AT the festive season of the year particularly, people commonly complain
that the newspapers are dull. Unless in exceptional years, nothing
happens of which the narration is in anywise interesting, and the dearth
of news is generally so extreme that journalists are actually driven to
fill their columns with theological controversies.
The dryness of grammatical details has been surmounted by the device of
putting them into metre, as in the _As in Praesenti_ and the _Propria quae
Maribus_ of the Eton Latin Grammar. Might not the contents of the
Journals, in like sort, be rendered somewhat less prosy than they
sometimes are by being versified? The telegrams would, perhaps, be
peculiarly susceptible of this treatment, whereunto they seem to lend
themselves in virtue of their characteristic conciseness, which it would
enhance. The electric wire on New Year's Day transmitted a certain
message from Rome. Here it is in the form of blank verse:--
The King to-day received the Ministers.
The Deputations Parliamentary,
The State's great Officers, the military
And the municipal authorities,
And other delegates. His MAJESTY
Thanks for congratulations did return
To those who tendered them, occasionally,
Upon the New Year's Day; and he expressed
His hope that, 'twixt the representative
Great bodies of the People and the State,
The concord, which the national unity
Doth to complete essentially conduce,
Would ever be maintained.