THE ART OF POETRY.

IV.

Good morning, gentlemen. Before I pass to the subject of my lecture today I must deal briefly with a personal matter of some delicacy. Since I began this series of lectures on the Art of Poetry I notice that the new Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Mr. W.P. Ker, in what I think is questionable taste, has delivered an inaugural lecture on the same subject under the same title. On the question of good taste I do not wish to say much, except that I should have thought that any colleague of mine, even an entirely new Professor in a provincial university, would have recognised the propriety of at least communicating to me his intention before committing this monstrous plagiarism.

However, as I say, on that aspect of the matter I do not propose to dwell, though it does seem to me that decency imposes certain limits to that kind of academic piracy, and that those limits the Professor has overstepped. In these fermenting days of licence and indiscipline persons in responsible positions at our seats of learning have a great burden of example to bear before the world, and if it were to go forth that actions of this type may be taken with impunity by highly-paid Professors then indeed we are not far from Bimetallism and the breaking-up of laws.

Now let us glance for a moment at the substance of the lecture. I should have been glad if Professor Ker had had the courtesy to show it to me before it was delivered, instead of my having to wait till it was printed and buy it in a shop, because I might have induced him to repair the more serious errors and omissions in his work. For really, when you come to analyse the lecture, what thin and bodyless stuff it is. Let me at once pay tribute to my colleague's scholarship and learning, to the variety of his citations. But, after all, anyone can buy a Quotation Dictionary and quote bits out of Swinburne. That surely—(see Freidrich's Crime and Quotation, pp. 246-9)—is not the whole task of a Professor of Poetry.

Such a man, if he is to earn his pay, must be able—

(a) to show how poetry is written;

(b) to write poetry;

and it is no good his attempting (a) in the absence of (b). It is no good teaching a man to slope arms if you are unable to slope arms yourself, because a moment will come when he says, "Well, how the dickens do you slope them?" It is no good professing lawn-tennis and saying, "Top-spin is imparted by drawing the racquet up and over," and so on, if, when you try to impart top-spin yourself, the ball disappears on to the District Railway. Still less is it useful if you deliver a long address to the student, saying, "H.L. Doherty was a good player, and so was Renshaw, and I well remember the game between McLoughlin and Wilding, because Wilding hit the ball over the net more often than McLoughlin did."

Those students who have attended my lectures more regularly than others—and I am sorry there are not more of them—will do me the justice to remember that I have put forward no theory of writing which I was not prepared to illustrate in practice from my own work. My colleague, so far as I can discover, makes one single attempt at practical assistance; and even that is a minor plagiarism from one of my own lectures. He makes a good deal of play with what he calls the principle and influence of the Italian Canzone, which simply means having a lot of ten-syllable lines and a few six-syllable ones. Students will remember that in our second lecture we wrote a poem on that principle, which finished:—

Toroodle—umti—oodle—umti—knife (or strife)

Where have they put my hat?

That lecture was prepared on May 27th; my colleague's lecture was delivered on June 5th. It is clear to me that in the interval—by what discreditable means I know not—he obtained access to my manuscript and borrowed the idea, thinking to cloak his guilt by specious talk about the Italian Canzone. The device of offering stolen goods under a new name is an old one, and will help him little; the jury will know what to think.

Apart from this single piece of (second-hand) instruction, what contribution does he make to the student's knowledge of the Art of Poetry? He makes no reference to comic poetry at all; apparently he has never heard of the Limerick, and I have the gravest doubts whether he can write one, though that, I admit, is a severe test. I am prepared however to give him a public opportunity of establishing his fitness for his post, and with that end I propose to put to him the following problems, and if his answers are satisfactory I shall most willingly modify my criticisms; but he must write on one side of the paper only and number his pages in the top right-hand corner.

The Problems.

(1) What is the metre of:—

"And the other grasshopper jumped right over the other grasshopper's back."

(2) Finish the uncompleted Limerick given in my Second Lecture, beginning:

There was a young man who said "Hell!

I don't think I feel very well."

(3) In your inaugural lecture you ask, "Is it true, or not, that the great triumphs of poetical art often come suddenly?" The answer you give is most unsatisfactory; give a better one now, illustrating the answer from your own works.

(4) Write a Ballade of which the refrain is either—

(a) The situation is extremely grave;

(b) The Empire is not what it was;

Note.—Extra marks will be given for an attempt at (b) because of the shortage of rhymes to was.

(5) What would you do in the following circumstances? In May you have sent a poem to an Editor, ending with the lines—

The soldiers cheered and cheered again—

It was the Prince of Wales.

On July 20th the Editor writes and says that he likes the poem very much, and wishes to print it in his August number, but would be glad if you could make the poem refer to Mr. or Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks instead of the Prince. He must have the proof by the first post to-morrow as he is going to press. Show, how you would reconstruct your last verse.

(6) Consider the following passages—

(i) I love little pussy,

Her coat is so warm,

And if I don't hurt her

She'll do me no harm.

(ii) Who put her in?

Little Tommy Green.

(a) Carefully amend the above so that they rhyme properly.

(b) Do you as a matter of principle approve of these kinds of rhyme?

A.P.H.

Customer. "And I had one of those little round bun arrangements."

Waitress. "That'll be another tuppence."

Customer. "One of those that are hollow, you know."

Waitress. "Oh—one of them. That'll be fourpence."

"Four Volumes 'The Great World War,' pre-war price Rs. 40. What offers? Perfect."—Indian Paper.

A clear case of propheteering.

From an Irish Labour manifesto:—

"Impulsive cats, howsoever justifiable, may prove to be unwise."—Irish Paper.

Remember what happened at Kilkenny.