'...if I said his beard was not
cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is call'd the Retort
Courteous. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would
send me word he cut it to please himself. This is call'd the Quip
Modest. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment.
This is call'd the Reply Churlish. If again it was not well cut,
he would answer I spake not true. This is call'd the Reproof
Valiant. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This
is call'd the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the Lie
Circumstantial and the Lie Direct....
Hence the tendency of this incurious and incompetent majority is to
ignore the existence of a difficulty which they are unable to
appreciate, and to rid themselves of the embarrassment of having to
recognise and admit the poetic quality of a vast amount of the new
poetry of the day by the short method of declaring that it differs from
the genuine article in the presence or absence of some quality which
they would find it mighty troublesome to define. Of course, if a man can
see no difference between the so-called “minor” poetry of to-day and
the “minor” so-called poetry of half, or even a quarter, or a century
ago, there is no more to be said. If he does not feel that to descend
from the great poets of the later Victorian Era to the dozens of others
who are next to them in rank, seems little more to-day than descending
from the summit of a mountain to one of its lower yet still lofty
slopes; whereas to make that descent a generation ago was “to feel as if
you had been kicked down a long flight of steps and had alighted in the
Poets’ Corner of an obscure provincial newspaper”
