And while Mary is mixing a glass,
I’ll try and I’ll tell you the rest of it.
Francis A. Fahy (1854).
“MY ARM AROUND HER I PASSED.”
HOW TO BECOME A POET.
Of all the sayings which have misled mankind from the days of Adam to Churchill, not one has been more harmful than the old Latin one, “A poet is born, not made.”
The human intellect, it is said, may, by patient toil and study, gather laurels in all fields of knowledge save one—that of poesy. You may, by dint of hard work, become a captain in the Salvation Army, a corporation crossing-sweeper—ay, even an unsuccessful Chief Secretary for Ireland; but no amount of labour or perseverance will win you the favour of the Muses unless those fickle-minded ladies have presided at your birth, wrapped you, so to speak, in the swaddling clothes of metre, and fashioned your first yells according to the laws of rhythm and rhyme.
Foolish, fatal fallacy! How many geniuses has it not nipped in the bud—how many vaulting ambitions has it not brought to grief, what treasures of melody has it not shut up for ever to mankind!
Hence the paucity of poetical contributions to the press, the eagerness of publishers to secure the slightest scrap of verse, the bashfulness and timidity of authors, who yet in their hearts are quite confident of their ability to transcend the best efforts of the “stars” of ancient or modern song.