"Well," he said, "I find myself with more congenial companions than I used to have. In the old days, when I wasn't sung at all, but was used more or less academically, I often found myself arm-in-arm with 'star' or 'far' or 'scar,' and I never really got on with them. We didn't agree. There was something wrong. But now I get better associates; 'roar,' for example, is a certainty in one verse. In fact I don't mind admitting I'm rather tired of 'roar,' true friends as we are.
"But I can see the poor young poetical fellows' difficulty; and, after all, I do roar, don't I? Just as my old friend 'battle' here"--I bowed to his companion--"is attached to 'rattle.'
"Of course," he went on, "I'm luckier than 'battle' really, because I do get a few other fellows to walk with, such as 'corps'--very often--and 'before' and--far too often--'gore'; but 'battle' is tied up to 'rattle' for the rest of his life. They're inseparable--'battle' and 'rattle.' Directly you see one you know that the other is only a few words away. We call them the Siamese Twins."
"There's 'cattle,'" I said, remembering 'The War-song of Dinas Vawr.'
"No use just now," said 'war.' "'Rattle' is the only rhyme at the moment; just as General FRENCH has his favourite one, and that's 'trench.' If 'battle' and 'rattle' are like the Siamese Twins, 'FRENCH' and 'trench' are like Castor and Pollux. Now and then the COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF makes the enemy 'blench,' but for one 'blench' you get a thousand 'trenches.' No, I feel very sorry, I can tell you, for some of these words condemned to such a monotony of conjunction; and really I oughtn't to complain. And to have got rid of 'star' is something."
"But there's one thing," he added, "I do object to, which not even poor old 'battle' has to bear, and that's being forced to march with a rhyme that isn't all there. I have to do that far too often; and it's annoying."
"Well," he said, "those poets who look forward are too fond of linking me to 'o'er'--'when it's 'o'er,' don't you know (they mean 'over'). That's a little humiliating, I always think. You wouldn't like constantly going about with a man who'd lost his collar, would you?"
"Well, it's like that," he said, "I am not sure that I would not prefer 'star' to that, or 'scar,' after all. They, at any rate, meant well and were gentlemanly. But 'o'er'? No.