Introduction

There is a mischievous episode in Tom Hood’s carnivalesque children’s novel, From Nowhere to the North Pole (1875), a work that was highly popular in the last decades of the nineteenth century, wherein the central protagonist, Frank, encounters a machine for writing poetry. Its inventor explains that the machine works by selecting a particular metre and inputting a series of rhyming words, printed on pieces of wood, to serve as line endings. Set running, the machine fills in the remaining words to produce a poem. Frank jumps at the opportunity to try the contraption himself. Asked to select a subject, he responds:

“Well, let me see-suppose we say ‘Invention’ as an ode.” “And the measure?” “I don’t know much about measures. I know Apothecaries’

Weight”— “I mean poetical measures. But I see you don’t understand; so we will

say iambic. Now choose your rhymes,—from this drawer, please.” Frank looked them over and picked out what he thought would be

suitable words, such as “immense,” “intense,” and “reveal,” “appeal,” and placed them on the edge of the table, while the inventor connected the feeder.