“Telephone 239. “36A, Clare Market,
“Telegraph, ‘Vindex.’ “W.C.
“Dr. Sir,
“Your estd. favor to hand. No stamp being enclosed with verses,
we have retained same, but will forward on receipt of two stamps,
including cost of this.
“Faithfully yrs.,
“ALPHONSE RIPHRAIM.
“Please note change of address.”
By this Peter Gurney was so angered, that he walked straight over
to his club, rang up No. 239, and told the editor of the _Patriot_,
personally, by word of mouth, and with emphasis, that he was a
Pro-Boer; then he rang off before that astonished foreigner had
time to reply.
But men of Mr. Peter Gurney’s stamp are not cast down by these
reverses. He remembered one rather low and insignificant sheet
called the _Empire_, in which a vast number of unknown names had
been appearing at the bottom of ballads, sonnets, and so forth,
dealing mainly with the foreign policy of Great Britain, to which
country (as being their native land) the writers were apparently
warmly attached.
Peter Gurney flattered himself that he understood why the _Empire_
made a speciality of beginners. It was a new paper with little
capital, and thought (wisely enough) that if it printed many such
juvenilia it would, among the lot, strike some vein of good verse.
He had heard of such ventures in journalism, and remembered being
told that certain sonnets of Mr. Lewis Morris, and even the earlier
poems of Tennyson, were thus buried away in old magazines. He
copied out his verses once more, gave them the new title “Aspiro,”
and sent them to the _Empire_. He got a very polite letter in
reply:--
“Dear Mr. ---- I have read your verses with much pleasure, and
see by them that the praise I have heard on all sides of your
unpublished work was not unmerited. Unfortunately, the _Empire_
cannot afford to pay anything for its verse; and so large has
been the demand upon our space, that we have been compelled to
make it a rule that all contributions of this nature should pay
a slight premium to obtain a space in our columns. But for this
it would be impossible to distinguish between competitors without
the risk of heartburnings and petty jealousies. We enclose our
scale of charges, which are (as you see) purely nominal, and
remain, awaiting your order to print,
“Yours truly,
“WILLIAM POWER.”
I need hardly tell you that Peter, on receiving this letter, put
two farthings into an envelope addressed to William Power, and was
careful not to register or stamp it.
As for his Poem, he changed the title to “They Live!” and sent
it to the editor of _Criticism_. Next day he was not a little
astonished to get his verses back, folded up in the following
waggish letter:--
“The Laurels,
“20, Poplar Grove,
“S.W.
“Monday, the 21st of April.
“Sir,
“I am directed by the editor
To say that lack of space and press of matter
Forbid his using your delightful verses,
Which, therefore, he returns. Believe me still
Very sincerely yours, Nathaniel Pickersgill.”
Now not a little disconsolate, young Mr. Gurney went out into the
street, and thought of _Shavings_ as a last chance. _Shavings_ gave
a guinea to the best poem on a given subject, and printed some
of the others sent in. This week he remembered the subject was a
eulogy of General Whitelock. He did not hesitate, therefore, to
recast his poem, and to call it a “Threnody” on that commander,
neglecting, by a poetic fiction, the fact that he was alive, and
even looking well after his eight months of hard work against the
Warra-Muggas. He went into the great buildings where _Shavings_
is edited, and saw a young man opening with immense rapidity a
hand-barrowful of letters, while a second sorted them with the
speed of lightning, and a third tied them into neat bundles of
five hundred each, and placed them in pigeon-holes under their
respective initial letters.
“Pray, sir,” said Peter to the first of these three men, “what are
you doing?” “I am,” replied the functionary, “just finishing my
week’s work” (for it was a Saturday morning), “and in the course
of these four hours alone I am proud to say that I have opened no
less than seven thousand three hundred and two poems on our great
Leader, some of which, indeed, have been drawn from the principal
English poets, but the greater part of which are, I am glad to say,
original.”
Embittered by such an experience, my friend Gurney returned to
his home, and wrote that same afternoon the Satire on Modern
Literature, in which he introduces his own verses as an example and
warning, and on which, as all the world knows, his present fame
reposes.
To-day everyone who reads these lines is envious of Mr. Peter
Gurney’s fame. He is the leader of the whole Cobbley school, the
master of his own cousin, Mr. Peter Davey, and without question the
model upon which Mr. Henry Hawk, Mr. Daniel Witton, and Mr. John
Stuart have framed their poetic manner. He suffered and was strong.
He condescended to prose, and kept his verse in reserve. The result
no poet can ignore.
I should but mislead the student were I to pretend that Mr. Peter
Gurney achieved his present reputation--a reputation perhaps
somewhat exaggerated, but based upon real merit and industry--by
any spontaneous effort. Hard, regular, unflinching labour in this,
as in every other profession, is the condition of success. But the
beginner may say (and with justice), “It is not enough to tell me
to work; how should I set about it? What rules should I follow?”
Let me pursue my invariable custom, and set down in the simplest
and most methodical form the elements of the Short Lyric.
The student will, at some time or another, have suffered strong
emotions. He will have desired to give them metrical form. He
will have done so--and commonly he will have gone no further. I
have before as I write a verse, the opening of one of the most
unsuccessful poems ever written. It runs:--
“I am not as my fathers were,
I cannot pass from sleep to sleep,
Or live content to drink the deep
Contentment of the common air.”
This is very bad. It is bad because it proceeded from a deep
emotion only, and shot out untrammelled. It has no connection with
verse as an art, and yet that art lies open for any young man who
will be patient and humble, and who will _learn_.
His first business is to decide at once between the only two styles
possible in manufactured verse, the Obscure and the Prattling. I
say “the _only_ two styles” because I don’t think you can tackle
the Grandiose, and I am quite certain you couldn’t manage the
Satiric. I know a young man in Red Lion Square who can do the
Grandiose very well, and I am going to boom him when I think the
time has come; but the Student-in-Ordinary cannot do it, so he may
put it out of his head.
I will take the Simple or Prattling style first. Choose a subject
from out of doors, first because it is the fashion, and secondly
because you can go and observe it closely. For you must know that
manufactured verse is very like drawing, and in both arts you have
to take a model and be careful of details. Let us take (_e.g._) a
Pimpernel.
A Pimpernel is quite easy to write about; it has remarkable habits,
it is not gross or common. It would be much harder to write about
grass, for instance, or parsley.