The rampart; and the god who shakes the earth,
Wielding his trident, led the rivers on.

He flung among the billows the huge beams

And stones which, with hard toil, the Greeks had laid
For the foundations. Thus he levelled all
Beside the hurrying Hellespont, destroyed
The bulwarks utterly, and overspread

The long, broad shore with sand.

-Iliad, 12: Bryant's Trs.

The principles that apply to these representations of persons and scenes in nature, apply also to conversations in dramatic poems. All lengthy descriptions or declamatory passages that have nothing to do directly with giving definiteness, character, and progress to the plot, detract from the interest of the poem, considered as a whole. The effect of these things upon the form is the same as that of rubbish thrown into the current of a stream-it impedes the movement, and renders the water less transparent. This is the chief reason why the works. of the dramatists of the age of the history of our literature commonly called classical, like Dryden, Addison, Rowe, Home, and Brooke, notwithstanding much that is excellent in their writings, have not been able to maintain their popularity. Ordinary audiences do not go to the theatre to be preached at in this style:

These are all virtues of a meaner rank

Perfections that are placed in bones and nerves.
A Roman soul is bent on higher views:
To civilize the rude, unpolished world,
And lay it under the restraint of laws;
To make man mild and sociable to man;
To cultivate the wild, licentious savage
With wisdom, discipline, and liberal arts,
The embellishments of life; virtues like these
Make human nature shine, reform the soul,
And break our fierce barbarians into men.

-Cato, 1, 4: Addison.

Some may suppose that the chief reason why such passages as these, and those quoted from Southey, are not popular, is because they manifest so few evidences of the work of constructive imagination, by which is meant mainly that they contain so little figurative language.

Yet, we have seen that some of Homer's descriptions are equally lacking in figures. It is not merely this that renders a description inartistic. It is its failure to be truly representative. For this reason the mere addition to it of figurative language would not remedy its defects.

This fact, however, will be considered at full in other chapters. The present chapter will be closed with a few quotations exemplifying, beyond what has been done in the preceding passages, how Homer carries the principles now under consideration into his illustrative representation. In the descriptions used in order to exemplify the main thought in the following, will be found the same characteristics as in those making up the main thought in most of the preceding quotations. It will be noticed that the items forming the features of every separate figure, mentioned for the sake of comparison, are presented in the same mental, fragmentary, specific, typical and progressive way with which we may now be supposed to have become familiar.

The hero was aroused

To fury fierce as Mars when brandishing

His spear, or as a desolating flame

That rages on a mountain-side among

The thickets of a close-grown wood. His lips
Were white with foam; his eyes from underneath
His frowning brows streamed fire; and as he fought,
Upon the hero's temples fearfully

The helmet nodded.

Through the serried lines

He could not break; the Greeks in solid squares

Meanwhile came thronging to the appointed place.

As swarming forth from cells within the rock,
Coming and coming still the tribe of bees
Fly in a cluster o'er the flowers of spring,
And some are darting out from right to left.
So from the ships and tents a multitude
Along the spacious beach in mighty throngs
Moved toward the assembly.

-Iliad, 2: Idem.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ALLOYED REPRESENTATION: ITS GENESIS.

Alloy introduces Unpoetic Elements into Verse-All Classic Representation Pure-Tendencies in Poetic Composition leading to Alloyed Representation-In Direct Representation-In Illustrative RepresentationLawful to enlarge by Illustrations an Idea Great and Complex or Small and Simple-Descriptions of a Meal-Sunset-Peasant-Sailor-How these Tendencies may introduce Alloy that does not represent-Exaggerations in Love-Scenes-In Descriptions of Natural Scenery, etc.— In Allegorical Poems and Sensational Plays.

WE

E will examine now the form of representation which, in contrast to pure, has been termed alloyed. This latter, as has been said, while following in the main the methods of picturing the thoughts that are used in pure representation, always introduces something into the picture in addition to what would naturally be perceived in connection with circumstances like those that are being detailed. At first thought, it might be supposed that these additions would not greatly impair the poetry in which we find them. But the fallacy of this supposition will appear, when we recall that poetry is an art, and that all art is representative. It follows from this that the purer the representation, the purer will be the art, and in the degree in which any thing is added to the representation,-any thing, that is, of such a nature that in like circumstances it could not presumably

have been perceived,—in that degree will the product be likely to lose its artistic qualities.

Some who may not recognize the truth of this statement, when viewed from a theoretical standpoint, may, when viewed from a practical. Let us look at it in this way then whatever is added to the representation must come, in the last analysis, from the artist; and from him, when not exercising his legitimate artistic functions; when, instead of giving us a picture of nature and man, as he finds them, he has begun to give us his own explanations and theories concerning them. Now all explanation and theories, as we know, are necessarily the outgrowth-if not of ignorance or superstition—at least of the intellectual or spiritual condition of the age in which one lives. For this reason, to a succeeding age they are not satisfactory, even if they do not prove to be wholly fallacious; and a work of science or philosophy that is made up of them usually dies, because men outgrow their need of it, and do not care to keep it alive. A work of artistic poetry, on the contrary, lives because its pages image the phenomena of nature, and of human life, which can really be perceived, and most of these remain from age to age unchanged. A writer who confines himself to these, which alone can be used legitimately in representation, is, as Jonson' said of Shakespear, “not of an age but for all time"; and this fact can be affirmed of men like him alone. Out of the thousands of poems written in the past, only those have come down to us, and are termed classic, which are characterized by an absence of explanations and theories, and a presence of that kind of representation which has here been termed pure. How important, then, it is for the poet of the present to under

'To the memory of my beloved master William Shakespear.