Verse
Versifying is the lowest form of poetry; and the last thing a great poet will do in these days is to write verses.
I have been trying to read Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece but cannot get on with them. They teem with fine things, but they are got-up fine things. I do not know whether this is quite what I mean but, come what may, I find the poems bore me. Were I a schoolmaster I should think I was setting a boy a very severe punishment if I told him to read Venus and Adonis through in three sittings. If, then, the magic of Shakespeare’s name, let alone the great beauty of occasional passages, cannot reconcile us (for I find most people of the same mind) to verse, and especially rhymed verse as a medium of sustained expression, what chance has any one else? It seems to me that a sonnet is the utmost length to which a rhymed poem should extend.