equally noted poems of this class, but modern poets rarely adopt this form.

(b). THE BALLAD.

Ballads are distinguished from songs proper by the fact of their containing a narrative. Love and war are the two chief topics of our ballad literature, while pathos and humour also furnish abundant material for these stories in verse. Chevy Chase, the Robin Hood ballads, John Gilpin, Lord Ullin's Daughter, Lucy Gray, Ben Battle, Nancy Bell, may be mentioned as typical specimens.

(c). THE HYMN AND SONG.

The only difference between these is that the former is always upon some sacred subject. Each is generally nothing more than the expression of some single sentiment, or the elaboration of some one feeling. Ken, Heber, Watts, Cowper, Wesley, and Keble are the authors of some of our most beautiful hymns, while to enumerate our songwriters would be to name nearly every one of our poets. Nothing has surpassed the sweet melodic charm of the lyrics of the Shakspere-Milton period of our literature, though perhaps Burns and Moore, as song-writers, may be mentioned as approaching very nearly the same excellence.*

(d). THE ELEGY.

This differs from other odes in that its subject is always mournful and its construction generally * For fuller particulars on this subject, see p. 217.

1

more regular.

Milton's Lycidas, Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, Collins's Dirge in Cymbeline, Burns's Man was made to Mourn, and Tennyson's In Memoriam are the finest specimens we have.*

2.-EPIC OR HEROIC POETRY.

This term is applied only to great and lengthy narrative poems, in which the dramatic element. is also introduced in the form of impassioned harangues, detailing some important national enterprise or the adventures of a distinguished hero. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Eneid, Dante's Inferno and Paradiso, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Camoens's Lusiad, and Milton's Paradise Lost and Regained, stand at the head of this species of poetry as the Classical Epics.

Scarcely inferior to these, and differing from them only in the fact that they depict less dignified undertakings, and which are fictitious, come such poems as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King These may be classed under this head as Romantic Epics Byron's Childe Harold may be included in the same category preferably to being considered a purely descriptive poem.

Another subdivision of poems of this class, but with still less of the heroic element in them, may, for want of a more suitable name, be grouped

* The reader is referred to Palgrave's "Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language.”

together as Poetical Romances. Scott's Marmion and Lady of the Lake, Moore's Lalla Rookh, Byron's Don Juan, Coleridge's Christabel, and Tennyson's Enoch Arden are of this kind; and if we allow the burlesque element to be added, such poems as Butler's Hudibras and Burns's Tam O'Shanter would be included.

3.-DRAMATIC POETRY.

"The very purpose of playing, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

Shakspere.

The word drama 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 poems, however, which are thrown into the dramatic form, are not intended, or are not suited, to dramatic representation-e.g. Bailey's Festus, Taylor's Philip Van Artevelde, Byron's Manfred, could not be so produced intact; and many of the plays of Shakspere are more suited to study than the stage, and require grievous hacking before they can be adapted to the requirements of the stage carpenter.

For the origin of the drama we must look to ancient Greece; there, we have seen above, the germ of the theatre arose out of the national custom of singing odes in praise of gods and heroes on festive occasions, speech and action being gradually

introduced for variety and broadened require

ments.

The word Tragedy (literally the goat-song) takes its name from the fact that the actors who sang and danced at these entertainments were dressed as satyrs. Comedy (a festive or rural song) was originally applied to the coarse, comic verses, mixed with extempore witticisms, which were indulged in by bands of revellers at harvest homes and vintage festivities. In course of time men of genius began to avail themselves of the opportunities which the recital of these crude verses afforded, and which no other species of composition then presented for national instruction, and we soon find plays more regularly constructed and based upon an organised plot. Under schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the drama was rapidly developed and elaborated to its utmost perfection. Tragedy was intended to excite the patriotic and heroic feelings of the audience, and to arouse its sympathy and pity for devotion and suffering virtue. Comedy, by its ridicule, turned the laugh of the hearers against the foibles and vices of the time. The difference between a Greek play and a modern one will be clearly seen by comparing Milton's Samson Agonistes, which is constructed upon the classic model, with any of Shakspere's plays.

The English Drama, or, as it is called, the Gothic, to distinguish it froin the classic drama, came into. existence about the latter half of the sixteenth century. It grew out of the crude Mysteries, or miracle plays, and Moralities, or moral plays, which we find

regularly represented at holiday times throughout Christendom about the end of the Middle Ages. They were produced all over Europe under the direction of the clergy as aids to religious and moral instruction. We see their survival down to the present day in the triennial representation of the Passion Play in the Bavarian village of Ober Ammergau. The former were coarse, and, to us, profane burlesques of Scripture narratives, the Deity Himself being frequently introduced; the latter consisted of quaint, comical dialogues, and frequently of furious disputes between characters personating abstract virtues and vices, the devil being the most important personage, as he always overcame the vices, and carried them off in triumph on his back or in a wheel-barrow at the finish.

Interludes occupy an intermediate place between the Moralities and the regular Comedy, as characters drawn from life were introduced. Heywood's Four P's, which we should consider a broad farce at the present day, may be taken as a fair specimen. The first comedy was Ralph Roister Doister, written by Nicholas Udall, master of Eton, about 1550, which was modelled after the Comedies of Terence; and this was followed a year or two later by Gammer Gurton's Needle, the work of John Still, bishop of Bath and Wells. The earliest known tragedy in English was Gorbudoc, or Ferrex and Porrex, the joint composition of Norton and Lord Buckhurst, which was represented in 1562, before Queen Elizabeth, at Whitehall. Within an amazing short time after this, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, and others, produced a