at college for a prize-medal in Latin: of course, I shall be
successful in proportion as I introduce the verbal elegances peculiar
to our Augustan age, and also catch the prevailing poetic
characteristic of that classical epoch.

"Now I think that every observant critic will admit that the striking
distinctions of the poetry most in the fashion of the present day,
namely, of the Augustan age, are,--first, a selection of such verbal
elegances as would have been most repulsive to the barbaric taste of
the preceding century; and, secondly, a very lofty disdain of all
prosaic condescensions to common-sense, and an elaborate cultivation
of that element of the sublime which Mr. Burke defines under the head
of obscurity.

"These premises conceded, I will only ask you to choose the metre.
Blank verse is very much in fashion just now."

"Pooh! blank verse indeed! I am not going so to free your experiment
from the difficulties of rhyme."

"It is all one to me," said Kenelm, yawning; "rhyme be it: heroic or
lyrical?"

"Heroics are old-fashioned; but the Chaucer couplet, as brought to
perfection by our modern poets, I think the best adapted to dainty
leaves and uncrackable nuts. I accept the modern Chaucerian. The
subject?"

"Oh, never trouble yourself about that. By whatever title your
Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius, like Pindar's,