es as may not easily be welded together or amalgamated into one whole
by the mercury of fancy. For instance, it would be well to avoid coupling
such words as moon and spoon, breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and
stove; hope and soap; all which it might be difficult to bring together
harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover
himself. SHELLEY affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift
and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a
ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a
_spavin_, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical.
_Benissimo!_ then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to do is
to fill up the lines to match the ends, and this, in one evening's
practice, will become as easy, the same thing in fact, as the filling up
of the blank form of an ordinary receipt.

But the most expeditious and surest way of procuring a good Sonnet is the
Division of Labor System. This has often been unconsciously practised by
modern poets, but it has never been explicitly set forth till now. Every
body knows that even in the fabrication of so small a thing as a needle,
the process is facilitated by dividing it among a number of hands; as to
one the eye, to another the point, to one the grinding, to another the
polishing. In the same way, to render a sonnet pointed and sharp, to
polish it and insure it against cutting the thread of its argument, the
work should be performed by two or more. Every sonnet, in short, ought to
be a translation. I do not say a translation from the German or any other
jargon, but a translation from English--from one man's into another man's
English. It is absurd for one workman to do both rhyming and thinking. In
this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take
any 'matter-ful' author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, and make
that your material. Trim it, compress it, turn it and twist it upside down
and inside out, vary it any way but the author's own, and you will be
likely to effect a speedy and wholesome operation. What a saving of time
is here! Who will be silly enough to manufacture his own thinkings into
verse when the world is so full of excellent stuff as yet unwrought in the
great mine of letters? Let us not burn up our own native forests while we
can fetch coals from Newcastle. What a pleasant prospect for readers too!
A man may be sure _then_, that a sonnet