["The last books of the Winter season are creeping out, and
some are important and some are not."--_Daily Chronicle_.]
The last books of Winter,
Some slim and some stout,
From the hands of the printer
Are now "creeping out";
And it's helpful to learn from
A man on the spot
That some are important
And others are not.
And yet the conviction
Expressed in this guise
In the matter of fiction
I'd like to revise;
For of the romances
Unceasingly shot
From the press, most are piffle
And very few not.
From minstrelsy's _mêlée_,
Its foam and its surge,
A Keats or a Shelley
May haply emerge;
Or there may be a Tupper
To leaven the lot--
Some bards are immortal
And others are not.
We're certain to meet with--
The stock never fails--
Some Memoirs replete with
Fatiguing details;
But the chance isn't great of
A Lockhart and Scott,
Or a Boswell and Johnson--
No, certainly not.
Some prophet whose coming
Is yet undivined
May set the world humming
And stagger mankind;
It may be a Darwin
Some publisher's got
Up his sleeve, or it may be
Some one who is not.
There may be some clinkers
Now "creeping" to light,
Tremendous deep thinkers
Or high in their flight;
There may be diffusers
Of air that is hot;
There may be a Bergson,
Again there may not.
Though the publishing season
Is now on the wane,
This isn't a reason
Why we should complain;
For the view of the expert--
His "i's" when we dot--
Is that some books are useful,
But most of them rot.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Hostess_ (_playfully_). "WHAT--HAVEN'T YOU FINISHED
YET?"
_Sandy_ (_regarding cake, from which he has been told to help
himself_). "AH, BUT YE KEN, A CAKE O' THIS SIZE ISNA SAE SOON EATEN AS
YE MAY THENK."]
* * * * *