CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



suits a state of mind more free and composed, as 

 in the ordinary routine business of life. As the 

 dance is to walking, so is the poetical measure to 

 prose. But since the age when prose began to be 

 a form of literary composition, and to be cultivated 

 with artistic skill, innumerable works have been 

 produced which have seized upon the fittest sub- 

 jects of poetry, and embodied them with a dress 

 and treatment such as to produce effects equal to 

 the finest metrical compositions. The speeches, 

 histories, and moral and critical works of the 

 ancients, which, along with poetry, constituted 

 their polite literature, are adequate to produce the 

 same deep intense human interest that is sought 

 in the greatest productions of poetic genius. And 

 in modern times there are large classes of prose 

 works that draw upon the sources of highest poetic 

 emotion, and differ only from poems in departing 

 from the measured stateliness of metre to adopt a 

 freer and more varied flow of melodious expres- 

 sion. The whole of our romances, novels, and 

 unversified plays, together with much of our 

 history, biography, criticism, sermons, and moral 

 disquisitions, are distinguished by the poetical, in 

 opposition to the utilitarian or scientific aim, and 

 endeavour to stir, cultivate, and inspire the warm sus- 

 ceptibilities and generous enthusiasm of humanity. 

 Among the many varieties of poetical composi- 

 tion, there are a few that are marked by wide 

 characteristic distinctions which deserve to be 

 specially alluded to. 



Lyric Poetry or Song. 



This is among the most primitive of literary 

 compositions. The strong predominating feeling 

 of a moment whether love, heroic resolve, anger, 

 exultation, courage, admiration, grief in a mind 

 gifted with the outpouring of song, expresses itself 

 in fervid and lofty phrase, which thrills the ears 

 and hearts of men, inspiring them with the like 

 emotion. It is, however, only a very select and 

 limited class of minds whose creativeness takes 

 the lyric form, and they are often incapable of any 

 of the other great poetic efforts. But if we range 

 over the extant literature of the world, we shall 

 find that the most exquisite effusions of song have 

 never been wanting to any cultivated people. The 

 Jews, Greeks, and Romans have contributed a 

 large proportion of those that still delight our 

 modern ears. England, Scotland, Ireland, France, 

 Germany, Italy, Spain, have each produced lyric 

 poets of the finest mould ; and in all these 

 countries the mass of the people, who are too 

 rarely reached by works of genius, have had their 

 lives cheered, enlivened, and invigorated by con- 

 genial song. 



As an exquisite example of the matter of song, 

 and of the cheering turn that it can give to our 

 views of life, we quote the following from Goethe, 

 as translated by Carlyle. The title is The Free- 

 tnason: 



' The mason's ways are 



A type of Existence, 



And his persistence 



Is as the days are 



Of men in this world. 



The future hides in it 

 Good hap and sorrow ; 

 We press still thorough 

 Naught that abides in it 

 Daunting us onward. 

 T50 



And solemn before us 

 Veiled the dark portal, 

 Goal of all mortal : 

 Stars silent rest o'er us. 

 Graves under us silent 



But heard are the voices, 

 Voice of the sages, 

 The world and the ages ; 

 Choose well ; your choice is 

 Brief, and yet endless. 



Here eyes do behold you 

 In eternity's stillness ; 

 Here is all fulness, 

 Ye brave, to reward you : 

 Work, and despair not.' 



Epic Poetry. 



The epic poem or stirring narrative, with its 

 ' beginning, middle, and end,' its regular develop- 

 ment, and appropriate conclusion, which, when 

 recited in early times by the wandering rhapsodist, 

 himself perhaps the composer, proved the charm 

 of many a social hearth or assembled village, has 

 in these latter days been transformed into the 

 novel or romance. Sir Walter Scott, for example, 

 has come in place of Homer ; Don Quixote is a 

 modern ^Eneid ; and for Paradise Lost and Re- 

 gained, we have Zanoni or Wilhelm Meister's 

 Apprenticeship. 



Plot-interest is the life and soul of the epic, of 

 whatever country or time. A narrative of stirring 

 transactions, with hairbreadth 'scapes, and moving 

 incidents by fire or flood, full of breathless interest 

 and painful suspense, with trials and difficulties 

 getting thicker and thicker around the path of 

 hero and heroine, to be triumphantly and mar- 

 vellously dispersed in the end these are the 

 magician's materials for engrossing minds young 

 and old, and for converting sober reality into a 

 fairyland of day-dreams. The wide variety of this 

 species of literature, and the changes that it has 

 undergone between Homer and Virgil, and down- 

 ward through medieval romance to the novels of 

 the day, would require an elaborate delineation, 

 which has been repeatedly attempted in the more 

 lengthened works on the history of literature. The 

 greatest and most important peculiarity in the 

 recent course of such productions, is the endeavour 

 to make what is exciting in plot and character 

 coincide more and more with what is real in life ; 

 so that the readers may not have their minds pre- 

 occupied with false and deceptive notions as to 

 the current of the world and the characters of 

 men. As all such works deal in representations 

 of the transactions or doings of men and women, 

 and put the air of reality upon these as much as 

 possible, their readers cannot help being impressed 

 with the view of life that they set forth ; and if 

 this proves coincident with what they actually 

 experience when they come into similar circum- 

 stances, they have been instructed and forewarned 

 as well as delighted. To combine truth with 

 intense human interest is the perfection of every 

 form of literature. 



The Drama. 



This mode of composition grows out of the 

 picturesque and striking aspects of human society 

 and life. It represents the interesting and exciting 

 intercourse of man with man, and the outward 



