The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-04-15
WIT BITING in Harper's Magazine for A/ April, W. D. Howells tells or the
 w erning of poets, and why the

A/ April, w. D. Howells tells of the
 w erning of poets, and why the masses refrain from poetry for fear or not earning living.
 "They argue that though Milton
 Paradise Lost now outsells any youiis lady authors first novel, it is by chance that no man with wife and children oe- nendent on him would be justified in talk ing.
 "so tbev forbear being poets, but none the less they long to know what those who take the risk get for their "orh' They might feel differently about go- ing into poetry for living if they hhe" that 100 years ago Thomas Moore re- ceived 3o0O guineas for his poem of Lalla RoolSh:' but even if they had been taught this fact in the public schools, they might still hesitate, on learning further that
 Ialla Rookh' was book of perhaps 'o'- GOO or SO,OOO words. Any young lady misht he paid at the same rate for her second novel though probably not for her third. Still for verse it would be uncommon' and it might rouse the masses to emuia- tion It is believed that the gains oi Byron from his poems were very great after he stopped refusing to take any tbins for them as he did when he found that the results of his high disdaln or mercy for his Muse simply went to HIS publisher Whether Samuel Rogers maoe much money or little by his poetry Very good poetry, as poetry went in his day) we do not know, but as he is said to nave kent A 900 note under glass where people might see it, we suppose he could
 . fford to work without pay, although it Is not certain that he did so. Of the gains of Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Words- worth and Coleridge we have no knowl- edge, but our surmise is that they LOOK all they could get, and that several oi them were in constant need of more For so poor a novel as Woodstock Sir Wal l ter Scott was paid $40,O00. or 980O0, put | Woodstock was prose, and there IS no telling what he got for Marmion' or The l Lady of the Lake It is certain thai ] Johnson sold Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake ield.' which was worth 4O.O00 Wood stocks for eco, and thought he had done very well by the author Goldsmith prob ably thought so. too, when he in Stantly sent ms lanulduy out sioi
 bottle of wine, which he drank with his
 kind literary agent.
 | 'sThe poets laureate of England are
 proverbially paid, though doubtless paie
 enough for the nerfunctory job which they appear to perform with difficulty but their outside gains are sometimes not SC despicable. During his later years 1t was
 rumored, and perhaps fabled, that Moxor
 paid Tennyson $2O,0O0 annually for his en 1 tire poetical output but whether he pros pered on the venture may be doubted. W' ! do not think at the moment of any Amer | ican poet remunerated in like measure unless it was that most brilliant mos lloyable one who continued to our time the high literary tradition of pecuniary ] embarrassment without regard to income l It was famed, but again very possibly fabled, that his publishers had agreed to pay him $10000 for years literary yield of all kinds. They afterward com plained that for this sum they received one story and one poem. but they hae taken the chances with an author wht
 was noted of uncertain inspiration and