xTC 1

(Comprising some Characteristic Literary Specimens drawn from the so-called 'xTC Notebooks' - they now being, as they certainly should be,in the unique and completely lawful possession of the present editor. Okay?)

x.
Oh, no! Poetry is not quite nothing - even if only just! [The word 'My' has been added at the beginning of the sentence, evidently in another, firmer hand. (Ed.)]

x.
Practically nothing anybody has ever said about poetry is of any value whatsoever, Samuel.
Mind you, pretty much the same could be said of poetry itself, could it not?

x.
I am continually struck, my dear, by how usual it is for people to talk about poetry as if it were flourishing. In fact, how many great poets have we had - or indeed Europe in general - in the last three thousand years? Eh? Ten? Twenty? Name fifty in rough order of diminishing greatness and how great is the fiftieth? We might even have talked to him ourselves - and not have been too much impressed by the experience at that!

x.
Yes. Well, as for Mr W., of course, this must absolutely go no further - but I have very good reason to believe that for a long while now he has been pursuing with no little success a more or less secondary career as a raging, mad, utterly defiant, audacious, possibly drugged[?] housebreaker.

(- I can scarcely bring myself to ...