As to some points in your letter.
I've no recollection of advising young authors to "leave all heart and sentiment out of their work." If I did the context would probably show that it was because their time might better be given to perfect themselves in form, against the day when their hearts would be less wild and their sentiments truer. You know it has always been my belief that one cannot be trusted to feel until one has learned to think—and few youngsters have learned to do that. Was it not Dr. Holmes who advised a young writer to cut out every passage that he thought particularly good? He'd be sure to think the beautiful and sentimental passages the best, would he not? * * *
If you mean to write really "vituperative" sonnets (why sonnets?) let me tell you one secret of success—name your victim and his offense. To do otherwise is to fire blank cartridges—to waste your words in air—to club a vacuum. At least your satire must be so personally applicable that there can be no mistake as to the victim's identity. Otherwise he is no victim—just a spectator like all others. And that brings us to Watson. His caddishness consisted, not in satirizing a woman, which is legitimate, but, first, in doing so without sufficient reason, and, second, in saying orally (on the safe side of the Atlantic) what he apparently did not dare say in the verses. * * *
I'm enclosing something that will tickle you I hope—"The Ballade of the Goodly Fere." The author's[12] father, who is something in the Mint in Philadelphia, sent me several of his son's poems that were not good; but at last came this—in manuscript, like the others. Before I could do anything with it—meanwhile wearing out the paper and the patience of my friends by reading it at them—the old man asked it back rather peremptorily. I reluctantly sent it, with a letter of high praise. The author had "placed" it in London, where it has made a heap of talk.
It has plenty of faults besides its monotonous rhyme scheme; but tell me what you think of it.
God willing, we shall eat Carmel mussels and abalones in May or June. Sincerely yours, Ambrose Bierce.
[12] Ezra Pound.
Washington, D. C.,
March 7,
1910.
Dear George,