The truth was, that the old classical scholar did not care a great deal for modern English poetry.

Give him an Ode of Horace, or a scrap from the Greek Anthology, and he would recite it with great inflation of spirits; but he did not think very much of "your Keatses, and your Tennysons, and the whole Hasheesh crazy lot," as he called the dreamily sensuous idealists who belong to the same century that brought in ether and chloroform.
He rather shook his head at Gifted Hopkins for indulging so largely in metrical composition.
"Better stick to your ciphering, my young friend," he said to him, one day.

"Figures of speech are all very well, in their way; but if you undertake to deal much in them, you'll figure down your prospects into a mighty small sum.

There's some danger that it will take all the sense out of you, if you keep writing verses at this rate.

You young scribblers think any kind of nonsense will do for the public, if it only has a string of rhymes tacked to it.