Art and Science 



If a man would get hold of the public ear, 

 he must pay, marry, or fight. I have never 

 understood that JEschylus was a man of 

 means, and the fighters do not write poetry, 

 so I suppose he must have married a theatrical 

 manager's daughter, and got his plays brought 

 out that way. The ear of any age or country 

 is like its land, air, and water ; it seems limit- 

 less but is really limited, and is already in 

 the keeping of those who naturally enough 

 will have no squatting on such valuable pro- 

 perty. It is written and talked up to as 

 closely as the means of subsistence are bred 

 up to by a teeming population. There is not 

 a square inch of it but is in private hands, and 

 he who would freehold any part of it must do 

 so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the 

 usual way and fighting gives the longest, 

 safest tenure. The public itself has hardly 

 more voice in the question who shall have its 

 ear, than the land has in choosing its owners. 

 It is farmed as those who own it think most 

 profitable to themselves, and small blame to 

 them ; nevertheless, it has a residuum of 

 mulishness which the land has not, and does 



33 C 



