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A fairer test of tone-color may be found if we turn to frank nonsense-verse, where the formal elements of poetry surely exist without any control of meaning or "sense": "The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
There is "nonsense-verse," as we shall see later, which fulfills every condition for pure formal beauty in poetry. Yet it is not poetry, but only nonsense-verse. Now shift the interest from the form to the meaning contained in the work of art, that is, to its significance. An expressive face is one that reveals character. Its lines are suggestive of something.
The sheer nonsense-verse the amphigouri as the French call it has been tried in various countries and at various times, but never with such success as in England, and it has seldom, if ever, been cultivated in England with such success as by Lear.
In nonsense-verse and parodies we have a glimpse, as it were, at the body of poetry stripped of its soul. Under the heat and pressure of emotion, things alter their shape and size and quality, ideas are transformed into concrete images, diction becomes impassioned, plain speech tends to become metaphorical.
Let the young English soul, in whatever logic-shop and nonsense-verse establishment of an Eton, Oxford, Edinburgh, Halle, Salamanca, or other High Finishing-School, he may be getting his young idea taught how to speak and spout, and print sermons and review-articles, and thereby show himself and fond patrons that it is an idea, lay this solemnly to heart; this is my deepest counsel to him!
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