THE MUDDLED MUSE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18617, 12 July 1930, Page 15

THE MUDDLED MUSE

A BATHETIC ANTHOLOGY. If an anthology is to be more than a mere collection, joy, care- and pride must go to its making. Such a labour of love is “The Stuffed Owl,” an anthology of bad verse selected and arranged by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee. For though in the words of the preface, “it would tseem at a hasty glance that to make an anthology of bad verse is on the whole a simple matter—a matter, say, of skimming lightly through one or two of the principal existing anthologies of English verse, making a quick but judicious selection, adding a few official and semi-official performances on topics of Imperial moment, the relief of Mafeking, Derby Day, Selfridge’s Extension, the Great War—yet there is more to it than that.” There is good bad verse and bad bad verse, and “The Stuffed Owl” is occupied mainly with the former kind. No mistakes of rhyme or rhythm deface good bad verses. It is distinguished less by form than by content. Bathos, banality, bombast and platitude—in these qualities it is preeminent.

While it must be a matter of deep regret that no examles from living writers are included, a moment’s reflection will reveal the awkwardness of asking permission of these poets to include choice specimens of their genius. Most of the authors, indeed, belong to the 18th and 19th centuries and to the English nation, though American producers, among others, Our Ella who from every pore exudes Impassioned transatlantic platitudes.

Some Examples. The selections are preceded by biographical and critical notes which, with the utmost gravity, burlesque the manner of more serious anthologies. Of a couplet from Erasmus Darwin’6 “Temple of Nature;” With gills and lungs respiring Lamprey’s steer, Kiss the rude rocks and suck till they adhere. The editor remarks that these lampreys “will probably arouse little emotion in a generation to whom similar embraces have become, by assiduous contemplation of American superfilms, a commonplace.” “I shall go down to Bedfordshire tomorrow” from “A Life-Drama,” by Alexander Smith, certainly justifies its inclusion. The true British pluck with which some poets have incorporated middle-class surnames in their verse is illustrated by Wordsworth’s. Spade! with ■which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands. By Crabbe in And I was asked and authorised to go To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co. And by Chatterton’s funeral line:

The blood-stained tomb where Smith and comfort lie.

As an example of poetic circumlocution few better efforts can have been made than John Armstrong's paraphrase for Cheshire cheese; Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk. Austin and Longfellow. The works of Alfred Austin are a happy hunting ground for the bathetic authologist. In the section entitled Hors d’Oeuvre we find The home-bound rustic counts his wage The Same last week, the same the next. And the exquisite lines describing the lambs When with staid mothers’ milk and sunshine warmed The pasture’s frisky innocents bucked up.

But game of this kind is too easy. Better sport is provided by a writer such as Longfellow, who, after producing “strains of music” like

A boy’s will is the wind’s will And the thoughts of youth are long, lotig thoughts. could perpetrate such a poetic (and grammatical) crime as “Excelsior.” “A bitter controversy has raged round the young man’s cry of “Excelsior!” One school of philologists holds that he meant to cry “Excelsius!” the comparative of the adverb excelie, but that what tvith the late hour and the severe Alpine cold ... he confused it with the comparative of the adjective excelsus. Arrayed in opposition is a school which insists that “the banner with the strange device” . . . was deliberately designed by Longfellow, the seer, to foreshadow the more striking developments of American publicity, and that “Excelsior!” therefore is to be regarded as perfectly good ‘big business’ Latin.” The “Official” Poems. The compilers of the anthology are not enamoured of “official” poems, though they pay a tribute to the ‘ Sonorous Muse of Lord Tennyson” v/ho “when called upon to celebrate the opening of a new railway or the illness of an aunt by marriage, once removed, of the R-y-1 F-m-ly, uttered no complaint but stoically tucked up his sleeves of white samite and got on with the job.”

Eight cartoons from the works of Max Beerbohm, including “Mr Tennyson, reading ‘ln Memoriam’ to his Sovereign” and “William Wordsv/orth in the Lake District at Cross-purposes,” add the last refinement of cruelty to an entertainment which disguises its savage intent under a cloak of suavity. “The Stuffed Owl,” an Anthology of Bad Verse, selected and arranged by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (Dent).