“Pooh! blank verse indeed! I am not going so to free your experiment from the difficulties of rhyme.”
“It is all one to me,” said Kenelm, yawning; “rhyme be it: heroic or lyrical?”
“Heroics are old-fashioned; but the Chaucer couplet, as brought to perfection by our modern poets, I think the best adapted to dainty leaves and uncrackable nuts. I accept the modern Chaucerian. The subject?”
“Oh, never trouble yourself about that. By whatever title your Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius, like Pindar’s, disdains to be cramped by the subject. Listen, and don’t suffer Max to howl, if he can help it. Here goes.”
And in an affected but emphatic sing-song Kenelm began:—
“In Attica the gentle Pythias dwelt.
Youthful he was, and passing rich: he felt
As if nor youth nor riches could suffice
For bliss. Dark-eyed Sophronia was a nice
Girl: and one summer day, when Neptune drove
His sea-car slowly, and the olive grove
That skirts Ilissus, to thy shell, Harmonia,
Rippled, he said ‘I love thee’ to Sophronia.
Crocus and iris, when they heard him, wagged
Their pretty heads in glee: the honey-bagged
Bees became altars: and the forest dove
Her plumage smoothed. Such is the charm of love.
Of this sweet story do ye long for more?
Wait till I publish it in volumes four;
Which certain critics, my good friends, will cry
Up beyond Chaucer. Take their word for ‘t. I
Say ‘Trust them, but not read,—or you’ll not buy.’”
“You have certainly kept your word,” said the minstrel, laughing; “and if this be the Augustan age, and the English were a dead language, you deserve to win the prize-medal.”
“You flatter me,” said Kenelm, modestly. “But if I, who never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the rhyme by the frequent introduction of a line that will not scan, and towering yet more into the sublime by becoming yet more unintelligible? Do that, and I promise you the most glowing panegyric in ‘The Londoner,’ for I will write it myself.”
“‘The Londoner’!” exclaimed the minstrel, with an angry flush on his cheek and brow, “my bitter, relentless enemy.”
“I fear, then, you have as little studied the critical press of the Augustan age as you have imbued your muse with the classical spirit of its verse. For the art of writing a man must cultivate himself. The art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the acquaintance of reviewers. In the Augustan age criticism is cliquism. Belong to a clique and you are Horace or Tibullus. Belong to no clique and, of course, you are Bavius or Maevius. ‘The Londoner’ is the enemy of no man: it holds all men in equal contempt. But as, in order to amuse, it must abuse, it compensates the praise it is compelled to bestow upon the members of its clique by heaping additional scorn upon all who are cliqueless. Hit him hard: he has no friends.”