He was a man who would have made a success of life a century and a half ago when conversation was a passport to good company and inebriety no bar.
“I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,”he said himself. “What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed couplets upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of chamber-maids and the conversation of bishops.”