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ON KIND HEARTS BEING MORE THAN CORONETS
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That is true. But a friend having remarked to me that Cash was more than kind hearts, I put the thing down in a formula for myself, thus,
Cash > Kind Hearts > Coronets
and sat gazing at it for a long time, until it awoke other thoughts in me.
And the first was this: "'Kind hearts are more than Coronets.' What an intolerably bad line! What a shocking line—or rather, half-line! What an outrage!"
When verse is concerned one must not mince matters. It is too sacred. One must have no reservations. One must ride roughshod over one's nearest and dearest, and proclaim bad verse aloud, and say, "Aroint! Honi!"
No reverend name, no illustrious label half-mixed with the State itself, should deter one. Nothing should impede the truth on bad verse save a substantial offer of money—and where is the chance of that in such a galley?
No! It is prime duty. Having the thing before you, having seen it, whether your opinion is asked or no, speak out at once and say: "Madam, this is not poetry, it is verse. It is not good verse; it is bad verse."