HANDBOOK OF POETRY;

EDITOR OF

BEING

A CLEAR AND EASY GUIDE,

DIVESTED OF TECHNICALITIES, TO THE

Art of Making English Verse.

ECA

THEC

BY

J. E. CARPENTER,

66

PENNY READINGS IN PROSE AND VERSE," POPULAR READINGS," ETC. AUTHOR OF TWO THOUSAND SONGS AND BALLADS, ETC. ETC.

TO WHICH IS ADDED

A NEW POETICAL ANTHOLOGY,

AND

A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF PROPER RHYMES, WITH LISTS OF DOUBLE AND SINGLE RHYMES, AND

TERMS USED IN POETRY.

LONDON:

SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET.

PREFACE.

Ta time when "Handbooks of History," "Handbooks of Chemistry," "Handy Books of the Law," and other short cuts to general knowledge or useful information, find a ready acceptance on the part of the public, the little treatise contained in the following pages may not be without its utility, or unacceptable to that large class who now, in the thousandand-one periodicals of the day, cultivate the Muses for pleasure and recreation, if with no higher aim and object. So totally devoid of anything like even an approach to inspired verse are most of the effusions admitted by too willing editors, so faulty in construction and false in rhyme are most of the verses of "The Poets' Corner" and the magazine column, that the authors themselves must not unfrequently be cognizant of their deformity, when they see them reflected in the light and glare of leaded or double-leaded print.

And yet, with a little care and study, how easily might

this be avoided. Not that any treatise on Poetry can make an Inspired Bard, any more than could the mere perusal of a few books make an individual of feeble mind a deep thinker; but it can, at least, do this-it can make him write correctly, if not forcibly; and a careful study of the following pages, it is to be hoped, will enable all but the wilfully ignorant to judge of their own writings, and so to remodel and correct them as, at least, to render them free from those objections so offensive to a fine ear and a cultivated taste.