iters who, having squatted on that part
of the literary domain some twenty or forty or sixty years ago, have, as
it were, fenced it in with their touchy, barbed-wire reputations, and
have come to regard it and cause it to be regarded as their private
property. The discovery having been made that rhyme is not a paddock for
this or that race-horse, but a common, where every colt, pony, and donkey
can range at will; a vast irruption into that once-privileged inclosure
has taken place. The study of the great invasion is interesting.

Poetry is commonly thought to be the language of emotion. On the
contrary, most of what is so called proves the absence of all passionate
excitement. It is a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after
rhymes which can be made serviceable, after images which will be
effective, after phrases which are sonorous; all this under limitations
which restrict the natural movements of fancy and imagination. There is
a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and
rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat excited by the
subject of the "poet's" treatment. True poetry, the best of it, is but
the ashes of a burnt-out passion. The flame was in the eye and in the
cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we come to
the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just
glimmering under the dead gray ashes,--that is all we can look for. When
it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well
the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They catch
all the phrases of the true poet. They imitate his metrical forms as a
mimic copies the gait of the person he is representing.

Now I am not going to abuse "these same metre ballad-mongers," for the
obvious reason that, as all The Teacups know, I myself belong to the
fraternity. I don't think that this reason should hinder my having my
say about the ballad-mongering business. For the last thirty years I
have been in the habit of receiving a volume of poems or a poem, printed
or manuscript--I will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more than
one in a day, but at very short intervals. I have been consulted by
hundreds of writers of verse as to the merit of their performances, and
have often advised the writers to the best of my ability. Of late I have
found it impossible to attempt to read critically all the literary
productions, in verse and in prose, whi