[According to "a distinguished neutral" there is a great demand in Constantinople just now for pianos.]
Of all occasions to unfaithful scoffers Given by Turkey in this year of grace, The unexpected homage that she offers To the piano holds the foremost place.
For Turkish music, _vide_ GROVE and others, Meant in the past the cymbals and big drum, And piccolo, a group which wholly smothers All other instruments and strikes them dumb.
Compared with this barbaric combination The tinkling of the keys, so soft and clear, Is lacking in explosive concentration, And yet there's more in them than meets the ear.
At least, one reason for this revolution Is plain; the keyboard, though its tones are cold, Viewed as a means of rapid "execution" Endears itself to Turks both Young and Old.
"M. Bratiano, Rumanian Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, has returned to Bukarest from Petrograd."--_The Times_.
The force of habit, we presume. How surprised the German Governor must have been to see him.
[Illustration: AT THE EXHIBITION OF THE "FORERUNNERS' SOCIETY."
_Artist_. "I RATHER LIKE THAT." _Super-Critic._ "BAH! PRETTY-PRETTY! CHOCOLATE BOX!"]
I have been examining a book by the POET LAUREATE, in which that learned and painstaking man puts forward for general acceptance a new theory and a new practice of metre in English poetry. It seems that our verse is accentual, whereas it ought to be quantitative--or it may be the other way about; my brain is in such a whirl with it all that I can't be certain which is right, but I am sure that one of them is, and so I leave you to take your choice. Failing that, you can buy Dr. BRIDGES' book, which is entitled _Ibant Obscuri_ (Oxford University Press), and thus expresses my inmost convictions about our great official poet and his followers. We are henceforth to write hexameters in English on an entirely new plan, of which the result is that they lose all likeness to any hexameters previously encountered on the slopes of Parnassus or anywhere else and become something so blind and staggering and dreadfully amorphous that the whole mind of the reader rises up in revolt against them.
That, at any rate, is my condition at this moment after going through a course of them. I notice that the reviewers have been a little shy of these hexametric efforts. They have mostly described them as "interesting experiments" and have applauded Dr. BRIDGES for his adventurous industry and his careful scholarship, and thereafter they have skirmished on the outskirts and have shown a disinclination to come to grips with the LAUREATE on the main question whether these hexameters are a success or a failure. Now I have no hesitation whatever in admitting my metrical ignorance and at the same time in denouncing as a fiasco the experiment of Dr. BRIDGES. I have spent some time in struggling with his hexameters; I have attempted to track his dactyls to their lair; I have followed up what I took to be his spondees, and I am thankful to say that I have managed to survive.