Poetry is commonly thought to be the language of emotion.  On the contrary, most of what is so called proves the absence of all passionate excitement.  It is a cold-blooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after rhymes which can be made serviceable, after images which will be effective, after phrases which are sonorous; all this under limitations which restrict the natural movements of fancy and imagination.  There is a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat excited by the subject of the “poet’s” treatment.  True poetry, the best of it, is but the ashes of a burnt-out passion.  The flame was in the eye and in the cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we come to the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just glimmering under the dead gray ashes,—­that is all we can look for.  When it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing.  They catch all the phrases of the true poet.  They imitate his metrical forms as a mimic copies the gait of the person he is representing.

Now I am not going to abuse “these same metre ballad-mongers,” for the obvious reason that, as all The Teacups know, I myself belong to the fraternity.  I don’t think that this reason should hinder my having my say about the ballad-mongering business.  For the last thirty years I have been in the habit of receiving a volume of poems or a poem, printed or manuscript—­I will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more than one in a day, but at very short intervals.  I have been consulted by hundreds of writers of verse as to the merit of their performances, and have often advised the writers to the best of my ability.  Of late I have found it impossible to attempt to read critically all the literary productions, in verse and in prose, which have heaped themselves on every exposed surface of my library, like snowdrifts along the railroad tracks,—­blocking my literary pathway, so that I can hardly find my daily papers.

What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of such a multitude of people, of all ages, from the infant phenomenon to the oldest inhabitant?

Many of my young correspondents have told me in so many words, “I want to be famous.”  Now it is true that of all the short cuts to fame, in time of peace, there is none shorter than the road paved with rhymes.  Byron woke up one morning and found himself famous.  Still more notably did Rouget de l’Isle fill the air of France, nay, the whole atmosphere of freedom all the world over, with his name wafted on the wings of the Marseillaise, the work of a single night.  But if by fame the aspirant means having his name brought before and kept before the public, there is a much cheaper way of acquiring that kind of notoriety.  Have your portrait taken as a “Wonderful Cure of a Desperate Disease given up by all the Doctors.”  You