(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR. " ] Sin,—Your correspondent Mr.
D. S. MacColl in the Spectator of December 26th, 1903, says : " It is perhaps a shame to give away the secrets of poetry." On this, to find what I had been given, I read his letter several times. From the window as I write these lines can be seen in my little suburban garden a number of rose trees that have just been put in to bloom next year. There stand the little brown sticks, PRL, FRL, FRL. Until very lately, such ignorance is there still in the land
despite encyclopaedias thundering and volleying about us, that I used to wonder why some roses were red, others white, &c. Even now I have but a vague idea that the waves of light, acting under the Creator's laws, account for the phenomenon of colour by passing in varying proportions through the buds of the different plants. (There is still the perfume to con- sider.) Am I any nearer making a posy of roses ?
" There was an awful rainbow once in heaven ; We know her woof, her texture, she is given In the dull catalogue of common things."
So writes Keats ; and Mr. MacColl, fulfilling the test, writes
to reduce Keats's poetry to the level of the letter-game !- I am, Sir, &c., H. C. B.
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