tire from us."

* * * * *

"THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

BY THE RT. HON. C. F. G. MASTERMAN.

'Die, thou children of stormy dawn,' cries the Prime
Minister to-day, as he stamps out the life of his little land
taxes."--_Daily News._

According to his critic Mr. LLOYD GEORGE seems to have done great
violence to his syntax as well as to his little land taxes.

* * * * *

"The bride, a tall brunette, looked a vision of golden
beauty as she advanced up the aisle on the arm of her
father."--_Evening Paper._

We do not think that this was the right occasion for an exposure of
feminine camouflage.

* * * * *

THE ART OF POETRY.

I.

Many people have said to me, "I wish I could write poems. I often try,
but----" They mean, I gather, that the impulse, the creative itch,
is in them, but they don't know how to satisfy it. My own position is
that I know how to write poetry, but I can't be bothered. I have not
got the itch. The least I can do, however, is to try to help those who
have.

A mistake commonly committed by novices is to make up their minds what
it is they are going to say before they begin. This is superfluous
effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible, if not
essential, to select a _subject_--say, MUD--but any detailed argument
or plan which may restrict the free development of metre and rhyme (if
any) is to be discouraged.

With that understanding, let us now write a poem about MUD.

I should begin in this sort of way:--

Mud, mud,
Nothing but mud,
O my God!

It will be seen at once that we are not going to have much rhyme in
this poem; or if we do we shall very soon be compelled to strike a
sinister note, because almost the only rhymes to _mud_ are _blood_ and
_flood_; while, as the authors of our hymns have discovered, there
are very few satisfactory rhymes to _God_. They shamefully evaded the
difficulty by using words like _road_, but in first-class poetry one
cannot do that. On the whole, therefore, this poem had better be _vers
libre_. That will take much less time and be more dramatic, without
plunging us into a flood of blood or anything drastic like that. We
now go on with a little descriptive business:--

Into the sunset, swallowing up the sun,
Crawling, creeping,
The naked flats----

Now there ought to be a verb. That is the worst of _vers