How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #4
Beside this thoroughfare
The sale of half-hose has
Long since superseded the cultivation
Of Pierian roses. (214-217)
When Mauberley goes down to Fleet St., the old stomping grounds of great journalists and writers, he realizes that socks sell much better than beautiful roses. That's because the modern world is all about usefulness instead of beauty. Roses wither and die eventually. But hey, a good deal on socks is tough to find.
Quote #5
Non-esteem of self-styled 'his betters'
Leading, as he well knew,
To his final
Exclusion from the world of letters (353-356)
There's only so much dissatisfaction a person can express before making a few enemies. As we could have predicted, all of Mauberley's "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" eventually got him in trouble with the writers and art critics of his time. It sounds like these people definitely pushed him out of their clique, or excluded him "from the world of letters."