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Literary Lapses
·
Stephen Leacock
111
The
poet,
it
must
be
said,
is
as
old
as
civilization.
The
Greeks
had
him
with
them,
stamping
out
his
iambics
with
the
sole
of
his
foot.
The
Romans,
too,
knew
him--endlessly
juggling
his
syllables
together,
long
and
short,
short
and
long,
to
make
hexameters.
This
can
now
be
done
by
electricity,
but
the
Romans
did
not
know
it.
But
it
is
not
my
present
purpose
to
speak
of
the
poets
of
an
earlier
and
ruder
time.
For
the
subject
before
us
it
is
enough
to
set
our
age
in
comparison
with
the
era
that
preceded
it.
We
have
but
to
contrast
ourselves
with
our
early
Victorian
grandfathers
to
realize
the
profound
revolution
that
has
taken
place
in
public
feeling.
It
is
only
with
an
effort
that
the
practical
common
sense
of
the
twentieth
century
can
realize
the
excessive
sentimentality
of
the
earlier
generation.
In
those
days
poetry
stood
in
high
and
universal
esteem.
Parents
read
poetry
to
their
children.
Children
recited
poetry
to
their
parents.
And
he
was
a
dullard,
indeed,
who
did
not
at
least
profess,
in
his
hours
of
idleness,
to
pour
spontaneous
rhythm
from
his
flowing
quill.
Should
one
gather
statistics
of
the
enormous
production
of
poetry
some
sixty
or
seventy
years
ago,
they
would
scarcely
appear
credible.
Journals
and
magazines
teemed
with
it.
Editors
openly
countenanced
it.
Even
the
daily
press
affected
it.
Love
sighed
in
home-made
stanzas.
Patriotism
rhapsodized
on
the
hustings,
or
cited
rolling
hexameters
to
an
enraptured
legislature.
Even
melancholy
death
courted
his
everlasting
sleep
in
elegant
elegiacs.
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