'All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod.
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore;
His arms and his legs were long and bare,
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble,
Had bent that stout back nearly double;
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago,
And the hands that worked his foreign vest
Long ages ago had gone to rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood--with Ham and Shem.'
Then, again, there is Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' a rare old
story rarely versified:--
'Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And eat the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.'
There is vast difference between the three writers; the courtly epigram
of Praed, and the scholarly variety of Browning, differ widely from the
style of the master whom they imitate. But it is a high testimony to the
literary value of what we may call the Ingoldsby method, that men so
original and so desperate have tried their hands at it. A glance at the
'Bentley Ballads' shows that the same thing has been done by a great
number of very different men; Sheehan and Creasy, Maginn and Mahony, Sam
Lover the versatile, whom we remember delighting us with improvisations
at Barnes-terrace just above the Thames, Tom Ingoldsby's son who follows
his father with filial felicity, have done excellently well in this
style of spirit and humour.
Indeed, to succeed in it to a certain degree, demands only abundance of
animal spirits and a capacity for rhythm and rhyme. But it is clear that
Barham had more than this. What, indeed, makes him perfect and absolute
master of his craft, is his power of invariably catching the whimsical
aspects, the humorous sides, of an event. Hood was too fond of a pun,
Praed was too fine a gentleman, Browning is too subtle and curious, to
attain the precise humour of Ingoldsby. Wherever we open the 'Legends'
we find the frolicsome fancy of their author fresh and facile. Take the
description of Winifred and David Pryce, in 'Look at the Clock!' It is a
picture easily realized in the Principality:--
'Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
Her gown was a flowered one, her petticoat green,
Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's;
Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
Her gown-tail was turned up, and tucked through the pocket holes:
A face like a ferret
Betokened her spirit:
To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young,
Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.
Now David Pryce
Had one darling vice;
Remarkably partial to anything nice,
Nought that was good to him came amiss,
Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss!
Especially ale--
If it was not too stale
I really believe he'd have emptied a pail;
Not that in Wales
They talk of their ales;
To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you,
Being spelt with a C, two R's and a W.'
Now in this there is absolutely nothing that will bear analysis; it is
the laughing spirit of the man that carries you on, amusing you in spite
of yourself, in spite of your decided feeling that really there is
nothing to laugh at. But, somehow, what with the ready jingle of the
rhyme, and the perfect good humour of the ridicule, amused you are.
Barham's loudest fun was generated when he had to deal with obsolete and
obsolescent superstitions. He loved to laugh at the vulgar idea of the
Devil--the fiend with horns, tail, and hoofs, whom Cuvier ruthlessly
dismissed as 'a graminivorous animal.' Thus, in the 'Lay of Saint
Cuthbert,' we find him describing a group of demons at dinner:--
'Few ate more hearty
Than Madame Astarte,
And Hecate, considered the belles of the party.
Between them was seated Leviathan, eager
To do the polite, and take wine with Belphegor:
Here was Morbleu (a French devil) supping soup-meagre,
And there, munching leeks, Davy Jones of Tredegar--
* * * * *
Here's Lucifer lying blind drunk with Scotch ale,
While Beelzebub's tying huge knots in his tail'--
and so on _ad libitum_. Again, in the 'Lay of Saint Abelard,' he gives
us 'Old Nick' defeated by a saintly personage. It was--
'In good King Dagobert's palmy days,
When saints were many and sins were few,
Old Nick, 'tis said,
Was sore bested
One evening--and could not tell what to do.
He had been east and he had been west,
And far had he journeyed o'er land and sea;
For women and men
Were warier then,
And he could not catch one where he'd now catch three.
He had been north and he had been south,
From Zembla's shores unto fair Peru,
Ere he filled the sack
Which he bore on his back--
Saints were so many and sins so few.
The way was long, and the day was hot;
His wings were weary; his hoofs were sore;
And scarce could he trail
His nerveless tail
As it furrowed the sand on the Red Seashore.
The day had been hot, and the way was long;
Hoof-sore, and weary, and faint, was he;
He lowered his sack,
And the heat of his back.
As he leaned on a palm-tree, blasted the tree.'
Demons and saints were the favourite themes of Tom Ingoldsby's laughter;
he jeered alike the Romish miracle-monger and the anthropomorphic fiend.
A volume might be written on the way in which the popular and vulgar
idea of the devil has gradually arisen. It is clear from 'Paradise
Lost,' that Milton favored the mediæval notion that the Pagan divinities
were really fiends; and it can scarcely be doubted that the hirsute Pan
gave the first sitting for that portrait of the devil which Coleridge
completed, when he wrote
'His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind for his tail to come through.'
At such matters we can smile contemptuously; but in earlier centuries,
when the Pagan superstition had still some vitality left in it, it was a
serious matter to the Christian convert. Pan might meet him at the
corner of a lonely woodland, and strike him with a panic dread. Worse
than all he might be allured by the terrible enticements of Venus. To
this day, Friday has a tradition of ill-luck, because it is _dies
veneris--vendredi_. That the goddess of evil pleasure still came among
men as a female fiend was a firm belief of the Middle Ages. Hence have
we the legend of the Venusberg, chosen as a theme by more than one
living poet, the version we prefer being unquestionably Lord Houghton's;
hence also that of the betrothal ring inadvertently placed by a
bridegroom on the finger of a statue of Venus, which finger, on his
return, he finds bent, and the ring irremovable. This latter story is
told with prosaic prolixity in the final volume of Mr. Morris's 'Earthly
Paradise.' It must be remembered that the change from Paganism to
Christianity was often effected in curious ways; that the worship of
Apollo, the sun-god, was, by a play upon words, diverted to Elias the
prophet; that temples of Venus were, as a rule, dedicated to the Virgin.
Probably that worship of the Virgin Mary to which Romanists cling so
fondly originated in a weak desire to satisfy proselytes by giving them
one goddess in exchange for another. Any way, the belief in Venus
endured so long that, in 1614, in the good city of Frankfort, a learned
lawyer named Kornman, published a work called 'Mons Veneris,' which
dealt with the legends about her as if they were based on fact. Of such
legends let us name one only; an English story, told by William of
Newbury. In the reign of Henry I., a peasant passed at midnight, near a
hill, not far from the town of Burlington. To his amazement, he heard
sounds of revelry therefrom, and saw a door open in the hillside, and,
entering, beheld a vast chamber, where men and women held high festival.
A cup was handed him, full of some liquid, which doubtless would have
the effect of Circe's magic wine: with singular presence of mind, our
peasant threw away the wine, and ran off with the cup. All the rabble
rout of Venus pursued him, but the swift-footed ploughman brought his
prize safely to Burlington. Somebody (probably the mayor, who should
have been knighted for it) sent the cup to the King, and the King made
it a present to the Queen of King David of Scotland; but King William of
Scotland returned it to Henry II. of England. Whether it is still among
the royal plate is a point to be determined by 'Notes and Queries.'
The growth of letters and of science changes all this; just as Venus
vanished a few centuries ago, Old Bogy also--the foe of our infancy--has
vanished from modern nurseries, nor do very many children of elder
growth believe in an archdemon of the graminivorous type. Hence the fun
of 'Ingoldsby' that ridiculed superstition of this sort is likely to
lose its interest in time. We fear, however, that his laughing
caricature of Romish absurdities--as in 'The Jackdaw of Rheims'--will
scarcely lose its point at present. The Pope may be reduced to 'the
Vatican, and a garden,' but the Papal superstition still clings closely
to multitudes of men, especially of the Celtic race. That race, as M.
John Lemoinne has just said of his French kindred, is feminine, and
seems unable to accept a manly religion.
The 'Ingoldsby Legends' are peculiarly adapted to the palate of youth.
They make fun out of trifles and vulgarities. One can hardly understand
a man of high culture caring much about them after forty. Then the
humour of Shakspeare's clowns, of Cervantes, and Sterne, and Elia,
becomes more enjoyable than the 'Ingoldsby Legends' or the 'Pickwick
Papers.' Then you prefer Autolycus to Sam Weller. The strong point of
Ingoldsby is his gay high-spirited boyishness; but this quality is only
attractive under certain conditions. It may, perhaps, be roughly stated
that a man will care to read Ingoldsby so long as he cares to play
cricket. It is, in fact, the eager buoyancy and rather perspiring fun of
the cricket-field which one finds in the rollicking strophes of the
'Legends.' When their writer knocks over a saint or a demon as if he
were a wicket, you almost expect to hear the shout of, 'How's that,
umpire?' Indeed, the book is a _loud_ book, scarcely to be tolerated,
one might think, in a quiet library. Yet was its author a quiet haunter
of libraries, and we find in one of his letters how he received in one a
royal visitor:--
'What think you of a visit from, and confabulation with,
the Queen of the Belgians. On Saturday, I was in the
library at St. Paul's, my custom always in an afternoon,
with a book-binder's 'prentice and a printer's devil,
looking out fifty dilapidated folios for rebinding. I had
on a coat which, from a foolish prejudice in the multitude
against patched elbows, I wear nowhere else, my hands and
face encrusted with the dust of years, and wanting only the
shovel--I had the brush--to sit for the portrait of a
respectable master chimney sweeper, when the door opened,
and in walked the Cap of Maintenance, bearing the sword of,
and followed by, the Lord Mayor in full fig, with the
prettiest and liveliest little Frenchwoman leaning on his
arm. Nobody could get at the lions but myself. I was fairly
in for it, and was thus presented in the most _recherché_,
if not the most expensive, court-dress that I will venture
to say the eyes of royalty were ever greeted withal.
_Heureusement pour moi_, she spoke excellent English,
however, and rattled on with a succession of questions
which I answered as best I might. They were sensible,
however, showed some acquaintance with literature, and a
very good knowledge of dates.'
Her lively Majesty might have been felicitated on finding Tom Ingoldsby
as a guide to the library of the great cathedral. But to return to the
'Legends.' Besides their extreme boyishness, their redundancy of
pulsation, there is a deficiency in them which must prevent their
becoming classic. They are devoid of poetry. Master of the grotesque as
he was, Barham had no mastery of the picturesque. Keen to see and seize
the humorous aspects of affairs, he had none of that deeper humour
which creates character. A real poet who had written some fifty or more
eccentric legends, could not have helped inventing or describing certain
individual characters in the course of his work. He must have done it
unconsciously, must have done it if even he had tried to avoid it. There
are two tests on the very surface of the true poet. If he describes a
scene, you see it; if he describes a man, you know him. Barham's
grotesque descriptions are often remarkable; indeed, his legends
somewhat remind us of the hideous gurgoyles of old churches, wherein
tradition sayeth the old ecclesiastic architects depicted their enemies,
making of them waterspouts, that during rain they might seem to vomit.
The men who carved those gurgoyles could not have sculptured an Apollo;
and of Barham it may be said that, though he wrote laughable stories
with supreme felicity, he never produced a line of poetry. He appears,
indeed, to have regarded only the surface of life. There is nothing in
his published works to show that he had an original idea, or that he
cared about ideas. Of course, having given us the 'Ingoldsby Legends'--a
piece of work absolutely unique, and quite unlikely to meet with a
readable rival--he will be forgiven if he had a contempt for ideas; but
one feels some desire to know whether such fertility of fun was not the
upper stratum of something stronger and finer. Tom Hood's fun, for
example, grows out of his profound melancholy, as under Etna's laughing
vines the volcanic fire is sleeping. Shakspeare's fun grows out of his
masterful knowledge of the world, of men, of women. In a play of his you
seem in some city of chivalry and romance, where the great knight passes
to deeds of high emprise, and the lovely lady smiles on him from her
balcony, and the troubadour sings of 'the Lord of Oc and No;' and all
the while you hear the chaffer of the market-place, the chatter of
street gossips, the insignificant laughter of loitering louts. Fun that
has no root in something deeper seems morbid and hysterical; and we
cannot help believing that there was more in Barham than his writings
reveal, than his most intimate friends knew, than perhaps he knew or
even guessed himself.
Dr. Maginn, a man like yet unlike Tom Ingoldsby, wrote these four
lines--part of a poem which we have no means of obtaining:--
'For those who read aright are well aware
That Falstaff, revelling his rough mates between,
Oft in his heart felt less the load of care,
Than Jaques, sighing in the forest green.'
Maginn had, if we may judge from appearances, higher poetic instincts
than Barham; his 'Homeric Ballads' are a very remarkable contribution to
the literature of Homeric translation; but he unwisely expended himself
upon periodical writing, and has left nothing behind him worthy of his
powers. It is, we think, a subject for congratulation, that the cheap
magazines of the day are so anxious to please the populace, that a
first-rate writer has absolutely no chance with them, and is obliged to
do work worthier of him. The shilling magazine has to suit the taste of
the railway reader, who wants to be amused during the hour in which
Great Western or Great Northern accepts him as a parcel to be delivered
at a friend's house by dinner-time. How this is done we need not say, as
anybody who likes to expend a shilling can judge for himself; but it is
so done as to render it absurd for men of the calibre of Barham and
Maginn to write for the majority of these magazines. This we take to be
an advantage. Such men are obliged to work harder--and better.
Another instance of a man with something nobler in him and better than
he ever gave the world, or even his friends, is Theodore Hook. Until his
private diary came into the hands of those who knew him best, they had
no knowledge of the depths of passionate remorse for a wasted life which
lay beneath the too brilliant surface of his character. 'In every page,'
wrote Lockhart,
'We trace the disastrous influence of both the grand
original errors perpetually crossing and blackening the
picture of superficial gaiety--indications, not to be
mistaken, of a conscience ill at ease; of painful
recollections and dark anticipations rising irrepressibly,
not to be commanded down; of good, gentle, generous
feelings, converted by stings and dartings of remorse into
agonies of torture. If we were to choose a motto for this
long line of volumes, it would be a maxim so familiar to
himself, that it is repeated over and over in his tales of
fiction--hardly omitted in any one of them--"Wrong never
comes right."'
Theodore Hook laboured under the double disadvantage of an irremovable
load of debt, and of an illicit connection which effectually prevented
his marrying a woman who might have directed his marvellous powers into
their true channel. The consequence was that he lived a false factitious
life; worked terribly hard to produce income necessary for him to meet
wealthy peers on apparently equal terms; was always pestered by
money-lenders; yet all the while his daring spirit maintained an
external gaiety unquenchable. At the very time when his spirit seemed
highest, when his wit was memorably brilliant, when at club or country
house he was amazing every one by his victorious vivacity, there occur
in his diary entries that show a broken spirit, a wounded heart, an
infinite regret for the past and despair of the future. Such was the
inner condition of a man whose conversation had such unique sparkle,
that men dined at the Athenæum for the chance of being allowed to draw
their chairs to his little table in a favourite corner (Temperance
Corner) after dinner--so that the diners at that club fell off more than
300 a year after his disappearance from his wonted seat.
It is unfortunate that the early career of men of letters is often
turned awry by the well-meant interference of their relations. A boy of
genius, who happens to appear in the midst of a steady, stolid,
respectable family, is usually regarded as a 'black sheep.' They try to
make him work in some regular groove, and, of course, he fails. If they
are very determined, he quarrels with them, and then, too often, he runs
headlong into debt, or love, or both, and burdens himself in such a way
that he has to toil for freedom through the best years of his life, and
possibly never emancipates himself. Of course, it is always hard to say
whether the young gentleman is right who fancies himself a genius. Dr.
Holmes, in his latest novel, has a capital sketch of a young poetaster
who 'eventuates' behind the counter of a store. Such youths require
Darwinian compression; but there are just a few of higher mould, with
the irrepressible vocation for pen and ink which nothing can cure, who
would do better if some way could be devised to give them a chance in
literature. Perhaps when the school boards have leisure to consider the
subject, they will try to discover a way of developing those latent
powers, mathematical as well as poetical, which often exist in regions
wholly unexpected. Inspectors of schools might be directed, after they
have registered the triumphs of the clever boys, to investigate the
habits of the stupid ones. A great poet or mathematician is almost
certain to seem stupid in his boyhood.
It may appear that we have tried the 'Ingoldsby Legends' by too high a
test; and, indeed, it is a very unpretentious production. Its originator
was wholly modest, and did not dream of placing himself in the foremost
seats of the literary amphitheatre. He knew the true value of his
invention. It is designed for those who would rather laugh than think.
It may amuse children at any rate, and there are certain fortunate folk
who, to the end of their lives, can be children now and then--can
listen to merry rhyming, can believe for the moment that in Fairyland
there are mock turtles and March hares, that the dogs there have no ears
because the dog's ears have been used up on the little boys' Latin
grammars, and the sheep no eyes because the little girls have used up
all their sheep's eyes in looking at their sweethearts; can imagine that
in Ghostland one may dine comfortably with one's doppelganger. There are
times--'weird winter nights,' as Shelley calls them, warmed with
merriment, and joyous summer days in which the nightingale seems ebrious
with ozone--when there is a necessity for nonsense of one sort or
another. It is this necessity which Ingoldsby and his followers supply.
Possibly some good is effected by the fact that the occupants of lofty
positions have deigned to play with these toys; that the occupants of
deaneries and canonries (ecclesiastic port-wineries, if we may venture
to coin a phrase) have found in such matters Attic salt for their
filberts.
_Apropos_ of Ghostland, just named, Barham was a great lover of spectral
stories, and the reader who cares about such will find in his memoir
some of the best we have ever seen. As to anecdotes, the book is
brimming over with them. Of course, one meets with one or two that have
been met before; but an old story, like an old friend or an old coat, is
sometimes more enjoyable than a new one. Barham was at Paul's School
with some men as well known as himself, among them being Sir Frederick
Pollock, Nestor of lawyers, and Richard Bentley, Nestor of publishers.
Another of his comrades was Charles Diggle, afterwards Governor of
Sandhurst College. Of him and Barham we find a good story:--
'The two boys having in the course of one of their walks
discovered a Quaker's meeting-house, forthwith procured a
penny tart of a neighbouring pastry-cook; furnished with
this, Diggle marched boldly into the building, and holding
up the delicacy in the midst of the grave assembly said,
with perfect solemnity,
'"Whoever speaks first shall have this pie."
'"Friend, go thy way," commenced a drab-coloured gentleman,
rising; "go thy way, and----"
'"The pie's yours, sir!" exclaimed Master Diggle, politely;
and placing it before the astounded speaker, hastily made
his escape.'
It was very improper, certainly; and we cannot help hoping that the Head
Master of Dean Colet's famous school heard of the impertinence, and
administered to the 'nether-urchin' of the future military pedagogue the
sharp flogging which he undoubtedly deserved. But one cannot help
laughing at these schoolboy absurdities; and the naughtiest boys, if
looked after by a schoolmaster like Tom Hood's,
'Who never spoilt the child and spared the rod,
But spoilt the rod and never spared the child,'
often turn out the ablest men. There is incipient power in these wayward
vivacities of youth.
Musical amateurs of the present day of the strenuous class that elicited
Charles Lamb's verses beginning--
'Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites; for my part
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel'
will doubtless deem Lord North an utter barbarian. George III. scolded
him for never going to the concerts of ancient music. 'Your brother, the
Bishop,' said the King, 'never misses them, my Lord.' 'Sir,' answered
the Premier, 'if I were as deaf as my brother, the Bishop, I would never
miss them either!'
Of Lord Thurlow we believe it was that Theodore Hook declared that
nobody could be as wise as Thurlow _looked_. Whether he had much wisdom
is a moot point; but strength of will he possessed in an enviable
degree, as the following anecdote shows:--
'Lord Thurlow had applied to George the Third on behalf of
his brother for the Bishopric of Durham, and having
somewhat unexpectedly met with a refusal, he bowed, and was
about to retire without pressing his suit, when the
monarch, wishing to soften his decision as far as possible,
added, "Anything else I shall be happy to bestow upon your
relative, but this, unfortunately, is a dignity never held
but by a man of high rank and family."
'"Then, Sire," returned Lord Thurlow, drawing himself up,
"I must persist in my request--I ask it for the brother of
the Lord High Chancellor of England!"
The Chancellor was firm, and the King was compelled to
yield.'
This we take to have been highly creditable to Thurlow: it was a
courageous assertion that the aristocracy of genius is at least equal to
the aristocracy of birth. Here is an amusing story of clerical ignorance
from Barham's diary:--
'December 3.--Dined for the first time with Dr. Sumner,
Bishop of Llandaff, who told me, as a fact, that Dr. R----,
a fellow of Eton, had some time since ordered one of his
ponds to be cleared out. A great number of carp, tench,
eels, &c., were taken in the course of the operation. The
doctor was at dinner with some friends, who had been
viewing the work, when a servant came in, to inform him
that in draining off the water the men had found a
chalybeate. "Have they indeed?" cried he, with much
interest; "I am very glad to hear it. Tell them to put it
along with the other fish for the present."'
In those days Eton was not famous for its erudition, and a fellow of
that famous corporation was likely to be a better judge of the 'other
fish' than of the chalybeate. Dr. R---- would probably have known
exactly the right way to dress a red mullet from the Avon or a Coniston
char.
Here is a good story of Dr. Thomas Hume, an intimate friend of
Barham's:--
'They had walked together to the office of one of the
morning newspapers, and there the doctor silently placed
upon the counter an announcement of the death of some
friend, together with five shillings, the usual charge for
the insertion of such advertisements. The clerk glanced at
the paper, tossed it on one side, and said gruffly, "Seven
and six!"
'"I have frequently," replied Hume, "had occasion to
publish these simple notices, and I have never before been
charged more than five shillings."
'"Simple!" repeated the clerk, without looking up; "He's
universally beloved, and deeply regretted! Seven and six."
'Hume produced the additional half crown, and laid it
deliberately by the others, observing, as he did so, with
the same solemnity of tone he had used throughout,
"Congratulate yourself, sir, that this is an expense which
your executors will never be put to."'
We hope that unlucky clerk could understand the rebuke that he received;
but to us it appears that sarcasm is generally thrown away on such
people. They are pachyderms.
The book contains some capital stories of poor Theodore Hook, that
marvellously wasted intellect. His great power lay in _impromptu_, of
prose or verse, spoken or written. No man has ever equalled him at a
paragraph or a squib, except as to the latter, Garrick and Coleridge.
Nobody was ever so exquisite a conversational wit. And certainly no one
has ever possessed his power of improvisation in English. He threw off
stanza and strophe as fast as a knifegrinder's wheel throws sparks. He
scintillated always. Coleridge, after an evening in his company,
declared he was as great a genius as Dante. His felicity was invariable.
When he was improvising at the piano, after luncheon, at his Fulham
villa, enter the ancilla, to say Mr. Winter, the tax collector, has
called. Ejaculates Hook:--
'Here comes Mr. Winter, collector of taxes;
I advise you to give him whatever he axes!
He isn't the man to stand nonsense or flummery.
For though his name's Winter, his actions are summary.'
But how could Hook stand the tremendous dissipation to which he
foolishly condescended? Here is a specimen of his way of living:--
'After a dinner given by Mr. Stephen Price, of Drury-lane
Theatre, all the guests, with the exception of Cannon and
Theodore Hook, having long since retired, the host, who was
suffering from an incipient attack of gout, was compelled
to allude pretty plainly to the lateness of the hour. No
notice, however, was taken of the hint; and, unable to
endure any longer the pain of sitting up, Mr. Price made
some excuse, and slipped quietly off to bed. On the
following morning he inquired of his servant--"Pray at what
time did those gentlemen go last night?" "Go, sir!" replied
John; "they are not gone, sir; they have just rung for
coffee!"'
To revert from anecdotes of this class to the special theme of our
article. Poetry is one thing, and verse-writing is another, and there
may be very good verse-writers who would not condescend to be
poetasters. In the present day there are a multitude of foolish persons
who have discovered that _breeze_ rhymes with _trees_, and that there
are as many syllables as they have fingers in a line of blank verse. So
they flood the shilling magazines with their silliness, and some of them
raise money enough to pay for the publication of a volume of their
trash. Within a few days from this time of writing we have had occasion
to look through about a score volumes of this class, and only one
contained anything that could be called poetry--and that one came from
San Francisco. Now, why cannot people with a faculty for verse write it
sensibly, without trying to be poets? Why can they not give us something
manly, something humorous? Lockhart and Maginn wrote fine verse, but
would have smiled at the notion of being called poets. Barham never
wrote a line of poetry, in the severe sense--but what immense amusement
has the world received from the rhymed stories of Ingoldsby!