And yet alongside this sort of thing we pick up many thin volumes of verse crowded with beauty of thought, of imagination, of passion.
And then what do we find given to us every week in _Punch_ and several of the illustrated papers? Poem after poem of the most perfect form in rhythm and rimes--faultless double rimes and triple and quadruple syllables all ringing far more true than any in _Hudibras_ or the _Ingoldsby Legends_. Sir Owen Seaman's verses surpass anything in the English language for originality both in phrase and thought, and Adrian Ross has shown himself the equal of Gilbert in construction. The editor of _Punch_ has been especially happy in his curry-combing of the German ex-Kaiser; we do not forget that it was his poem on the same personage, which appeared in _The World_ after the celebrated telegram to Kruger, that gave him his sure footing among the _élite_ of satirical humour.
was surely the most finished sting that ever came from the tail of what I venture to call "vespa-verse."
I remember how, when I came upon Barham's rime,--
Had thrown in her face a whole cup of hot coffee-lees,"
I thought that the limits of the "triple-bob," as I should like to call it, had been reached. Years afterwards I found myself in a fit of chuckling over Byron's
"Tell us ye husbands of wives intellectual,
Now tell us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?"
After another lapse I found among the carillon of Calverley,--
"No, mine own, though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those 'Lodgings with an ample sea-view,'
The _Bab Ballads_ are full of whimsical rimes; but put all these that I have named together and you will find that they are easily outjingled by Sir Owen Seaman. The first "copy of verses" in _Punch_ any week is a masterpiece in its way, and assuredly some of his brethren of Bouverie Street are not very far behind him in the merry dance in which he sets the _pas_.
A good many years ago--I think it was shortly after the capitulation of Paris--there was a correspondence in _The Graphic_ about the English words for which no rime could be found. One was "silver," the other "month." It was, I think, Burnand who, contrived,--
"Argentum, we know, is the Latin for silver,