An Artist of the Monostich
— The artist received us in his workshop. We entered, — the Censor and myself, — and cast wondering looks about us. The artist’s chief excellence and delighted vocation consisted in producing the finest effects with the least visible material. Where other metrical lapidaries demanded a Kohinoor, he asked only the thinnest lamina of diamond, which he would cut and polish with consummate patience. The most precious scintillation of fancy, of wit, of philosophical thought, could be embodied, so he maintained, in the mere point of the brilliant ; and with all the reverence of his craft for the inspired workmen of the elder day, he yet thought it possible to achieve fine and harmonious results without the bulk of material by them deemed necessary. Generally speaking, an epic was his abhorrence ; he considered that the reader labored under its superincumbent weight as did the painter of mediæval times who succumbed beneath the silver burden of a prince’s gratitude. The ode was an amorphous aggregation, at best. The sonnet, even, was too extensive and diffuse. He had found the quatrain something too prolix for his needs, and the couplet he had finally discarded for a neater and compactor form, more in consonance with the high-pressure tendencies of his Muse. He was an artist of the monostich. As such alone, he modestly complied with our request that he would permit us to inspect his workshop, and carry thence some specimens of his craftsmanship. These, without further comment, are here subjoined.