Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/20
percentage to have any apparent power: so the musician and the painter must wear out their souls in teaching the elements of their arts, and the poets write leading articles and newspaper paragraphs. Possibly they are more in touch with their fellows for that; but, on the other hand, they must in some sense be always among aliens, to whose eyes they may be in most regards perfectly respectable citizens, yet always marred by the regrettable, foolish habit of writing verse. A poet hath no sort of honour at all in his own country.
As their professions go, perhaps the greater part are journalists, editors, reporters, free-lances: one of them rose to be a war-correspondent. These have got as near as our conditions allow to following the literary profession, but for some of them it means sore restriction from better literary work. There are also lawyers, not a few, and some of the best of the writers have been politicians—walking after Domett, who was Premier and poet and pressman, all three. It was Sir William J. Steward who, as Speaker, gave that model of Parliamentary rulings: “Parliament is an assemblage of gentlemen. The first characteristic of a gentleman is courtesy. Whatsoever, then, is discourteous is ungentlemanly, and therefore unparliamentary.” There are, inevitably, three or four Civil Servants in the list, two or three are clergymen, and the