I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind.
"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle."
"Considered absolutely," I replied, "perhaps it wasn't. But considered in the light of the temptation I was under to say immeasurably severer things, it was mild and gentle in an extreme degree. The man is not a poet, but a fool. He not only hasn't the smallest appreciation of what poetry is or means, but he hasn't the ability to entertain a thought of any kind worthy of presentation in print or in any other way. I should have stultified myself and the Evening Post if I had written more favorably of his work than I did. I should never have thought of writing of it at all, but for the Evening Post's rule that every book offered here for review must be mentioned in some way in the literary columns. Here is the book. I wish you would glance at the alleged poems and tell me how I could have said anything concerning them of a more considerately favorable character than what in fact I printed."
He took the book from my hand and looked it over. Then he laid it on my desk, saying:
"It is indeed pretty bad. Still, I have always found that it is possible to find something good to say about a poet's work."
A little later a still worse case came to my lot. It was a volume of "verse," with no sense at all in it, without even rhythm to redeem it, and with an abundance of "rhymes" that were not easily recognizable even as assonances. It was clumsily printed and "published" at some rural newspaper office, and doubtless at the expense of the author. Finally the cover attempt at decoration had resulted in a grotesque combination of incompatible colors and inconsequent forms. In brief, the thing was execrably, hopelessly, irredeemably bad all over and clear through.
I was puzzling over the thing, trying to "find something good to say" of it, when Mr. Bryant came into my den. I handed him the volume, saying:
"I wish you would help me with a suggestion, Mr. Bryant. I'm trying to find something good that I can say of that thing, and I can't—for of course you do not want me to write lies."
"Lies? Of course not. But you can always find something good in every volume of poems, something that can be truthfully commended."
"In this case I can't regard the sprawlings of ill-directed aspiration as poems," I replied, "and it seems to me a legitimate function of criticism to say that they are not poems but idiotic drivel—to discriminate between poetry in its unworthiest form and things like that. However, the man calls his stuff poetry. I wish you would help me find something good that I may say of it without lying."