l8o ASSAYS JX PHILOSOPHY 



ourselves with an endeavour to find the single deter- 

 mining principle from which they all arise. 



But is there any such single principle ? We must 

 confess this seems unlikely, when we contemplate 

 the confusing diversity of the actual species of 

 poetry. Not to speak of a common originative 

 principle, it hardly looks probable, at first sight, 

 that there should be common to the varieties of 

 poetry anything important at all, — - to the epic, the 

 dramatic, the lyric, the didactic ; the tragic, the 

 comic ; the heroic, the sentimental ; the meditative, 

 the sportive ; the elegiac, the satirical ; the classic, 

 the romantic. And if we turn from the form and 

 mood of the poetry to its subject and contents, — to 

 love and war, to myriad-visaged Nature and the 

 "marvellous heart of man," to joy and sorrow, 

 glory and shame, to " the loud laugh that speaks the 

 vacant mind," and to "those thoughts that wander 

 through eternity," — the belief in the unity of the 

 poetic spirit becomes still more difficult. How can 

 diversity so wide be reduced to unity .? How can a 

 single principle provide for such manifold effects, 

 or preserve its identity through such an infinitude 

 of variations — variations that go to the extreme 

 of embracing opposites? 



To satisfy these wonderings, and dispose of them, 

 is doubtless part of our business in the effort to 

 ascertain the essential principle of poetry. But 



