376 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



has presided over the birth of this piece, reflection has attended 

 the production of that. But in each case the artist has seen 

 his subject within narrow compass, treated that as a complete 

 whole, and given to the world a poem in the narrative and 

 descriptive style, reminding us of the epic in its general form, 

 of the drama or the lyric in its particular treatment. Those 

 who have read the technical lessons which the idylls of 

 Theocritus convey, will understand why I classify this 

 exuberant jungle of Victorian poetry under the common 

 title of idyll. 



No literature and no age has been more fertile of lyric 

 poetry than English literature in the age of Victoria. The 

 fact is apparent. I should superfluously burden my readers 

 if I were to prove the point by reference to Byron, Coleridge, 

 Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Eossetti, Clough, Swinburne, 

 Arnold, Tennyson, and I do not know how many of less 

 illustrious but splendid names, in detail. The causes are not 

 far to seek. Without a comprehensive vehicle like the epic, 

 which belongs to the first period of national life, or the drama, 

 which belongs to its secondary period, our poets of a later day 

 have had to sing from their inner selves, subjectively, intro- 

 spectively, obeying impulses from nature and the world, which 

 touched them not as they were Englishmen, but as they were 

 this man or that woman. They had no main current of 

 literature wherein to plunge themselves, and cry : ' Ma 

 naufragar m' e dolce in questo mar.' l They could not 

 forego what made them individuals ; tyrannous circumstances 

 of thought and experience rendered their sense of personality 

 too acute. When they sang, they sang with their particular 

 voice ; and the lyric is the natural channel for such song. 

 But what a complex thing is this Victorian lyric ! It includes 

 Wordsworth's sonnets and Eossetti's ballads, Coleridge's 

 1 Ancient Mariner ' and Keats' odes, Clough 's * Easter Day ' 

 and Tennyson's ' Maud,' Swinburne's * Songs before Sunrise ' 

 and Browning's ' Dramatis Person,' Thomson's ' City of 

 Dreadful Night ' and Mary Eobinson's * Handful of Honey- 



1 ' To drown in this great tide is sweet for me.' 



