difficult to make, because it must, to a great extent, grow out of the occasion and the speaker must be quick at repartee.

A plea is an oral discourse or speech delivered by a lawyer to a court or a jury.

4. Lectures.-A lecture is an oral discourse delivered before a school, a class, or a popular audience with the view of imparting instruction.

Lectures delivered to schools, churches, scientific associations, and the like are designed to convey instruction as their chief object; but lectures delivered before promiscuous and popular audiences are designed partly to entertain and partly to instruct. There are some socalled lectures which have no element of instruction in them. They are designed more to create amusement than anything else. These hardly rise to the dignity of lectures, and have no claim to the title.

5. Sermons.-A sermon is an oral discourse delivered by a clergyman to a congregation; it usually takes for its subject some passage of Scripture, which is explained and developed, and an application made to the conduct and life of the hearers.

Sermons may also be delivered by others than clergymen. These are called lay sermons. Coleridge was noted for his lay sermons.

CHAPTER IV.

POETRY.

Poetry is that division of discourse in which thought addressed to the feelings and the imagination is expressed in the form of verse.

Essentials. The essentials of poetry are the following: 1. It must be the product of the imagination; 2. It must aim to please; 3. It must be in the form of

verse.

1. It must be the Product of the Imagination. There is much verse that cannot properly be called poetry, and for whose existence as verse there seems to be no possible excuse, except that the meter and the rhyme please the ear. Poetry rises above what is merely narrative, descriptive, or argumentative. It is the product of a creative imagination under excitement. It is an ideal creation of the mind. Its characters, its incidents, its scenes, and even its language, are drawn from the writer's imagination, and not from the real world. Shakespeare, himself one of the greatest of poets, thus pictures the process:

"The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

2. Poetry must Aim to Please.-While the object of prose composition is to set forth the truth, sometimes to convey information, and sometimes to move or persuade, that of poetry is essentially to please. Prose composition aims also in a measure to please, but only so far as may be necessary to hold the interest; but poetry, being a work of the imagination, finds its whole end in pleasing the reader or hearer, and observes the conditions. which govern prose only so far as these are necessary to gratify good taste. Poetry, like painting, music, and sculpture, is an art whose mission is to minister to man's æsthetic nature.

3. The Natural Form of Poetry is Verse.-There is a close connection between emotion and rhythmical movement. This is noticed in the influence which music has upon every one susceptible to its charms.

French critics have attempted to prove that some works not in metrical arrangement are poetry; but verse is one of the essentials of poetry, and, while a composition may be poetical in having all the other essentials, it is not poetry unless it have a metrical arrangement.

The rhymes of Mother

Note. But not all verse is poetry. Goose, and even some more dignified and pretentious efforts at versification, while they may have the mechanical form of verse, are not poetry, because they lack the other essentials.

KINDS OF POETRY.

The different kinds of poetry may be included under the following heads: Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, Dramatic, Pastoral, Didactic, and Satirical.

1. EPIC POETRY.

Epic Poetry is that which treats of heroic exploits. It is the highest and most difficult kind of poetical

composition, and, in consequence, the number of celebrated epics is very limited. In ancient verse Homer's Iliad in Greek and Virgil's Æneid in Latin are the most celebrated, and in modern verse Milton's Paradise Lost in English. To these might be added Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered in Italian, the Romance of the Cid in Spanish, the Niebelungen Lied in German, and the Henriade in French.

The essentials to an epic poem are—

1. The Subject should be Great and Heroic.-Thus, the Eneid has for its topic the perils and labors of Æneas, the reputed founder of the Roman race, in establishing the nation and laying the foundation of Rome.

The Iliad describes the siege and downfall of Troy, the most noted event in the early history of the Trojans and the Greeks.

Paradise Lost has for its topic the downfall not only of the human race, but also of the angelic host from heaven.

2. An Epic should Form a Completed and Connected Whole. -The writers of epics do not, however, proceed, as the historian, by beginning at the beginning. They usually begin near the middle or the end of the narrative, historically considered, describing events that are highly interesting, and then weaving in the preceding events through conversation and recitals.

3. An Epic Poem should have a Hero.-In addition to the heroic subject in general, there should be one prominent actor in the whole scene. Thus, in the Iliad it is Achilles, in the Eneid it is Æneas, in Paradise Lost Milton intended it to be Adam, but Satan is quite as prominent a figure as the human hero.

4. An Epic Poem should Involve many Actors, together with a Complicated Plot.—The first is necessary, because of the dignified character of the epic, which would soon. be tiresome if it were confined to the exploits of a single individual; the second, a complicated plot, is necessary also to sustain the interest.

5. The General Tone of an Epic should be Serious and Earnest.—When a poem of this character introduces caricature, it is known as mock-epic, as The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, supposed to have been written by Homer, and the Rape of the Lock, by Pope.

6. The Story should be Interesting.—An epic is essentially a story, which in its materials and arrangement would be interesting if told in prose. In the recital of this story in poetry the interest should in no way be allowed to deteriorate, but should, in reality, be heightened by the ornament which poetry affords.

Metrical Romance.-The Metrical Romance is a narrative of adventure less dignified than that of the epic. In the epic love is not a characteristic, but in the romance it is prominent. Witches, elves, ghosts, and fairies are substituted for the gods and goddesses of the epic. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and The Faerie Queene are examples of metrical romance.

Metrical Tale.-The Metrical Tale is a short story of love adventure told in verse. Some of the most noted are The Eve of St. Agnes, by Keats; Evangeline, by Longfellow; and Tam O'Shanter, by Burns, the last being full of humor.

2. LYRIC POETRY.

Lyric Poetry was originally that which was written to be sung. It was designed to be accompanied with