Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the System had foreseen it, he said.

But when he came to hear that the youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for being much disturbed.
"Surely," said Lady Blandish, "you knew he scribbled ?" "A very different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet.

"No Feverel has ever written poetry." "I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked.

"He rhymes very prettily to me." A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry, quieted Sir Austin's fears.
The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to him.

Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing: he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, "Poor boy!" Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition.