ssed the
points evolved. "Then what is your conclusion?" the elder of the two
demanded. "Do you still think I was right, or have you come to a
different opinion?"

"Oh, how should I safely confess that I am of a different opinion? You
would easily forgive me, but what would all those hundred poets whom I
thought not so promising as you believed do to my next book? Especially
what would the poetesses?"

"There is something in that. But you need not be explicit. If you differ
with me, you can generalize. What, on the whole, was the impression you
got? Had none of the pieces what we call distinction, for want of a
better word or a clearer idea?"

"I understand. No, I should say, not one; though here and there one
nearly had it--so nearly that I held my breath from not being quite
sure. But, on the other hand, I should say that there was a good deal of
excellence, if you know what that means."

"I can imagine," the elder poet said. "It is another subterfuge. What do
you really intend?"

"Why, that the level was pretty high. Never so high as the sky, but
sometimes as high as the sky-scraper. There was an occasional tallness,
the effect, I think, of straining to be higher than the thought or the
feeling warranted. And some of the things had a great deal of
naturalness."

"Come! That isn't so bad."

"But naturalness can be carried to a point where it becomes affectation.
This happened in some cases where I thought I was going to have some
pleasure of the simplicity, but found at last that the simplicity was a
pose. Sometimes there was a great air of being untrammelled. But there
is such a thing as being informal, and there is such a thing as being
unmannerly."

"Yes?"

"I think that in the endeavor to escape from convention our poets have
lost the wish for elegance, which was a prime charm of the Golden Age.
Technically, as well as emotionally, they let themselves loose too much,
and the people of the Golden Age never let themselves loose. There is
too much Nature in them, which is to say, not enough; for, after all, in
her little aesthetic attempts, Nature is very modest."

The elder poet brought the younger sharply to book. "Now you are
wandering. Explain again."

"Why, when you and I were young--you were always and always will be
young--"

"None of that!"

"It seemed to me that we wished to be as careful of the form as the most
formal of our poetic forebears, and that we would not let the smallest
irregu