Far back at the beginning he had been unfortunate enough to sell a sonnet for ten shillings.

Alack! You sell your first sonnet, you win your first hand at cards, and then the passion has you.
Poetry was a drug on the market.

Nobody read it (or wrote it) these days; and any one who attempted to sell it was clearly mad.

Oh, a jingle for Punch might pass, you know; something clever, with a snapper to it.

But epic poetry?
Sonnets?
Why, didn't you know that there wasn't a magazine going that did not have some sub-editor who could whack out fourteen lines in fourteen minutes, whenever a page needed filling up?
These things he had been told times without number.