in English poetry, as quantity is in classical poetry. Quantity is founded, but the distinction between them is clearly seen in much But when loud súrges lásh the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar; L When Ajax strives some rock's väst weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow.—Pope. This distinction will be more fully illustrated further on, under the head Classic Metres. Besides rhythm, the essential difference, there are certain other variations, which are occasionally made use of as embellishments, distinguishing poetry from prose: these are rhyme, alliteration, and parallelism. Rhyme is the identity in two lines of poetry of the last accented vowel sound and what follows it, with a difference in the sounds preceding it. Rhymes are either single, double, or triple; as, kill, still; billow, pillow; tenderly, slenderly. It was introduced into our poetry in the sixteenth century, and for a long time was looked down upon by the scholars of the age as a barbarous innovation. Sydney, Ben Jonson, and Milton were strong in their censure of it, although each of them employed it. Our language, however, has so few rhyming words that it can never become an essential to English versification; still the sweet jingle it has will always cause it to be regarded as an important. element in the music of our poetry.1 1 The number of English words forming perfect rhymes is so small that, even in the best poets, we often meet with very imperfect ones, such as hear, pair; prove, love; flood, brood; face, rays, &c. Rhyme depends upon sound, and not upon identity of letters; e.g. rough, through; wreath, breath, would be inadmissible as rhymes. Such pairs as I, eye; lyre, liar, are assonances, not rhymes. In some of our Alliteration is the frequent recurrence of the same sound at the beginning of words or syllables in the same verse; it is the chief characteristic of Anglo-Saxon and early English poetry: e. g. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head. How high his highness holds his haughty head! Pope. Parallelism consists in repeating in the second line, with some slight modification, the thought expressed in the first. It is the chief characteristic of Hebrew poetry, and is but rarely employed in English; e. g. Tell it not in Gath, Publish it not in the streets of Ascalon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. 1 Kings i. 20. satirical writers we occasionally find the most comical combinations to form rhymes, designed no doubt to add to the fun of the piece; e.g. And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Beat with fist instead of á stick. Butler. Having once reached the summit, and managed to cross it, he KINDS OF POETRY. The earliest literary compositions are rhythmical. Long before the art of writing was invented, rude songs of war and love, hymns to the gods, and especially to Bacchus, were composed and handed down by tradition. We find bards or poets amongst all nations when emerging from a state of barbarism, whose duty it was to sing these traditionary odes as occasions called for them, and to celebrate the achievements of heroes, and great national events of their own age, in original compositions. Nearly all our knowledge of the early history of nations is derived from this source. In course of time these lyrical poems were strung together, and committed to writing, with narrative verses interspersed, in order to give a unity to the collection; hence the origin of Epic Poetry. On great national festivities, the celebration of the deeds of past heroes, and of their gods, was of the first importance. A rude stage was erected, and performers, fantastically dressed, chanted these national odes in chorus. After a while, in order to vary the entertainments, soliloquies and dialogues were introduced; hence the rise of the drama. The different kinds of poetry are as follow: (1) Lyric Poetry, which was so called because it was originally intended to be sung, and accompanied on the lyre. We find the earliest specimens of it in the Old Testament, such as Miriam's and Deborah's songs, and David's elegy on Saul and Jonathan. Lyric poetry is of several kinds a (a) The Ode (won, à song). The Greek choral odes, upon the model of which many in our own language are constructed, consisted of stanzas arranged in groups of three; the strophe, to be chanted by one-half of the singers, the antistrophe by the other half, and the cpode by the whole. In our own tongue we have odes upon a variety of subjects, heroic, sacred, moral, and amorous. Perhaps the finest of all is Dryden's Alexander's Feast. Gray, Collins, Campbell, Shelley, and Wordsworth are the authors of almost equally fine specimens. In the composition of odes the moderns have succeeded less than in any other kind of versification. (b) The Ballad, i. e. a song. Ballads are distinguished from songs proper by the fact of their containing a narrative. Love and war are the two chief subjects of ballads. Chevy Chase, the Robin Hood ballads, John Gilpin, Edwin and Angelina, and Lucy Gray may be taken as good specimens. (c) The Hymn and Song.-The only difference between these is that the former is always on some sacred subject. Each is generally nothing more than the expression of some single sentiment. Bishop Ken, Bishop Heber, Dr. Watts, Cowper, and Keble are the authors of some of our most beautiful hymns. To enumerate our song writers would be to name all our poets, though Moore and Burns have, perhaps, written more than any others. Dibdin requires especial mention for his sea songs. (d) The Elegy. This differs from other odes only in its subject being always mournful. Gray's celebrated Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, Milton's Lycidas, Collins's Dirge in Cymbeline, and Tennyson's In Memoriam are fine specimens. (2) Epic or Heroic Poetry. This term is applied only to great and lengthy narrative poems, in which, however, there is something of the dramatic, detailing some important national enterprise, or the adventures of a distinguished hero. The chief epics of all nations are, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Eneid, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, the Lusiad, and Jerusalem Delivered. These great works are distinguished as Classical Epics. To the same class, but differing from the above in their narrating less dignified undertakings, and these being fictitious, as well as in a want of unity of purpose, belong the Romantic Epics, such as the Orlando Furioso, the Divine Comedy, the Faerie Queene, and the Idylls of the King.1 Scott's Lady of the Lake, Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, &c., Moore's Lalla Rookh, Longfellow's Hiawatha, &c., though scarcely dignified enough to be considered epics, fall under this head as Poetical Romances. Butler's Hudibras, Burns's Tam O'Shanter, &c. differ from the above only in the burlesque element they contain. (3) Dramatic Poetry.-The word drama (dpāμu) means action, and the term dramatic poetry is applied to that species of composition which is made up of dialogue, and which is, for the most part, intended to be acted. All dramatic poems, however, are not intended for representation; e. g. Bayley's Festus, Taylor's Philip von Artevelde; and even many of Shakspere's plays are more suited to the study than the stage. For the origin of the drama we must look to ancient Greece: there, we have seen above, the theatre arose out of the national custom of singing odes in praise of gods and heroes on festive occasions, soliloquies and dialogues being gradually introduced to vary the exhibitions. The word Tragedy (rpaywdía, literally the goat-song), takes its name from the fact that the actors who sung and danced at these entertainments were dressed as satyrs. Comedy (wpwdía, a festive or revel song) was originally applied to those rude, comic verses, mixed with extempore witticisms, which were indulged in by bands of revellers at vintage festivities. In course of time men of genius. began to avail themselves of the opportunities which the drama afforded, and which no other species of composition then afforded, for national instruction; and we soon find plays more regularly constructed, and containing a plot. Under Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the drama was carried to its utmost perfection. Tragedy 1 Byron's Childe Harold and Don Juan may be considered as Romantic Epics quite as well as purely descriptive poems. |