[Xpp-general] ad passed in silenc

[Alverio <tri...@he...>]

T drew in, Showed the quaint old face and the pointed chin, And the arm
that was raised o'er the violin, As the old man whispered his hope's
dead tale, To the friend who could comfort, though others might fail,
And the chords stole hushed and low. Pianissimo!" He stopped, and the
sheet of paper fell from his hands. "Well," she said, with all the
eagerness of a new-born writer, "tell me, do you think them _very_ bad?"
"Well, Angela, you know----" "Ah! go on now; I am ready to be crushed.
Pray don't spare my feelings." "I was about to say that, thanks be to
Providence, I am not a critic; but I think----" "Oh! yes, let me hear
what you think. You are speaking so slowly, in order to get time to
invent something extra cutting. Well, I deserve it." "Don't interrupt; I
was going to say that I think the piece above the average of
second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the first-class
standard. You have caught something of the 'divine afflatus' that the
drunken old fellow said he could not cage. But I do not think that you
will ever be popular as a writer of verses if you keep to that style; I
doubt if there is a magazine in the kingdom that would take those lines
unless they were by a known writer. They would return them marked,
'Good, but too vague for the general public.' Magazine editors don't
like lines from 'a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought,' for, as
they say, such poems are apt to excite vagueness in the brains of that
dim entity, the 'general public.' What they do like are commonplace
ideas, put in pretty language, and sweetened with sentimentality or
emotional religious feelings, such as the thi