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Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange to the author, "would not willingly let die."
Thrown upon his own resources, he sought and obtained permission to come to Rome, where he obtained some small post as a notary attached to the quaestors. Poverty drove him to verse-making, but of what kind we do not certainly know. About this time he made the acquaintance of Virgil, which ripened at least on Horace's part into warm affection.
And so he had grown in the warmth of his parents' love, trained in what we call outdoor sports, but which are life itself to the Arab, until at fourteen no one could surpass him in running or horsemanship or spear-throwing, whilst with rifle or revolver he could clip the hair off the top of a man's head, the which strenuous accomplishments he balanced in passing his leisure moments in the gentle arts of verse-making and even music, in spite of the latter being condemned by religion; also did he learn to converse in foreign tongues.
The ladies whose hair he dressed, sometimes complained that their curl papers were scrawled over with writing, and, when opened out, they were found covered with verses. The men whom he shaved spread his praises abroad. In so small a town a reputation for verse-making soon becomes known. "You can see me," he said to a customer, "with a comb in my hand, and a verse in my head.
He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of similar enigmas in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: "Lo! a Riddle for the wise, In the which a Mystery lies. RIDDLE. "Some men are free whilst they in prison lie; Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.
Then, for a generation or so, he was too busy contending with natural forces, and asserting his claims to life and place on the new continent, to have much leisure for verse-making, though here and there, in the stress of grinding days, a weak and uncertain voice sounded at times.
This is always a sad beginning of a married life. There was one thing about her husband that Mariette did not like. That was his verse-making. It was all very well in courtship, but was it worth while in business? She saw him scribbling upon curl-papers instead of attending to his periwigs.
Although the mathematics of those times are hardly considered seriously nowadays, they then ranked with verse-making as a polite accomplishment, and had all the charm of novelty. Duerer, no doubt, had some gift that way, as he seems to have made a hobby of them during many years.
My husband has a copy of your Cambridge prize verses, and says 'the Latinity of them is quite beautiful. I quote his very words." "Latin verse-making is a mere knack, little more than a proof that one had an elegant scholar for one's tutor, as I certainly had. But it is by special grace that a real scholar can send forth another real scholar, and a Kennedy produce a Munro.
Rhythms became more and more the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes; poetical epistles, joint poetical exercises and competitions among good friends, were of common occurrence, and towards the end of this epoch institutions were already opened in the capital, at which unfledged Latin poets might learn verse-making for money.
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