Address on Literature and Arts. 133 



foremost. " Proverbs in Porcelain," " Ballades in Blue China," 

 and " Rhymes a la Mode," are titles which aptly indicate 

 the nature of their contents. It may be doubted, liowever, 

 Avh ether there is not something suicidal in collecting such 

 trifles in book form. To come upon occasionally and 

 unexpectedly, and amongst graver reading, they are 

 charming ; but marshalled side by side, like linnets 

 ravished from their native copses, and crowded in a cage, 

 they quickly pail upon you. It is a banquet wholly of 

 syllabubs, and you soon feel very hungry, and there comes to 

 you, like a wicked whisper, that epigram of the old satirist, 

 which seems to have a cruel applicability to the author — 



" As skilful divers to the bottom fall 

 Faster than those who cauuot swim at all ; 

 So in this way of writing without thinking, 

 Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking." 



Andrew Lang, in the work already quoted, says, " Now we 

 dwell in an age of democracy, and poetry wins but a feigned 

 respect, more out of courtesy and for old friendship's sake 

 than for liking. Though so many v/rite verse, as in Juvenal's 

 time, I doubt if many read it. ' None but minstrels list of 

 sonneting.' " Just so ; the public is quickly sated with 

 rhyming for rhyming's sake. But when what is both good 

 poetry and good reading appears, it counts its readers by 

 thousands ; l:)ut while poets write to please themselves, 

 to practise their hand in quaint measures, to catch far-off 

 ■echoes from old lyres, to reproduce the outward shell of a 

 past century's thought, while they give us the barren 

 blossom of an airy fancy, the devices of a fine-strung ear, but 

 do not dig deep into their own hearts, nor speak as those 

 who are stirred with strong emotion, or lifted by miglity 

 inspiration to utter things irrepressible, they need not 

 wonder, they should not complain, if the world cares as 

 little for their trifling as they for the world's needs. 



I have thus briefly touched upon one department of the 

 literature of our day, and that only in connection with living 

 poets, of whom we may expect more, and for whom there is 

 yet hope. I had intended to glance at fiction, 1 liography, 

 history, the drama, and so on ; but these must needs wait a 

 more convenient season, and, perchance, a more experienced 

 critic. I do not flatter myself that my audience will accept 

 all my conclusions without demur. In poetry, which is 

 pre-eminently a matter of taste, each reader will find his 

 own affinities, and will know what best appeals to him. 



" 'Tis with our jutlgments as our watches, none 

 Go just alike, yet each believes his own." 



