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Literary Lapses
·
Stephen Leacock
112
In
that
era,
indeed,
I
know
not
how,
polite
society
was
haunted
by
the
obstinate
fiction
that
it
was
the
duty
of
a
man
of
parts
to
express
himself
from
time
to
time
in
verse.
Any
special
occasion
of
expansion
or
exuberance,
of
depression,
torsion,
or
introspection,
was
sufficient
to
call
it
forth.
So
we
have
poems
of
dejection,
of
reflection,
of
deglutition,
of
indigestion.
Any
particular
psychological
disturbance
was
enough
to
provoke
an
excess
of
poetry.
The
character
and
manner
of
the
verse
might
vary
with
the
predisposing
cause.
A
gentleman
who
had
dined
too
freely
might
disexpand
himself
in
a
short
fit
of
lyric
doggerel
in
which
"bowl"
and
"soul"
were
freely
rhymed.
The
morning's
indigestion
inspired
a
long-drawn
elegiac,
with
"bier"
and
"tear,"
"mortal"
and
"portal"
linked
in
sonorous
sadness.
The
man
of
politics,
from
time
to
time,
grateful
to
an
appreciative
country,
sang
back
to
it,
"Ho,
Albion,
rising
from
the
brine!"
in
verse
whose
intention
at
least
was
meritorious.
And
yet
it
was
but
a
fiction,
a
purely
fictitious
obligation,
self-imposed
by
a
sentimental
society.
In
plain
truth,
poetry
came
no
more
easily
or
naturally
to
the
early
Victorian
than
to
you
or
me.
The
lover
twanged
his
obdurate
harp
in
vain
for
hours
for
the
rhymes
that
would
not
come,
and
the
man
of
politics
hammered
at
his
heavy
hexameter
long
indeed
before
his
Albion
was
finally
"hoed"
into
shape;
while
the
beer-besotted
convivialist
cudgelled
his
poor
wits
cold
sober
in
rhyming
the
light
little
bottle-ditty
that
should
have
sprung
like
Aphrodite
from
the
froth
of
the
champagne.
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