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That is true. But a friend having remarked to me that Cash was more than kind hearts, I put the thing down in a formula for myself, thus,

Cash > Kind Hearts > Coronets

and sat gazing at it for a long time, until it awoke other thoughts in me.

And the first was this: "'Kind hearts are more than Coronets.' What an intolerably bad line! What a shocking line—or rather, half-line! What an outrage!"

When verse is concerned one must not mince matters. It is too sacred. One must have no reservations. One must ride roughshod over one's nearest and dearest, and proclaim bad verse aloud, and say, "Aroint! Honi!"

No reverend name, no illustrious label half-mixed with the State itself, should deter one. Nothing should impede the truth on bad verse save a substantial offer of money—and where is the chance of that in such a galley?

No! It is prime duty. Having the thing before you, having seen it, whether your opinion is asked or no, speak out at once and say: "Madam, this is not poetry, it is verse. It is not good verse; it is bad verse."

And what wickedly bad verse!

I remember coming down on to Stamford one July morning (I was following the Roman road across Burleigh Park, and so down to the river), when I saw in the window of a little shop among the first houses of the town, hither of the bridge, a card; an ornamented card; a florally ornamented card, put up for sale. It was a set of verses all about a rich man who owned Burleigh, that great house, and who married a young woman much poorer than himself. I read them and paid little attention to them. I thought they were some local thing made up to sell in a charity. But a little way on I found another set in another window, and then another, all just the same. I read them again, and something familiar echoed in my mind; something of childhood ... I sought.... There was an odd connection with "Locksley Hall." Yet what had "Locksley Hall" to do with Burleigh? Then it broke in on me like an evil-doer breaking sacred locks: Tennyson! Tennyson had written this amazing thing!

And so he did "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." And in Lady Clara comes "Kind Hearts = Coronets + K" ("K" being some positive number)—I had found it!

The answer to all those who ask why great poets (and especially our great poets, and especially our modern great poets) write rubbish is as old as the Higher Criticism. It is because a poet is only a man used by the gods. It is not the man himself who is the poet. He is only the reed. Those Good Poets who don't publish their Bad Verse along with their Poetry are only those who happen to be good critics and at the same time very keen on their reputation as verse-writers. All good Poets have written execrable verse, but as to who writes Poetry I will tell you: it is a god.

A lot might be written, by the way (but I will not write it), on the different kinds of bad verse put out by Good Poets. The "Kind hearts and Coronets" monstrosity is quite, quite different from Wordsworth's prose, or Corneille's dotage. Some might say that each great poet had his own kind of bad verse. It is not so. Their bad verse is not good enough to be individual. They do it in commonplace groups; and I suppose each falls into the group natural to him when the god is not blowing through the reed; or when it proves a broken reed. Thus Hugo left un-godded becomes mere rhetoric and Milton, a stately painter at the best, a tiresome tractarian at the worst—as in the theological bits of "Paradise Regained." Horace (I think—I won't look it up) said that a poet was such that however bad a line might be, you felt the poet in it. If Horace said that, or if any one said that, it isn't true. But talking of truth, "kind hearts are more than coronets" is quite true, and I can imagine that truth being put into fine verse—even into poetry, if and when the god should feel inclined ... and here I pause to praise you, Phœbus Apollo, my protector, my leader, my Capitan; but you have a way of quitting; you leave them in the Scæan Gate....

There is nothing against Truth being expressed in Poetry, even though most Poetry is lies.

"Nox est perpetua una dormiunda" is Poetry—though it is sternly true; at least, it is half true.

And "between a sleep and a sleep" is Poetry, and so is "Our little life is rounded with a sleep" ... where the operative word is "rounded."

("Every English sentence, Gentlemen," said the Professor to his class, "contains an operative word. For instance, in the sentence: 'Every gentleman who hits a cocoanut will receive a good cigar,' the operative word is not 'gentleman,' but 'good.'")

So also is both Poetry and profoundly true that line of granite:

L'amour est un plaisir, l'honneur est un devoir

which I quote again and again; though I suppose a great many people will say it is not Poetry at all, and cannot be, because it is written in a foreign language. Well! Well!

So is also:

Dead honour risen out-does love at last.

That also is Poetry, though in the more formal manner. But that last line has this drawback about it; which is, that only those who have lived to a certain age and in a certain way can know the truth of it; and that those who have not lived the truth of it will not make much of it anyhow. Young people will make nothing of it, nor those who have become old blamelessly, of whom a great number are to be found to this day in the outlying parts and among seafaring men.

But I say that truth is no bar to poetry, nor bad verse to truth either. And I say that this half-line of horribly bad verse, "kind hearts are more than coronets," is as true as true.

Which of you, O my companions, having drunk the wine of this world and half-despaired would not rather fetch up in your dereliction against a kind heart than a coronet? I don't say the two combined are to be despised. I only ask: Which of you having strictly to choose in the dark passage of this life between: (a) a coronet with a bad heart; (b) a kind heart without a coronet—wealth being equal—would not choose (b)? I would. So would you all. I cannot answer for women, but as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said, "I know my own people," and the bearded ones (or those who would be bearded but for the detestable necessity of shaving) will with one moaning voice reply: "Kind Hearts!... No, thank you; I do not feel inclined for a Coronet this evening; bring me a Kind Heart."

Which of you, O my brethren, having suffered the things of this world and finding yourself sitting lonely on the bank of a stream in some forest place would not desire to have approach him, rather than a shallow, silly, boring, untenacious, stupid, cranky, ill-tempered, nagging, sour, pinched, haggard woman with a little coronet on her wig, a warm, a just, an experienced, a tender, an at-the-right-time-silent, a speaking-the-unexpected-word-of-salvation-at-the-Heaven-sent-moment, true, profoundly-loving, sufficiently admiring, comforting, regally beautiful woman with a kind heart? Which of you would not leave the first to approach the second? (Supposing, of course, equal incomes.)

It is as true a thing as ever was said. But it was said badly. He ought not to have attempted it in metre until he was feeling in the mood.

I can hear arguments on the other side. A coronet is more amenable to the will of man. You can buy a coronet. You cannot buy a kind heart. To call kind hearts "better" than coronets, therefore, is like calling fine weather "better" than a good boat. For the sea the boat is more important than the weather. You can guarantee the one, you can't the other. You can make sure of your coronet, but not of your kind heart.

Again, a coronet does not change or fade—money being always taken for granted. It is incorruptible. It is not subject to our poor mortal years; but what it is on the brow of the infant, that it remains on the senile and wrinkled front of him last ticked off to answer questions in the House of Lords; but a Kind Heart!... Oh! Chronos!

Again, a coronet is heritable. A kind heart hardly so. A coronet is definable. All are agreed upon it. It is there or it is not there, and that's an end of it. Not so the Kind Heart. One having seized on a companion for ever, and all on account of a Kind Heart, many will say, "I can't for the life of me discover what he (she) saw in her (him) to make him (her) marry her (him)." But no one ever says that of a coronet. They may wonder what the coronet saw in the non-coronet, but never what the non-coronet saw in the coronet. When the fellow (or the wench) mates upwards with a coronet everybody knows why; it's plain sailing and there can be no dispute. A coronet, I say, is something objective, substantial, real. It is made of ashwood covered with plush, it has spikes and each spike a ball on the top. But who shall define a Kind Heart? It is one thing to one man, one to another; it is elusive; it is all in the mind like the Metaphysician's Donkey.

More: a Coronet of itself can bring about no evil. It is good in itself absolutely. It conveys a definitely good thing, enjoyable to those who enjoy it and at the worst indifferent to those who do not. It is a steady, unmixed, absolute pleasure to its owner and to others. But a Kind Heart? No! A kind heart suffers; and it causes suffering—more than it heals. It makes its owner as often as not despised, always taken advantage of. It is a perilous, uncertain thing.

Nevertheless, I return to my original judgment; kind hearts are more than coronets. They are less rare; they are more easily captured; they are much cheaper—yet they are more. One may put them somewhere between coronets and good verse, but, of course, nowhere near Poetry.

* * * * *

"Oh! Sir!" cries the Reader of Proofs, "have you verified your references in all this?"

"No, My Child, nor will I. It is an extra labour, and should be charged overtime. Let them go."