in its purely fictitious personages, representations of classes of men or women in real life. In the creation of these, all the poet's knowledge of human nature in its broad features and in the delicate shades of character by which men differ, one from another, is brought into use. His ability to construct a plot and to invent opportunities for the development of his characters each made to influence others and their material surroundings to influence all- has widest scope and is put to the severest test. There is room here for profound insight, for imagination of high order, and for the most varied exercise of artistic skill. Without intending it as his main purpose, the poet makes a deep impression upon the intellect of the spectator or reader, and so becomes a teacher. In dramatic poetry, the poet keeps himself behind the scenes and out of sight. His choices and his personality are not disclosed. The excellence of the play depends, in large part, on the poet's fidelity to nature, on his bringing into active exercise the proper agencies, and those only, and in allowing these to work out their natural issue without help or hindrance from him. Into dramatic poetry, description and narrative are freely introduced. There may be great variety of incident, but there must be unity of action, each part helping on every other, and all contributing to one result. Rhyme may occasionally alternate with blank-verse, and prose may be put into the mouths of some of the characters, especially the more common, even into the mouths of the greater characters in their more common moods. A farce is a species of comedy marked by low humor and abounding with ludicrous incidents. There are prose farces also. A mask is a dramatic production, once common, in which the actors wore masks and represented mythical or allegorical characters. An opera is a tragic or a comic drama set to music and sung as well as acted. Orchestral music accompanies the vocal. Concluding Remarks upon Poetry. In his early paper upon Milton, Macaulay says, "As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines." The truth of this assertion seems open to question. In its highest essentials, civilization had advanced in the two thousand years between Eschylus and Shakespeare, but surely dramatic poetry, as represented by these two, did not decline in the interval. The lyric poetry of Burns is not inferior to that of Anacreon, nor the great epic of Milton to that of Dante or that of Virgil. In all that goes to the making of the highest and the best poetry, the manhood of the race is richer than its infancy. It is not rash to affirm that in sensibility to the charms of rural scenery and landscape beauty, as well as in the ethereal perception of the graces of character, our own Chaucer, and we have advanced in the five hundred years since his day—living in the autumn of the race, is superior to Homer living in its spring-time. It is certain that poetry is more needed now than ever before, and that it is more widely read and better appreciated now than ever before. If here, as elsewhere, the demand creates a supply, we need not be apprehensive of the future of poetry. It has this added felicity that, as knowledge accumulates, material for poetry accumulates. Every truth that brings any incitement to the intellect has a poetic side to it, and can furnish the poet a suggestion that may be worked into the background of his picture, or even stand as the subject of it. But whatever may be the future of poetry, we may comfort ourselves with the thought that there is enough for all our needs, though another line of poetry should never be written. From the beginning, poetry has attracted to itself the greatest writers. The best thought, alive and aglow with the best feelings, has gone into it. These rich products of the imagination, the great masters have incarnated in language, mellifluous, gemmed with imagery, musical with the melody of rhythm, - fit body for the indwelling soul, — and on the shelves of all libraries stand these productions possessing a power to charm denied to painting or to statuary. And this inheritance of ours never wastes. Poetry does not grow old and unserviceable. What satisfies our æsthetic nature completely will continue to satisfy it- we can no more outgrow it than our lungs can outgrow air. Poetry is immortal. The feeling, the sentiment which floods the thought preserves it is the spices and the aloes that embalm it. Nay, poetry, which haunts the memory as prose never does, is not only a "joy forever" but is ever becoming more and more a joy. For poems grow richer and better by use; and this not by what they lose but by what they gain, for out of us there goes, at every reading of them, something that enters into them, and sweetens them as sunbeams sweeten grapes. Not only do their words grow into place and grow together from frequent repetition of them, but, little by little, poems fill their pores with the emotions they awaken in us, and which pass out of us and enter into them until they exhale a fragrance that makes their very atmosphere aromatic. Substituting Read for Not in a stanza of Longfellow's, we conclude these remarks by quoting, [Read] from the grand old masters, [Read] from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of time; Read from some humbler poet Whose songs gushed from his heart, POETRY. And the night shall be filled with music; I. Mission. A SCHEME FOR REVIEW. Poetry - Definition. Prose in three things. Differs from ordinary Primary Mission to the Feelings. Secondary to the Intellect and to the Will. |