I. THE NATURE OF LYRIC There is not, it may be fairly asserted, any language in the world possessed of a greater variety of beautiful and elegant pieces of lyric poetry than our own."-J. RITSON, Select Collection of English Songs, 1783. "I HAVE no great opinion of a definition," says Burke in his treatise On the Sublime and Beautiful. To the demand for scientific classification and definition in literature our reply is identical with that of Burke. Nothing indeed could be more obviously futile than all attempts to divide a literature as wide and varied as are human experience and human emotion into a number of separate and distinct watertight compartments, by the erection of certain arbitrary barriers never to be crossed. Such attempts at the formation of a complete and comprehensive system of classification and definition in literature lead inevitably to that final damnation of the critic by which, far from the Delectable Mountains, he wanders in the outer waste of letters, evolving a new class for each example, a new definition for each class, until the logical result, ever near but never to be attained, appears within reach, when each poem shall find itself alone in its own separate class, the wheel after infinite toil coming full circle. Nevertheless the categories, if distinctions be not carried too far, are a convenient means of classification, not without a certain value. That these categories merge imperceptibly one into the other, and that their value is only to be found within certain limits, was realised and well expressed by Matthew Arnold when he wrote: "We may rely upon it that we shall not improve upon the classification adopted by the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic, dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety and should be adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two categories a poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance, narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every good poem a strain, a predominant note, which determines the poem as belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the best proof of the value of the classification and of the advantage of adhering to it." 1 Entirely just as this criticism is, so wide and vague a principle of division as the "strain " or predominant note" obviously leaves much room for individual differences of opinion as to whether a particular poem is or is not to be included in the lyric category. From this fact arise endless discussions such as whether Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci are rightly to be termed lyrics. Hence a slight examination of the various. meanings attached to the term "lyric " lyric" is not out of place. To the Greeks a lyric meant originally a song intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. In course of time the term lost a great part of its original meaning; the ideas of singing and of a musical accompaniment died out, and the former association of lyric with song and music was retained only in music of rhyme, rhythm, and verbal melody. But if part of the original significance of the term has become obscured, other portions of its meaning which were at first implicit rather than explicit have attained a greater importance and consequently a clearer and more definite recognition with the passing of time, so that the modern reader demands as a fundamental element of a great lyric that it be an expression of individual emotion, or, in other words, subjective. With the 1 Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 1891, pp. 137-8. tendency of later poets to deeper introspection, this individual element has inevitably assumed greater importance, until lyric has become a favourite form of temperamental expression. Thus it is that in that ideal pattern of lyric laid up no doubt in the heavens, the critic demands a complete balance and harmony of three elements-music of word, rhyme, and rhythm, strong, real, direct emotion, and temperamental expression, an individual channel through which that emotion finds its way and assumes its own special significance. The critic's conception of lyric will therefore depend in large measure upon the relative value that he attaches to each of these three elements in lyric, and here too is room for much difference of opinion and consequent dispute. Narrative, descriptive, dramatic, or other elements may enter into a poem of a certain lyrical tendency, and raise doubts as to its real character. For such cases no general rules can be laid down, and the verdict will vary with the individual. Nevertheless it must not be forgotten, in looking for the "strain " or " predominant note in such poems, that an apparently non-lyrical form, such as that of narrative or descriptive verse for example, is not necessarily inconsistent with true lyric utterance, and that dramatic form can be employed without destroying the essential subjectivity of a poem. A lyric, as it is in the ideal a supreme expression of strong emotion, must consequently be short; but the mere length of a poem as such can never become a test of its quality, and the ideal poet might make his ideal lyric as long as Homer's Iliad without affecting its lyric quality. Regarded as the supreme expression of strong emotion, lyric reveals itself as the very real but inexplicable essence of poetry, so that the greatest and most truly poetical verse invariably shows a lyric quality, whatever may be the form. Nor must we, in dealing with English poetry in the eighteenth century, adopt too high a standard of lyric quality. To adhere steadfastly to our |