Versifying is the lowest form of poetry; and the last thing a great poet
will do in these days is to write verses.
I have been trying to read _Venus and Adonis_ and the _Rape of Lucrece_
but cannot get on with them. They teem with fine things, but they are
got-up fine things. I do not know whether this is quite what I mean but,
come what may, I find the poems bore me. Were I a schoolmaster I should
think I was setting a boy a very severe punishment if I told him to read
_Venus and Adonis_ through in three sittings. If, then, the magic of
Shakespeare’s name, let alone the great beauty of occasional passages,
cannot reconcile us (for I find most people of the same mind) to verse,
and especially rhymed verse as a medium of sustained expression, what
chance has any one else? It seems to me that a sonnet is the utmost
length to which a rhymed poem should extend.