The name of the novel itself I cannot recall;
but I remember the name of the young poet--Aylmer Deane; and the
forever unforgettable title of his book of verse was POMENTS: BEING
POEMS OF THE MOOD AND THE MOMENT. What would I not give to possess a
copy of that work?
Though he had suffered, and though suffering is a sovereign
preparation for great work, I did not at the outset foresee that
Aylmer Deane was destined to wear the laurel. In real life I have
rather a flair for future eminence. In novels I am apt to be wise only
after the event. There the young men who do in due course take the
town by storm have seldom shown (to my dull eyes) promise. Their
spoken thoughts have seemed to me no more profound or pungent than my
own. All that is best in these authors goes into their work. But,
though I complain of them on this count, I admit that the thrill for
me of their triumphs is the more rapturous because every time it
catches me unawares. One of the greatest emotions I ever had was from
the triumph of THE GIFT OF GIFTS. Of this novel within a novel the
author was not a young man at all, but an elderly clergyman whose life
had been spent in a little rural parish. He was a dear, simple old
man, a widower. He had a large family, a small stipend. Judge, then,
of his horror when he found that his eldest son, `a scholar at
Christminster College, Oxbridge,' had run into debt for many hundreds
of pounds.
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