‘Heard’st thou a quiver and clang?
In thy sleep did it make thee start?
‘Twas a chord in twain that sprang—
But the lyre-shell was my heart.’
He took a pull at the stout, laid his head on the table, and sobbed like a locomotive.”
“But it’s not very bad—not bad at all, so far as I see,” said Helen, who had a woman’s weakness for the side attacked, in addition to a human partiality for fair play.
“No, not bad at all—for absolute nonsense,” said Bascombe.
“He had been reading Heine,” said Wingfold.
“And burlesquing him,” returned Bascombe. “Fancy hearing one of the fellow’s heart-strings crack, and taking it for a string of his fiddle in the press! By the way, what are the heart-strings? Have they any anatomical synonym? But I have no doubt it was good poetry.”
“Do you think poetry and common sense necessarily opposed to each other?” asked Wingfold.
“I confess a leaning to that opinion,” replied Bascombe, with a half-conscious smile.
“What do you say of Horace, now?” suggested Wingfold.
“Unfortunately for me, you have mentioned the one poet for whom I have any respect. But what I like in him is just his common sense. He never cries over spilt milk, even if the jug be broken to the bargain. But common sense would be just as good in prose as in verse.”