Read it through once

Patronage of music, art and the drama were characteristic incidents in the life and work of the Prince. The day for helping literature had perhaps gone when he came upon the scene and newspapers were then supposed to do for budding genius what royalty and aristocracy did for Johnson, Goldsmith, Swift or Pope. It is a curious fact of later-day democracy that, with the obvious exception of Kipling, most of the greater lights in literature--Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson, Mathew Arnold or Swinburne--were born with fairly comfortable means. This in passing, of course. Something has been said elsewhere as to His Royal Highness's patronage of music and there is no doubt that he taught smart society to support the opera, while his personal enthusiasm for Wagner was pronounced and sincere.