It
is not proper to say, "I hate poetry," even if one thinks it. To
admit ignorance of Tennyson or Milton or Shakespeare is bad form,
even if one skimmed through them in college and has never
disturbed the dust upon their covers since. I have heard a
whispered, sneering remark after dinner, "I don't believe he ever
_heard_ of Browning," by one who had penetrated about as far
into Browning's inner consciousness as a fly into the hickory-nut
it crawls over. I well remember seeing a lady of highly
respectable culture hold up her hands in horror before a college
graduate who did not know who Beowulf was. Neither did she, in any
true sense of knowing. But her code taught her that the "Beowulf,"
like other "good poetry," should be upon one's list of
acquaintances.
What these Americans really think is a very different matter. The
man in the trolley-car, the woman in the rocking-chair, the clerk,
the doctor, the manufacturer, most lawyers, and some ministers
would, if their hearts were opened, give simply a categorical
negative. They do not like poetry, or they think they do not like
it; in either case with the same result.
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