Anyone who was used to writing could
see at a glance that literature was his natural development, and I was
pleased at seeing him settle down to it so spontaneously. I was less
pleased, however, to observe that he would still occupy himself with
none but the most serious, I had almost said solemn, subjects, just as
he never cared about any but the most serious kind of music.
I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had
attached to the pursuit of serious enquiry was a sufficient proof that
He disapproved of it, or at any rate that He did not set much store by
it nor wish to encourage it.
He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, who only got
L5 for 'Paradise Lost.'
"And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. "I would have
given him twice as much myself not to have written it at all."
Ernest was a little shocked. "At any rate," he said laughingly, "I
don't write poetry."
This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, written
in rhyme. So I dropped the matter.
After a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of
his getting L300 a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and
said he would try to find some employment which should bring him in
enough to live upon.
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