distaste for modern poetry, then there is something seriously wrong
in the method of your development.) You may at this stage (and not
before) commence an inquiry into questions of rhythm, verse-structure,
and rhyme. There is, I believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to
English prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. The only one
with which I am acquainted is Tom Hood the younger's _Rules of Rhyme:
A Guide to English Versification_. Again, the introduction to Walker's
_Rhyming Dictionary_ gives a fairly clear elementary account of the
subject. Ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms.
With a manual in front of you, you can acquire in a couple of hours a
knowledge of the formal principles in which the music of English verse
is rooted. The business is trifling. But the business of appreciating
the inmost spirit of the greatest verse is tremendous and lifelong. It
is not something that can be "got up."




CHAPTER X

BROAD COUNSELS


I have now set down what appear to me to be the necessary
considerations, recommendations, exhortations, and dehortations in aid
of this delicate and arduous enterprise of forming the literary taste.
I have dealt with the theory of literature, with the psychology of the
author, and--quite as important--with the psychology of the reader.
I have tried to explain the author to the reader and the reader to
himself. To go into further detail would be to exceed my original