the general effect painfully ludicrous. Everybody that has ever endured a school exhibition knows this. The fact that such rendering invariably comes of putting that or any similarly rhymed piece into the mouths of youths is of itself very strong if not conclusive proof that there is something radically wrong in the structure. That is, there is too

much metre-noting and too little melody in the rhyme. We hold that the school-boy's ding-dong is the true reading of this false literary form. The remedy lies not in reiterated rehearsals and birch or ferule, but in remodelling the piece, so that the form shall not necessarily mislead the boy.

Our principle and reasoning apply to every poem in the language. We state, without qualification, that there is not a poem in metre, stanza, and rhyme, in the English language that can be read aloud as it is written without marring the meaning or making sing song of the piece. Open a volume of Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Longfellow, Poe-any metring and rhyming poet, good or bad--and the truth of our proposition will appear. And no elo

cutionist-be he orator, actor, teacher, preacher, or what not-that is in his senses will undertake, will dare, to present any such poem to an intelligent audience as it stands in the printed books.

We shall give, a few pages further on, some examples illustrative of our idea of the difference between written and uttered poetry.

We do not propose nor wish to extend this discussion in detail to the remaining points mentioned-ALLITERATION, ITERATION and ECHO, ONOMATOPOEIA, and REFRAIN-upon the ground that they are not features peculiar to poetry, but belong to language in general. They belong equally to prose, although the use of them, or some of them, is probably more frequent in verse than in prose. Any one that feels diposed to pursue this enquiry may look up the matter in the broad field of English literature. He will find Churchill's

'Apt alliteration's artful aid" in a number of authors, notably in the ornate and effective speeches of Chancellor Phillips. Macaulay may furnish iteration and echo; Ruskin and all the fine descriptive writers, onomato

pœia; Franklin, refrain; and so on to the end of the chapter.

Our conclusions, then, are, that our poetry -the poetry of the present-not only ought to discard metre, stanza, and rhyme, as they are now used, but has actually done so, except to the eye alone; that the verse measures a sentence or a leading phrase and the stanza corresponds to the paragraph, in prose; that terminal rhyme is, like metre and stanza, an impediment to free and natural expression, and to that extent directly objectionable; and, in fine, that no revolution in the structure of verse is imminent, but that poets should, and doubtless will, shape their poems so as to assist and not to impede or confuse the reader, which will be done by making their verses and their stanzas, when they use stanzas, to depend upon and thus to show the natural divisions of their thoughts and not merely equal measures of words.

We present, in the way of a supplement or appendix, two parts more, both of examples mainly; the former to illustrate our own system, and the latter to contrast it with others.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES.-The examples

we give here are for the most part familiar ones, and are the more useful for that reason. We give them sometimes with the reading arrangement as to paragraphs, carefully preserving the minor punctuation of the authors; and sometimes in other forms, according to the point to be illustrated. By "minor punctuation we mean that notation which is generally called grammatical-embracing the period, colon, semi-colon, comma, interrogation and exclamation points, and the dashalthough we take issue with Wilson, who holds that "the art of punctuation is founded rather on grammar than on rhetoric." view is that all punctuation belongs to rhetoric, for the reason that its end is to enable the reader to get at and to give the author's real meaning; rhetoric being taken with Locke's meaning, its end being to make efficient all communication by language. Punctuation we understand to embrace not only the points just enumerated but also italics, paragraph breaks, quotations, accents, parentheses, hyphens, longs and shorts, displays, spacings, and all other marks to indicate meanings, whether called grammatical or rhetorical.

Our

In our selections we discard, as the reader must always do, the stanzas, metres, and rhymes so far as rhymes merely mark metres. The rhymes thus subordinated to their legitimate use of melody will be found to be of no other use; and, indeed, to be of no very great disadvantage to the reader, the strongest objection to them in general being the trouble and sacrifices they cost the writers, who often had to wring them in at considerable cost.

Special peculiarities will be mentioned with each piece.

In Mrs. Browning's Cowper's Grave there is one stanza, out of the fourteen which make the poem, in which the verses and the sentences are coincident; and in which we find the ideal of the poem-an ideal which the poet could not sustain even to the end of the second stanza. The perfect stanza is the first:

"It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying.

It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying.

Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence,

languish.

Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish."