In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a publisher’s hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became publisher’s reader and adviser. It was the age of the ‘dicky dongs,’ and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the ‘Ruined Home’ Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. ‘Bad Taste in All Ages’ (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of Mr. Sidney Lee’s monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook—the skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.

I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of bad poetry. It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary little volume of unreadable and unsaleable song. There are, however, certain stanzas so exquisite in their unconscious absurdity that an inverted immortality may be claimed for them. It is essential that their authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been created—the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for example. When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown—Shelley, Keats, or Tennyson—become playful, I confess to a feeling of nervousness: the unpleasant, hot sensation you experience when a distinguished man makes a fool of himself. Rossetti—I suppose from his Italian origin—was able to assume motley without loss of dignity, and that wounded Titan, the late W. E. Henley, was another exception. Both he and Rossetti had the faculty of being foolish, or obscene, without impairing the high seriousness of their superb poetic gifts.

But I refer to more serious folly—that of the disciples of Silas Wegg. Some friends of mine in the country employed a ladies’-maid with literary proclivities. She was never known to smile; the other servants thought her stuck up; she was a great reader of novels, poetry, and popular books on astronomy. One day she gave notice, departed at the end of a month, left no address, and never applied for a character. Beneath the mattress of her bed was found a manuscript of poems. One of these, addressed to our satellite, is based on the scientific fact (of which I was not aware until I read her poem) that we see only one side of the moon. The ode contains this ingenious stanza:—

O beautiful moon!
When I gaze on thy face
Careering among the boundaries of space,
The thought has often come to my mind
If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.

It was my pleasure to communicate this verse to our greatest living conversationalist, a point I mention because it may, in consequence, be already known to those who, like myself, enjoy the privileges of his inimitable talk. I possess the original manuscript of the poem, and can supply copies of the remainder to the curious.

In a magazine managed by the physician of a well-known lunatic asylum I found many inspiring examples. The patients are permitted to contribute: they discuss art and literature, subject of course to a stringent editorial discretion. As you might suppose, poetry occupies a good deal of space. It was from that source of clouded English I culled the following:—

His hair is red and blue and white,
His face is almost tan,
His brow is wet with blood and sweat,
He steals from where he can:
And looks the whole world in the face,
A drunkard and a man.

I think we have here a Henley manquÉ. In robustious assertion you will not find anything to equal it in the Hospital Rhymes of that author. I was so much struck by the poem that I obtained permission to correspond with the poet. I discovered that another Sappho might have adorned our literature; that a mute inglorious Elizabeth Barrett was kept silent in Darien—for the asylum was in the immediate vicinity of the Peak in Derbyshire. Of the correspondence which ensued I venture to quote only one sentence:

‘I was brought up to love beauty; my home was more than cultured; it was refined; we took in the Art Journal regularly.’

Of all modern artists, I suppose that Sir Edward Burne-Jones has inspired more poetry than any other. A whole school of Oxford poets emerged from his fascinating palette, and he is the subject of perhaps the most exquisite of all the Poems and Ballads—the ‘Dedication’—which forms the colophon to that revel of rhymes. I sometimes think that is why his art is out of fashion with modern painters, who may inspire dealers, but would never inspire poets. For who could write a sonnet on some uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr. Orpen? Theirs is an art which speaks for itself. But Sir Edward Burne-Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the higher slopes. In a long and serious epic called ‘The Pageant of Life,’ dealing with every conceivable subject, I found:—

With some the mention of Burne-Jones
Elicits merely howls and groans;
But those who know each inch of art
Believe that he can bear his part.

I don’t remember what he could bear. Perhaps it referred to his election at the Royal Academy. Then, again, in a ‘Vision’ of the next world, a poet described how—

Byron, Burne-Jones, and Beethoven,
Charlotte Bronte and Chopin are there.

I wonder if this has escaped the eagle eye of Mr. Clement Shorter. Though perhaps the most delightful nonsense, for which, I fear, this great painter is partly responsible, may be found in a recent poem addressed to the memory of my old friend, Simeon Solomon:—

More of Rossetti? Yes:
You follow’d than Burne-Jones,
Your depth of colour his
than that of monochromes!
Yes; amber lilies poured, I say,
A joy for thee, than poet’s bay.

But while true art refines
and often stimulates,
Art does, at times, I say,
sit grief within our gates!
Art causes men to weep at times—
If you may heed these falt’ring rhymes.

A small volume of lyrics once sent to me for review afforded another flower for my garland:—

Where in the spring-time leaves are wet,
Oh, lay my love beneath the shades,
Where men remember to forget,
And are forgot in Hades.

But I have given enough examples for what would form Part I. of the English anthology. Part II. would consist of really bad verses from really great poetry.

Auspicious Reverence, hush all meaner song,

is one of the most pompously stupid lines in English poetry. Arnold did not hesitate to quote instances from Shakespeare:—

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons.

You would have to sacrifice Browning, because it might fairly be concluded—well, anything might be concluded about Browning. Byron is, of course, a mine. Arthur Hugh Clough is, perhaps, the ‘flawless numskull,’ as, I think, Swinburne calls him. Tennyson surpassed

A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman,

in many of his serious poems.

To travellers indeed the sea
Must always interesting be

I have heard ascribed to Wordsworth, but wrongly, I believe. I should, of course, exclude from the collection living writers; only the select dead would be requisitioned. They cannot retort. And the entertaining volume would illustrate that curious artistic law—the survival of the unfittest, of which we are only dimly beginning to realise the significance. It is like the immortality of the invalid, now recognised by all men of science. You see it manifested in the plethora of memoirs. All new books not novels are about great dead men by unimportant little living ones. When I am asked, as I have been, to write recollections of certain ‘people of importance,’ as Dante says, I feel the force of that law very keenly.

To Frederick Stanley Smith, Esq.