“You needn’t be afraid of his criticism, for he writes poetry sometimes,” said I.
“Do you?” said Hattie, incredulously.
“Certainly,” answered my brother; “everybody does now-a-days. In the class from which I graduated at college, there were forty-five, of which forty wrote poetry.”
“Wrote verses, you mean,” said Hattie, demurringly.
“There is very little difference. The Horatian maxim, ‘Poeta nascitur non fit,’ which has so long been thought to countenance a distinction, simply means that men and women who write poetry, like other men and women, are ‘born.’ ”
“I suppose, then,” replied Hattie, humoring the idea, “that the doctrine that poets were obliged to gallop up the sides of a steep mountain in Greece, on a vicious nondescript called Pegasus, is to be considered wholly metaphorical.”
“Just so,” said Fred. “Pegasus is now a mere omnibus horse, and timid people need no longer be afraid of entering the coach lest they should get a kick from the rampant animal, or be thrown into the depths of Helicon.”
“The doctrine of inspiration is also exploded,” said I, laughing. “Burns used to compose some of his nice little sonnets while engaged in the groveling occupation of ploughing, and if any thing more elaborate than usual was wanting, he took a glass of Scotch whisky.”
“Byron, too,” continued Fred, “wrote under the influence of gin; and it is said of Wordsworth, considered by the Lake school the greatest of modern poets, that he had an assistant feeding him with bread and butter while he was writing the ‘Excursion.’ Whoever, then, can drink whisky and gin, or as coming within the circle of the ‘pledge,’ can eat bread and butter, need fear no lack of inspiration.”
“How ridiculous!” exclaimed Hattie. “What would these great immortals think, could they hear your nonsense.”