Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/265

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gotten that I must be allowed to present one exquisite illustration of it by a Son of Ben:

When I a verse shall make,
Know I have pray'd thee,
For old religion's sake,
Saint Ben, to aid me.

Make the way smooth for me,
When I, thy Herrick,
Honouring thee on my knee
Offer my lyric.

Candles I'll give to thee.
And a new altar
And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
Writ in my psalter.

The beauty of this antique relation between the elder and the younger writers is lost because the younger generation no longer knocks at the door. It thunders at the door, it batters, it hammers, it bangs, it thumps, it kicks, it whacks, it wrenches, it lunges, it storms—it would require a Rabelaisian vocabulary to express all the indignities which the younger generation substitutes for knocking at the door. This somewhat barbaric performance, Brander Matthews, with his unfailing courtesy of phrase, calls sounding a "tocsin" at the door.

The ringleaders of this innovation in manners, "the most impatient of our young people, are hardened journalists of forty, with a following of youths upon whose caustic lips the maternal milk is hardly