POETRY 



261 



is really very unessential. All the principles of 

 dramatic poetry may be comprised in an essay on 

 the Agamemnon. 



Into these three elements, then, the Song, the 

 Statement, and the Drama, all poetry that is not 

 of a primitive nature is capable of being resolved. 

 That which was primitive and of this we have to 

 conjecture moie than we can prove was probably 

 Song alone. But, while we divide poetry into these 

 three elements, it is not possible to make the 

 same easy division of poetical literature. Here 

 are found", indeed, the three great classes, but, as 

 [has been already said, they are constantly detected 

 existing side by side in one and the same composi- 

 tion. The more elaborate the species of poetry the 

 more likely are we to find upon analysis that the 

 classes are confounded in it. In the Sonj* we still 

 preserve the simplest form of poem. This is a short 

 piece in regular recurrent rhythm, expressing with 

 the utmost conciseness a single enthusiastic and 

 intense personal emotion, which it pours forth 

 without deviation at a breath. When the spon- 

 taneous outburst is over the song naturally closes. 



No other species of poetry is so simple as this. 

 The Ode, which is often regarded not merely as 

 a lofty form of lyric, but as the typical form par 

 excellence, introduces a complexity. Too long and 

 elaborate to be sung spontaneously, it verges upon 

 drama in calling to its aid a chorus and an anti- 

 chorus of singers ; upon epic by its excursions into 

 narrative and didactic reflection. The ode, in 

 which we include its funereal form the Elegy, 

 remains, however, truly lyrical in its necessary 

 dependence upon melody. Not a line of it but 

 presupposes a musical interpretation. The tradi- 

 tional lixed forms suggest the accompaniment of 

 music to a far less degree. The Sonnet, for in- 

 stance, with its dignified arrangement of full lines, i 

 admitting very slight modification of form, is 

 singularly ill-fitted to be sung. It offers no musi- 

 cal variety, whereas its very oeauties, and in par- 

 ticular those subtle harmonies which are secured 

 by a proper attention to the structure of its quat- 

 rains and tercets, would not merely gain nothing, i 

 but would lose much by being set to music. Yet | 

 we can imagine even tne sonnet chanted to some 

 simple conventional melody, unobtrusive enough 

 nut to conceal its intellectual beauties nor that 

 vein of reflective and pensive narration which links 

 it to the epical order ; and we must continue to 

 regard the sonnet as essentially lyrical, notwith- 

 standing its complexity and monotony. Not less ! 

 than the song, the sonnet requires to consist of the i 

 spontaneous expression of a single intense emotion. 

 \Vhnt is true of the sonnet is true of the other 

 traditional forms, some of which, as, for instance, 

 the Rondeau, approach the song more closely, while 

 others, as, for example, the grandiose Chant Royal, 

 take their place on the further side of the sonnet, 

 between the ode and the latter. 



If in the divisions of lyrical poetry we find the 

 other two classes occasionally present, the counter- 

 part is still more true when we turn to a similar 

 examination of epic and dramatic poetry. In the 

 first case we possess an exquisite form, less success- 

 fully cultivated in England than in Italy, the Terza 

 Kima, in which the lyrical and the epic forms j 

 co-exist to an almost equal degree. Here it is iin- j 

 possible to say whether the art of narrative or the 

 art of song predominates. Even in the pure epic 

 neither the lyrical nor the dramatic element is 

 omitted. Whenever a burst of enthusiasm or 

 passion seizes the narrator he passes without tran- 

 Bition into lyric; whenever from describing his 

 personages he proceeds to a record of their con- 

 versation, he suddenly transforms his epic into 

 Jrama. Indeed, the rank of the various sections 

 of the epical order of poetry may almost be deter- 



mined by the opportunity they give for an admix- 

 ture of the others. The Epistle is one of the least 

 lyrical sections of all poetry ; it may, however, 

 contain an element of tne dramatic. Satire, when 

 it comprises no admixture of narrative, is apt to 

 fall very low in the poetic scale. If its passion be 

 enthusiastic and genuine it may attain to a certain 

 lyrical afflatus ; but there is little of the instinct 

 of song in mere rage and disdain. Pure satire is 

 commonly sustained solely by its executive ability, 

 and is one of those species of literature which 

 prove the necessity of giving to poetry a definition 

 depending in the first instance not on its truth or 

 beauty as ' a criticism of life,' but on its rhythmical 

 structure. 



Drama, as existing in modern Europe, has lost 

 much of the external appearance of poetry. The . 

 distinction which admits a comedy in prose within 

 the order of poetical literature and yet excludes a 

 novel seems an arbitrary one. But it can be 

 accounted for on traditional grounds. The novel 

 has always been, from the days of the later Greeks, 

 written in prose, and properly so, for it is independ- 

 ent of regulated form. Comedy, on the other hand, 

 has but very lately, and still not completely, escaped 

 from the bonds of verse. Rhythmical form is still 

 largely used for tragedy, although the tendency in 

 each of the great sections of drama is to dispense 

 with a restraint which adds to the reader's pleasure, 

 but in a much less degree to the spectator's. In 

 other divisions of dramatic ' literature verse and 

 even rime are still essential. In Opera, which is 

 a combination of song with a conventional species 

 of drama, both are necessary; and Pastoral im- 

 peratively demands for its graceful convention the 

 ornament of metre. Dialogue, a dramatic form, 

 may be combined even with an epical species as a 

 medium for giving information or exportation. 

 Hastily looked at, however, drama appears in its 

 modern aspects to be divorced more and more com- 

 pletely from the sister branches of poetry. It is 

 therefore important to insist on the fact that the 

 great poetical principle of unity in variety rules 

 here as it does in those compositions which seem 

 more completely under its sway. Without a lyrical 

 element holding the parts of a drama together, 

 balancing them, and supplying them with the 

 necessary fire and harmony, the humblest play 

 cannot maintain its existence. It is this more or 

 less concealed dependence upon fixed laws of form 

 which must always distinguish dramatic literature 

 from the varieties of prose fiction. As long as it 

 obeys these laws it holds its place in the order of 

 poetry, although it may have abandoned its rhyth- 

 mical shape. If it throws off these fortunate re- 

 straints it either perishes altogether or it becomes 

 a mere variety of the prose novel. 



In the incessant discussion which takes place as 

 to the nature of poetry, the real aspect of tne ques- 

 tion is too frequently obscured by a confusion be- 

 tween Poetry, as a craft practised by artists, and 

 the Poetical, as a metaphysical conception. The 

 latter, which has been analysed with extraordinary 

 minuteness by the Germans, and in particular by 

 Goethe and by Hegel, is not necessarily combined 

 with any of tne external forms of poetical litera- 

 ture. This distinction, admirably laid down by 

 Diotima in the Symposium of Plato, has been 

 generally forgotten by those who have endeavoured 

 to sentimentalise the art and to confuse our ideas 

 of it by such vague and futile definitions as the 

 well-known formula 'Poetry is impassioned truth.' 

 It seems almost waste of words to point out that 

 while the best poetry must be impassioned and 

 must be true, in accordance with Aristotle's dictum 

 that the superiority of poetry consists ' in its pos- 

 sessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness,' 

 yet that no definition which confines itself to moral 



