3?9 



LYRIC POETRY. 



LYTTA. 



S0 



arrival of Joseph." And in Rosellini's splendid work ' I Monument! 

 dell' Egitto e della Nubia ' are many engravings, some coloured, ex- 

 hibiting instruments of great antiquity, resembling in essential points 

 the modern guitar, or lute, with a neck, but this much elongated. 



The most ancient Grecian lyre said to have been formed by Hermes 

 from the shell of a tortoise, and of which the annexed is a representa- 

 tion, as given by Mersenne, had but three strings (jig. 1). That of 

 Terpander (from Blanchinus) had seven, and took the form given in 

 fg.'l. 



Timotheus increased the number to eleven ; and others were gradu- 

 ally added, till they reached sixteen, fifteen of which rendered the 

 principal sounds in the Greek scale, and the sixteenth was the 

 Proslamhanomenos, that is, the added or supernumerary sound. 



LYRIC "POETRY is commonly understood to be that kind of poetry 

 which is composed in order to musical recitation, but the epithet has 

 been transferred to all kinds of verse partaking in any degree of the 

 game nature as that to which it was at first applied. Thus we hear of 

 lyrical ballads, the greater part of which might with as great propriety 

 be called epical, and of lyric measures in Horace, where there is no 

 ground to suppose that they were sung, and no fitness for the purpose 

 of musical rehearsal. In a former article [Epic POETRY] we have 

 endeavoured to point out a distinction between epic and lyric poetry 

 more satisfactory than common language allows ; but there is surely 

 no impropriety in giving a decided meaning to words which have 

 visually been understood in a confused sense, particularly when, as in 

 the present case, the name senses have been applied to each, so as not 

 only to confuse, but to confound them. Pursuing then the course 

 which we have pointed out, lyric poetry must be defined as that class of 

 poetry which has reference to and is engaged in delineating the com- 

 poser's own thoughts and feelings, in distinction from epic poetry, which 

 details external circumstances and events. 



The history of lyrical poetry is perhaps subject to greater difficulties 

 than any other species of composition. In that nation where it 

 attained to its most perfect growth, it is precisely that class of its 

 literature which is to us, except in regard to one author, a total blank. 

 Pindar is nearly all that remains to us of the whole lyric poetry of 

 Greece, and great as his reputation has deservedly been, we have no 

 reason to consider him ax paramount to his class, and very good reason 

 for denying to him what has commonly been considered his right, that 

 of presenting us with the purest type and example of a lyric poet. 

 And scarcely any trace remains of that link between epic and lyric 

 poetry which was the origin of Greek tragedy. This was perhaps the 

 most national form of lyric poetry among the Greeks, the others 

 having been for the most part rather the productions of individual 

 imaginations, which gained popularity in proportion as they found 

 sympathy, much in the way in which modern poetry makes its way 

 into notice. 



Ulrici, in his very elaborate work on the history of Greek poetry, 

 gives two as the principal sources from which lyric poetry was derived 

 religious worship, and the individual feelings of the people ; the first 

 of which elements is traceable in one of the two kinds of epic poetry, 

 which we named hieratic, while the second is that in which consists the 

 difference between pic and lyric poetry. He proceeds to divide Greek 

 lyric into the Doric, ^Eolic, and Ionic kinds : which correspond nearly, 

 the first to what is to be found in choruses ; the second to love-songs, 

 uch as Sappho's, and drinking-songs, or scolia ; and the third to the 

 elegy, epigram, and satire. 



It has been remarked that both in epic and in lyric poetry the 

 Romans possessed nothing like a school of poets, while in Greece there 

 was a regular progression from epic to lyric schools, each of which 

 supplied many individuals grouped round a principal figure in each 

 class. Virgil and Lucan are the types of Roman epic poetry, and 

 Horace stands almost alone as a lyric poet. But to attempt to give a 

 history of Roman lyric would be little else than to enumerate every 

 man who wrote verses from Ennius downwards, for almost every one 

 of them attempted that as well as all other kinds of poetry. The 

 whole of Latin poetry was in fact on a Greek model, even the most 

 original of the Latin poets having borrowed his metres, though he 

 might make everything else his own. 



It might perhaps startle any one to be told that satire is a branch of 

 lyrio poetry, and that the most important branch of Roman lyric is 

 satire. But a careful review of the definition with which we started 

 cannot fail to explain this. Satire is essentially lyrical or subjective 



in its nature, and the Roman satire more so than the Greek, inasmuch 

 as it partakes far' less of the nature of lampoon or ludicrous descrip- 

 tion, and deals more with general than with individual traits of 

 character. In their satire it is that we must look for information on 

 Roman modes of thought and feeling. It was, or at least appears to 

 us to have been, the only outlet which the Imperial tyranny gave to 

 the free and noble spirit of Rome in her best days, and it is quite 

 astonishing how far this liberty was employed. What it was in earlier 

 days we cannot tell, except as far as Horace's description of Lucilius 

 avails. The words may mean almost anything, but we should be 

 inclined to suppose that it partook much more of the nature of lampoon 

 than in later times. To the satire we may add its powerful auxiliary 

 the epigram, the same in name but very different in nature from its 

 Greek fellow, which ought rather to be called epigraph, or even 

 epitaph. 



The Horatian lyrics merged in the later ages of the empire into a 

 species of poetry much neglected, we mean the rhyming verses of the 

 monks, which often contain Hebrew sublimity expressed in most 

 sonorous verses. They are curious as affording the best specimen of 

 the transition from scansion to accent, that is, from the antique to the 

 modern rule of versification. 



English lyrical poetry is late in its full development, for to call our 

 ballads lyrical is a misnomer, seeing that the prose and poetical 

 romances often give exactly the same story in another shape. We need 

 go no further than the ballad ' Mort d' Arthur," so well known to 

 readers of Percy's ' Reliques.' At the same time, though the form of 

 these ballads is mostly narrative or epical, there is often a strong 

 admixture of lyrical feeling, as in ' The Jew's Daughter,' ' Sir Cauline, 

 and others. Scarcely any poems occur before the time of Milton 

 deserving the title of lyrical, except perhaps some of Giles and Phineas 

 Fletcher's works and Shakspere's sonnets. In ' Lycidas,' ' II Pense- 

 roso,' and ' L' Allegro,' we see almost the first, and perhaps the most 

 beautiful examples our language can boast. The prevalence of French 

 taste until the revival of poetry at the close of the laat century gave so 

 artificial a character to the works of Dryden, Pope, and their successors, 

 that we can hardly give the title of lyrical to any of them except 

 the satires and a few fine odes. In our own day Wordsworth and 

 Coleridge are too well known to require that we should point out how 

 exclusively lyrical is the tendency of their works. Shelley has com- 

 bined more of what is called sensuous beauty with the rest of tho 

 qualities requisite to make up a lyrical poet ; and, among living poets, 

 Tennyson may perhaps be mentioned as the greatest of lyrical poets. 



(Ulrici's Qesc/iic/itc der HdUniichen Dichtkumt ; Dunlop's Mist, of 

 Roman Literature.) 



LYRICS are those verses which are commonly used in lyrical poetry. 

 Such are those of Pindar, of Horace's odes, and of the tragic and comic 

 choruses. They are generally short, in order, as is said, to agree 

 better with the time of any music which might have been intended to 

 accompany them. The old grammarians divided all verses into those 

 in which the metre was repeated in each line (xarn irrixov), such as 

 hexameters, iambics, and trochaios ; and those which require more 

 lines than one to make up a system (xarel aiirrrripLa), as in the case of 

 Sapphic or Alcaic verses, or a choric strophe. The latter division 

 contains almost all the lyric metres known, including nearly all Horace's 

 odes, all Pindar's, and all the choruses and even anaprestic systems. 

 Of these strophes a further division has been made, into longer, such as 

 Pindar, Stesichorus, Simonides, and the Greek dramatists employed ; 

 and ihortfr, such as those of the earlier Ionian and vEolian poets, of 

 their imitators, and of Seneca, besides rare examples in the Greek 

 dramatists. 



Hermann further distinguishes the longer strophes into Dorian. 

 JEott&n, and Lydian, of which he gives examples from Pindar to prove 

 that the first was used where impressive majesty was requisite, the 

 second to give a notion of rapidity and vehemence, and the third as 

 possessing part of the qualities of each. 



A question has arisen, and it is at all events a curious point, why 

 lyrical poems are generally divided into lines so much shorter than 

 heroic. That such was the case in Greek and Roman poetry is certain, 

 and it is not explained by saying that they were sung to an accompani- 

 ment, for surely there is just as much reason to suppose that Homer's 

 long hexameters were chanted as Anacreou's short iambics, and music 

 might be as well adapted to one as to the other. 



LYTTA. [CANTHABIDES.] 



