(4) In reading Verse, pronounce every word just as if it were prose, observing the stops with great exactness, and giving each word its proper accent; and if it be not harmonious, the Poet, and not the Reader, is to blame."
Better, perhaps, be sure of your ear before you blame the poet. But in general, if these rules are followed, there can be little danger of reading like a parrot, or like a small boy in his first breeches at a Dame's school. To think while one reads; that is the main thing: so as not to be, as Sidney says,—just
... like a child that some fair book doth find,
With gilded leaves or coloured vellum plays,
Or, at the most, on some fair pictures stays,
But never heeds the fruit of writer's mind.
[13]. "Comes dancing from the East."
I found a story about this dancing in Mrs. Wright's Rustic Speech and Folklore. It is the story of a woman who lived in a district called Hockley, in the parish of Broseley. She said that she had heard of such "dancing" but did not believe it to be true, "till on Easter morning last, I got up early, and then I saw the sun dance, and dance, and dance, three times, and I called to my husband and said, 'Rowland, Rowland, get up and see the sun dance!' I used," she said, "not to believe it, but now I can never doubt more." The neighbours agreed with her that the sun did dance on Easter morning, and that some of them had seen it. "Seeing," goes the old proverb, "is believing"—which is true no less of the "inward eye." I once tried to comfort a very little boy who was unhappy because there was a Bear under his bed. Candle in hand, I talked and talked, and proved that there wasn't a real bear for miles and miles around, not at any rate until we reached the Zoo, and there—black, brown, sloth, spectacled, grizzly and polar alike—all of them, poor creatures, were cabined, cribbed and shut up in barred cages. He listened, tears still shining in his eyes, his small face sharp and clear. "Why certainly, certainly not," I ended, "there can't be a real bear for miles around!" He smiled as if pitying me. "Ah yes, Daddie," he answered with a die-away sob, "but, you see, you's talking of real bears, and mine wasn't real."
[14]. "Us Idle Wenches."
It was a jolly bed in sooth,