The great difficulty in verse is avowedly the rhyme. Dean Swift says somewhere in his letters, “that a rhyme is as hard to find with him as a guinea,”--and we all know that guineas are proverbially scarce among poets. The merest versifier that ever attempted a Valentine must have met with this Orson, some untameable savage syllable that refused to chime in with society. For instance, what poetical Foxhunter--a contributor to the Sporting Magazine--has not drawn all the covers of Beynard Ceynard, Deynard, Feynard, Geynard, Heynard, Keynard, Leynard, Meynard, Neynard, Peynard, Queynard, to find a rhyme for Reynard? The spirit of the times is decidedly against Tithe; and I know of no tithe more oppressive than that poetical one, in heroic measure, which requires that every tenth syllable shall pay a sound in kind. How often the Poet goes up a line, only to be stopped at the end by an impracticable rhyme, like a bull in a blind alley! I have an ingenious medical friend, who might have been an eminent poet by this time, but the first line he wrote ended in ipecacuanha, and with all his physical and mental power, he has never yet been able to find a rhyme for it. The plan I propose aims to obviate this hardship. My system is, to take the bull by the horns; in short, to try at first what words will chime, before you go farther, and fare worse. To say nothing of other advantages, it will at least have one good effect,--and that is, to correct the erroneous notion of the would-be poets and poetesses of the present day, that the great _end_ of poetry is rhyme. I beg leave to present a specimen of worse, which proves quite the reverse, and am, Sir, Your most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN GRUBB. [Illustration: REFUSING TITHE.] THE DOUBLE KNOCK. Rat-tat it went upon the lion’s chin “That hat, I know it!” cried the joyful girl: “Summer’s it is, I know him by his knock, Comers like him are welcome as the day! Lizzy! go down and open the street-door, Busy I am to anyone but _him_ Know him you must--he has been often here; Show him up stairs, and tell him I’m alone.”