His greatest poem was written in
honour of a poet whom any English Vigilance Society would have crucified.
"Sane" critics will naturally observe, in their quiet manner, that
"Anactoria" and similar feats were "so unnecessary." Would it were true!
THE SEVENPENNIES
[_29 Apr. '09_]
Some time ago a meeting (henceforward historic) took place between Mr.
Longman, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Reginald Smith, Mr. Methuen, and Mr.
Hutchinson [All baronets or knights now, except Reginald Smith, who is
dead] of the one part, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and Mr.
Anthony Hope of the other part. Mr. Longman was the host, and the
encounter must have been touching. I would have given a complete set of
the works of Mrs. Humphry Ward to have been invisibly present. The
publishers had invited the authors (who represented the Authors' Society),
with the object of dissuading them from allowing their books to be
reprinted at the price of sevenpence. Naturally, the publishers, as
always, were actuated by a pure desire for the welfare of authors. Messrs
Shaw, Hewlett, and Hope have written an official account of their
impressions of the great sevenpenny question, and it appears in the
current number of the _Author_. It is amusing. The most amusing aspect of
the whole affair is the mere fact that one solitary Scotch firm, Nelsons,
have forced the mandarins, nay, the arch-mandarins, of the trade to cry
out that the shoe is pinching.
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