BAD VERSE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1330, 6 January 1912, Page 9

BAD VERSE.

The guest of the evening at a recent dinner of the Poets' Club was Mr. Ililaire Beiloc. Speaking on "Bad Verse," Mr. Bclloc said that there were three criteria of this art. In tho first place no one had of wilful purpose deliberately and successfully written Iwul verse. Many great poets had attempted to do so for the jest, but all of them had failed. Satirists had attempted, and _ they had always fallen into the groove of their own admirable art. Tho rhythm of really bad verse must cither bo exaggerated or nonexistent. A lino which was wholly bad and without rhythm was a masterpieco of human speech, and ho went so far as to say that ho had never read such a line in his life The second criterion was that tho matter must be base. (Laughter.) The writer of bad verse must bo a coward or a traitor or a man of weak will, given up to some form of debased intellect, a drunkard, avaricious, or a usurer. Otherwise he would fall into popular melodrama. (Laughter.) The third essential was that tho effect should )>e horrible. (Laughter.) As instances of really bad lines, ho quoted: "Coffined in English oak lie sleeps in peace"—(laughter)—and "This is .my Hag; for this I am prepared to do end die." But it was not by single I verses that they could tell bad verse. Bad I verse was-something organic and large.! They must write a bad poem before thev cOul'd boast that they had written bail verse. Mr. Winston Churchill once made a speech in his constituency—where the Jews always voted for him, and Aryans voted for him, and those who voted against' him \otod with regret—(laughter)—which began thus: "There is one thing that inank'nd will never forgive, and it is had verse/ He meant very, very bad verse, and th"n he quoted some lines of Kipling. (Laughter./ Of a good deal of really li".J verse that was Luiug written they nMist not ray that it was helping the decline of their country or bringing down its moral standard. But they could say that it was a symptom of decline, and they could rejoice ill the idea that though it might not be a cause, it might be an effect, of the ruin of the society in which they lived. The verse of Rudyard Kipling ir. the "History of England" was tjuit'o an impossible thing. ll' wo had a criticism which was to say what it thought, , that cared nothing for advertisements ' v,'*id at so much an inch, if wo had a diticism that told us the truth, there

would have boon a shout of laughter over that absurd bouk. (ITear, hoar.) They might agree with its evident hut rather puerile patriotism, but tho verso as verse they would condemn. It was not condemned. 'Were they prepared in the. nrnr future—ho did not say to re-establish tho standard of English literature, for that was from God, and the man wrolo well or badly, not really by something of his own, but by something given to him— but to tell the truth about English letters, or were they prepared to give up pretending that the great nations of tho past that conquered and ruled were indifferent to letter.-* altogether? Were they prepared to accept that doclrinc v.-hich'was put upon them that a nation could be great without being civilised and could bo powerful if it lacked song? If they were prepared to believe that a nation without traditions could continue without tolling the truth with regard to its own literature, condemning what was eondemnable, praising what was praisablo, he-differed. Tho two things could not go together. A nation pretendiug to impress its soul upon the general eommunitv of tho wotlil could do it by arms, as the French did 11 hundred years ago, or by commerce as the Germans now attempted, or by tho spread of language as we attempted at this moment, but would fail unless it placed in the vanguard of its attempt the regard lor tho purity and for tho excellence of letters. (Cheers.)