Causes,' as it is called, tells us, that in order to arrive at a clear understanding of any individual thing, we must make four enquiries respecting it. We must ask what is the material which conditions its existence? What is its essential form? Through what agency is it produced? and What is the end attained by it?

If we examine the idea of poetry in this way, as indeed we have to some extent already done, we shall at once be satisfied that its existence is dependent upon the thoughts and feelings with which man views the world of which he is a part, and upon the actions and events of which he is a doer or a sufferer. That poetry has promise of being the strongest and most enduring that works upon the largest body of material, takes fullest account of the thoughts, the feelings, the doings and sufferings of the human race. To dramatic poetry, therefore, has been conceded the highest place, because its range is widest, because it addresses itself not to a representation of one phase of thought or of feeling, but to a representation of life in all its more striking phases, of life as it really is, and as it interests us. The high-water mark of its intellectual achievement is touched in a nation's dramatic poetry. In the epic there are elements which it has in common with drama and lyric, modified indeed, but present. The distinctive character of lyric poetry is its absolute subjectivity. Expressive of an individual mood, occasioned perhaps by some external circumstance, but, nevertheless, taking its essential colour and shape from the individual mind, lyric poetry is subjective. But it is something more. Wordsworth, in his Excursion,' is largely a subjective poet, but 'The Excursion' is no lyric. The lyric is concerned with one memorable incident, one strong emotion, one imperative

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thought. It is essentially a song capable of being sung by one voice or by a chorus, accompanied by some musical instrument. And 'capable of being sung,' not that it must be sung to be rightly appreciated, but that it ought to have the qualities of song. Lyrics have been regarded by some as the only true poetry, and such persons have declined to give the name to long philosophical or descriptive poems. This judgment is unwarrantably narrow. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is reported to have said that he hated long poems. But he did not in reality hate long poems. Nothing would have given him greater delight than a long poem, had it been possible to keep throughout the level of essential poetry. But it is not possible; and so it comes that the lyric, which, in the hands of a master, may be from first to last at the same level, intense, flawless and complete, is the most fascinating of all forms of poems. The lyric goes straight to the heart, for it is the song of the heart, and gives voice to the feelings that have their home in the secret depths of our being, to the affections that are primal. Hence there is a closer similarity between the lyric poetry of all races than exists between any other of their art products. In the expression of the deepest human feeling all nations tend to become one nation, all peoples to merge into one people. When we get down to the foundations we find the whole world kin. Religion, affection, patriotism; these are the chief springs of song; or, as we may more at length express it, in our relation to the unseen world, and to the Supreme Power, 'in Whom we live and move and have our being,' in our relation to our fellows, and in our relation to the country of our ancestors, to which we are bound by indissoluble and sacred links; in these relationships, whence spring the intensest and most spontaneous of our joys and

sorrows, the roots of lyric poetry are deeply struck. Not definitely marked off from other poetry by versification peculiar to itself, lyric is distinguished by the quicker movement, the more vehement and emphatic form which will naturally arise out of and represent fervent passion, and divide off this kind of verse from the slower, statelier, graver movement proper to drama or epic.

'Poetry,' said Wordsworth, 'is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, it is the impassioned expression which is on the face of all science.'

In the nature of things, therefore, its foundations are laid; and as man's knowledge of the true nature of things widens and deepens, and as that knowledge is brought into relation with human nature, additions are made to the materials of poetry, which concerns itself with truth and beauty that are enduring. Poetic material can never become exhausted. The moods of races, like those of individuals, vary, and in each mood a new aspect of life is predominant or becomes emphasised by a temporary eclipse or suppression of others. The poetry which appealed to the imagination in the Elizabethan epoch, poetry with a tone like Marlowe's

'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?'

gave place to the poetry which appealed to the intelligence in the age of Anne, with a tone like Pope's,—

"Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,

But the joint force and full result of all.'

In its turn the poetry of manners gave place to that of romance, and in place of

we have

'This mournful truth is everywhere confess'd,
Slow rises worth by poverty express'd,'

'She's o'er the Border, and awa
Wi' Jock o' Hazeldean.'

Nor can style and manner ever grow old; new modes of thought bring with them new and appropriate modes of expression. As no two faces are ever alike, as no two voices have the same tone, so in no two poets is the same accent discoverable. We need have no fear that as civilisation advances poetry will decay, as we are sometimes told; it will always be kept alive, in the words of Arnold, 'by the instinct of self-preservation in humanity.'

When we have investigated the a priori conditions for the existence of poetry, and found them to lie in the nature of things, in the world and man as a thinking sentient being related to the world, and when we have investigated its essential and distinguishing form, and found it to consist in language to which rhythm and movement have been communicated, 'the best words in the best order,' a part of the inquiry still remains to be pursued. It is still left for us to ask by what agency does this impassioned expression of man's thought about himself and the world come into being, and what end does it serve. Let us consider the answers to be returned to these questions.

And with respect to the first, we may say that it is through the agency of a particular type of mind. At all times, and among all races, the poet has been reverenced as a man divinely favoured, and not without cause. As we reflect again over the old conception of the poet's character, that he was the bearer of divine messages to men, we see how natural it is, how real it

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is. He is indeed a man favoured of heaven, for his thought comes nearer to intuition than that of other men, he feels more finely, more intensely, and more widely than they, and under the guidance of Nature herself, he speaks a purer and a more expressive language. 'The delight which a work of art affords seems to arise from our recognising in it the mind that formed nature again in active operation.' The poet, then, is a man quick to see and quick to feel, and when he presents in his poetry those aspects of truth or of beauty that have come home to him, he does so with entire conviction. For the moment, at least, he loses sight of himself, and feels himself the speaker of a disinterested word, a word to the whole human race. His message, dictated by no personal element, comes as an oracle from the central source of truth. Poets who excel in the mastery of the medium of words or language in which they work, are sometimes spoken of as the most consummate artists; others whose excellence lies in an intellectual mastery of life, in imaginative insight, in the discovery of new aspects of truth, with whose force or beauty our minds have not become familiarised, these poets are sometimes spoken of as vates or seers. We have seen,

however, that before a man can claim the honourable title of poet, he must to some degree combine both powers, the power which consists in a mastery of the form, the medium of language in which he works, and the power which consists in an intellectual mastery of life, and in a kind of spiritual vision. Here, indeed, we are sailing perilously near the inhospitable shores of the land of metaphysic, which are full of terrible quicksands, and we might have endless riddles propounded to us in respect of this spiritual vision ascribed to poets, such as the formidable one for example,