A NET OF NOTHING 97 



the same way. Rhyme, indeed, is in many respects 

 a pernicious influence. It is constraining, cramps 

 the powers of expression, checks effective detail, 

 and coarsens or starves the more delicate shades 

 and touches. Yet, with all the limitations and 

 shacklings which its use must necessarily impose, 

 we have amongst us a set of purists who are 

 always crying out against any rhyme which is not 

 absolutely exact, though that it is sufficiently so to 

 please the ear — and what more is required ? — is 

 proved by this, that many of our best-loved coup- 

 lets rhyme no better — and by this, that the ear is 

 pleased with rhythm alone, as in blank verse. And 

 so the fetters, instead of being widened, as they 

 ought to be, are to be pulled closer and closer, 

 and, to get an absolute jingle, all higher considera- 

 tions — and there can hardly be one that is not 

 higher — are to be sacrificed. I doubt if there has 

 ever been a poet whose own ear would have led 

 him to be so nice in this way ; but so-called critics 

 — for the most part the most artificial and inap- 

 preciative of men — weave their net of nothing 

 around them. Happy for our literature, and for 

 peoples still to be moved by it, to whom what was 

 thought by the old British pedants to constitute 

 a cockney rhyme will be a matter but of learned- 

 trifling interest — if of any — when *'these waterflies" 

 are disregarded ! By great poets I would be under- 

 stood to mean. As for the other ones, '' de mini- 

 mis'' — yes, and '' de minoribus,'' too, here — '' non 

 curat lexT Mais laissons tout cela. 



There can hardly be a better place for observing 

 the ways of cuckoos than this open amphitheatre 



