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INTRODUCTION
There is, in my judgment, no more certain method of creating, or increasing, a distaste for poetry than the setting of exercises in Enghsh verse composition in " the manner of Milton " as a school task.
If a genuine interest in the pattern and content of verse has been aroused, many pupils will feel themselves impelled to try the prentice hand ; but they must be judged by the efforts they make rather than by the result of them. And it is devoutly to be hoped that the pleasant and interesting work now being done in this direction by progressive teachers and their pupils will escape the attention of the examiner.
The above is really an apology for the casual manner in which verse composition is dealt with in this book. I did not set out to make poetasters, but to interest young folks in poetrj^ and it seemed to me that they would be more readily interested if they were encouraged to inspect the mechanism of verse ; for the young inquirer likes to know " how it works," whether the thing is a machine or a poet's mind. But I have not attempted codification in the matter of prosody. The book is a garland, and prosody or verse-pattern is the string—if a string is used to make garlands. Metaphors are so dangerous ; and it is so long since I made any garlands.
It is, however, the quiet, unharassed, steady pursuit of apt and beautiful metaphor and simile, musical phrase and appropriate epithet, which constitutes the chief value of poetry study and verse composition, and which leads to the acquisition of a new sense :