Produced by K. Nordquist, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) EVERY MAN HIS OWN POET. EVERY MAN HIS OWN POET: OR, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book. BY A NEWDIGATE PRIZEMAN. Nuper ventosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas animos juvenum ad magna surgentes veluti pestilenti quodam sidere afflavit.--PETRONIUS. Oxford: THOS. SHRIMPTON & SON, BROAD STREET. 1872. Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. A table of contents, though not present in the original publication, has been provided below: INTRODUCTION. OF THE NATURE OF POETRY. RECIPES. HOW TO MAKE AN ORDINARY LOVE POEM. HOW TO MAKE A PATHETIC MARINE POEM. HOW TO WRITE AN EPIC POEM LIKE MR. TENNYSON. HOW TO WRITE A POEM LIKE MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. HOW TO WRITE A POEM LIKE MR. BROWNING. HOW TO WRITE A MODERN PRE-RAPHAELITE POEM. HOW TO WRITE A NARRATIVE POEM LIKE MR. MORRIS. HOW TO WRITE A SATANIC POEM LIKE THE LATE LORD BYRON. HOW TO WRITE A PATRIOTIC POEM LIKE MR. SWINBURNE. CONCLUSION. INTRODUCTION. To have attempted in former times a work of this description, would have seemed, we cannot deny, to savour either of presumption or of idiotcy, or more probably of both. And rightly. But we live in times of progress. The mystery of yesterday is the common-place of to-day; the Bible, which was Newton's oracle, is Professor Huxley's jest-book; and students at the University now lose a class for not being familiar with opinions, which but twenty years ago they would have been expelled for dreaming of. Everything is moving onward swiftly and satisfactorily; and if, when we have made all faiths fail, we can only contrive to silence the British Association, and so make all knowledge vanish away, there will lack nothing but the presence of a perfect charity to turn the nineteenth century into a complete kingdom of heaven. Amongst changes, then, so great and so hopeful--amongst the discoveries of the rights of women, the infallibility of the Pope, and the physical basis of life, it may well be doubted if the great fathers of ancient song would find, if they could come back to us, anything out of the way or ludicrous in a recipe-book for concocting poetry.