I have looked through more essays upon poetry than I care to remember without finding anywhere a discussion of poetry for the unpoetical. A recent writer, it is true, has done much to show that the general reader daily indulges in poetry of a kind without knowing it. But the voluminous literature of poetics is well-nigh all special. It is written for students of rhythm, for instinctive lovers of poetry, for writers of verse, for critics. It does not treat of the value of poetry for the average, the unpoetical man-- it says little of his curious distaste for all that is not prose, or of the share in all good poetry that belongs to him. By the average man, let me hasten to say, I mean in this instance the average intelligent reader, who has passed through the usual formal education in literature, who reads books as well as newspapers and magazines, who, without calling himself a litterateur, would be willing to assert that he was fairly well read and reasonably fond of good reading. Your doctor, your lawyer, the president of your bank, and any educated business man who has not turned his brain into a machine, will fit my case. Among such excellent Americans, I find that there exists a double standard as regards all literature, but especially poetry. Just as the newspapers always write of clean politics with reverence-- whatever may be the private opinions and practices of their editorial writers--so intelligent, though unpoetic, readers are accustomed to speak of poetry with very considerable respect. 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. The rhythm annoys them (little wonder, since they usually read it as prose), the rhyme seems needless, the inversions, the compressions perplex their minds to no valuable end. Speaking honestly, they do not like poetry. And if their reason is the old one, I do not like you, Dr. Fell; The reason why I cannot tell,