The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without
very well understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known and
approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that you
will not write harmonious verses; but to deal in new metres without
considering what metre means and requires, is preposterous. What I would,
with many wishes for success, prescribe to Tennyson,--indeed without it he
can never be a poet in act,--is to write for the next two or three years in
none but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres, such as the
heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octo-syllabic measure of the
Allegro and Penseroso. He would, probably, thus get imbued with a
sensation, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, just as Eton boys
get to write such good Latin verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is,
I can scarcely scan some of his verses.
_May _1. 1833.
RABELAIS AND LUTHER.--WIT AND MADNESS.
I think with some interest upon the fact that Rabelais and Luther were born
in the same year.[1] Glorious spirits! glorious spirits!
----"Hos utinam inter
Heroas natum me!"
[Footnote 1:
They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but
Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally
placed at the end of the year preceding.
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