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Updated: June 21, 2025
KENELM CHILLINGLY had quitted the paternal home at daybreak before any of the household was astir. "Unquestionably," said he, as he walked along the solitary lanes, "unquestionably I begin the world as poets begin poetry, an imitator and a plagiarist. I am imitating an itinerant verse-maker, as, no doubt, he began by imitating some other maker of verse.
But not only does Apollo touch the lyre of the poet, he wields also the bow; the winged dart of sarcasm spares neither the tedious verse-maker nor the provincial who corrupts the language, but it hits none more frequently and more sharply than the potentates by whom the liberty of the people is endangered.
Neither, indeed, has a man of any extent of thinking for a mere verse-maker, in whose numbers, however perfect, there is no poetry, no mind. The china was beautiful, but Dr. Johnson justly observed it was too dear; for that he could have vessels of silver, of the same size, as cheap as what were here made of porcelain .
But the new form brought with it a new danger that of prolixity. It was necessary that the exposition account for Wallenstein's conduct by exhibiting the sources of his power. This meant a dramatic picture of his wild and irresponsible soldatesca. The theme was boundless and Schiller was a facile verse-maker.
But when you give to your gift of song the modest title of verse-making, permit me to observe that your gift is perfectly distinct from that of the verse-maker. Your gift, whatever it may be, could not exist without some sympathy with the non verse-making human heart.
"I was only trying to string together some ideas that came into my head this fine morning." "You are a poet, then?" said Kenelm, seating himself on the bench. "I dare not say poet. I am a verse-maker." "Sir, I know there is a distinction. Many poets of the present day, considered very good, are uncommonly bad verse-makers.
'My lord, said he, 'you must know that Primasso was a very learned grammarian and a skilful and ready verse-maker above all others, which things rendered him so notable and so famous that, albeit he might not everywhere be known by sight, there was well nigh none who knew him not by name and by report.
"Poor dear Southey was a great verse-maker, rather than a great poet; and I always consider that his party-prejudices and party-writing narrowed and harshened a mind which ought to have been flowing forth freely and lovingly towards all forms of life. And as for Shelley and Burns, their politics dictated to them at once the worst portions of their poetry and of their practice.
It must, then, be a very noble love: Augustus, Pollio, Varius, Maecenas, the greatest statesmen of their day, they were verse-makers. Cardinal Richelieu was a verse-maker; Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Warren Hastings, Canning, even the grave William Pitt, all were verse-makers.
Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go, inland, towards Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on to Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last good-bye to Branscombe and could hardly help waving my hand to it. Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to say my farewell in numbers?
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