be remembered) out of six to the professional impugners of the Seventh Commandment.
Over a third of these poems are good of their kind, light, bright, and readable, but there are only too many which fall to the lugubrious level of the popular 'funny' verse of the hour—stuff like nine out of ten of the Bab Ballads and 'comic annuals,'—the source, doubtless, of much innocent pleasure to the domesticated commercial clerk, and the suburban young ladies who have lived and loved; but not alarmingly interesting to any one else. No original note is struck. Indeed, it would be a marvel if there were—as great a marvel as if a new form of barrel-organ suddenly discoursed a new form of music to us in the jaded fever of the London streets. No form of writing—no, not the Three-Volume Novel itself—has been more exploited than the Occasional Verse. It is hackneyed beyond redemption. Not even continuous efforts after local colour and the obstinate use of technical terms can get Mr. Kipling out of the vicious circle. A paraphrase of Poe ('The Raven' for choice) is inevitable under such circumstances, and here we have it at full length. So is a paraphrase of Browning's blank verse, when Mr. Kipling wants to try his hand at what he takes to be poetical characterisation; and Tennyson, and models even more hapless, will be requisitioned for efforts at the narrative idyllic.
