prepared to put it in hand at once, and to print two hundred and fifty copies--they won’t do less--and to issue the poem in three volumes at one guinea net. The cost, however, will be two hundred pounds, which must be borne by the author. For this sum they will use good paper, clear type, and they will bind it in superior cloth, and they will send out fifty copies for review to the leading London and provincial journals; but Octavius assures me that Crumpett and Hawker will touch the book only on these terms, and on no other.” The old man gave a gasp of consternation. “Two hundred pounds,” he said weakly, “two hundred pounds!”