"It simply has to be taken for what it is--blank verse, but hopelessly bad blank verse--knock-kneed, mutilated, awkwardly spliced at line-ends, with no pause-composition; as inartistic as anything can possibly be.

Battle (when the cannon's sulphurous breath

is about as vile a thing metrically as I can remember; and if anybody says you can put it all right by reading 'battalia' or some similar form, I can only once more reply that, no doubt, if things were different they would not be the same...."

Saintsbury, writing about some obscure Jacobean or Caroline dramatist named Davenant, of whom I am utterly ignorant. These are the truly dead white men. And it is a pity, because there is a useful purpose served by reading really bad literature from the past in great quantities.