The English Lyric: A Study in Psycho-Genesis 



BY HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER 

 I. ETHNIC CHARACTER 



The mental complexion of a race, no less than that of an indi- 

 vidual, is most characteristically mirrored in its artistic achieve- 

 ment. Throughout the history of civilization what has given 

 tone and quality to every effective culture has been, more than all 

 else, its art. The aesthetic impression produced by a race and its 

 works is always lasting indication of its vital force. 



Nowadays when we think of Greek civilization the image first 

 to present itself is of urns and vases of graceful line, or of won- 

 derful marble statuary, or of fine-limned temples gleaming white 

 above the blue waters of the Aegean. Always it is some beauty 

 of plastic form, luminous, exquisite, less a thrilling of the imagina- 

 tion than a rest in radiant charm. Contrast with this the culture 

 of Italy. The Renaissance ! Our one overmastering estimate of 

 the Italian race is determined by that period of its history in 

 which it developed an habiliment of sensuous splendor for its 

 ideas and its ideals such as has never been attained by any other 

 people. Its mere wealth of color and tone stimulate the imagina- 

 tion to undreamt vision. The spirit of it, also, is in part re- 

 vealed to us, and this because we are not wholly alien to the 

 ideals it was concerned in expressing. The Renaissance was 

 Italian in its sensuous magnificence, but its motives were Euro- 

 pean, Occidental, and so not out of sympathy with our own. 

 Understanding is, indeed, quite as essential to aesthetic apprecia- 

 tion as is stimulation of sense through beauties of color and 

 form. Oriental civilizations seem all more or less foreign and 

 unnatural to us. Though here, as with the more intimately com- 



Umveksitv Studies, Vol. IX. No. -i, October 1909. 



343 



