was designed to arouse the sympathies and pity of the audience for heroism and suffering virtue; comedy, by its ridicule, turned the laugh of the hearers against the foibles and vices of the age. The difference between a Greek play and a modern one will be clearly seen by comparing Milton's Samson Agonistes, which is composed after the Greek model, with any of Shakspere's plays.

The Modern Drama arose about the latter half of the sixteenth century. It grew out of the rude Mysteries or Miracle plays, and Moralities or Moral plays, which we find in existence about the end of the middle ages. The former were coarse, profane burlesques founded upon Scripture narratives, the Deity himself being frequently introduced; the latter consisted of quaint dialogues, and frequently of furious disputes between characters personating abstract virtues and vices, the devil being the important one, as he always overcame the vices, and carried them off at last. Interludes occupy an intermediate place between the Moralities and modern comedy; Heywood's Four P's may be taken as a fair specimen of them. One of the earliest comedies is Gammer Gurton's Needle,' and the earliest tragedy is Sackville's Ferrex and Porrex, both written in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Soon after this Greene, Marlowe, and especially Shakspere, raised the drama to its highest excellence.

In the classic drama, (and the French theatre is constructed upon that model), what are called the unities are preserved, i. e. a unity in time and place; but Shakspere refused to be confined by any such arbitrary limitations, although, as in the Tempest, he has shown himself quite able to observe them when it suited his purpose.1

'The English drama is called Gothic as distinguished from the classic drama. Besides differing in respect to the unities, the distinction be. tween tragedy and comedy is rigidly observed by the ancients, while in Shakspere the elements of the two frequently are found side by side. It is a mark of the highest genius to depict skilfully those phases of human life in which the sublime and the ludicrous are indissolubly

The distinction between a modern tragedy and comedy is, that the former has always a mournful termination, the latter a happy one.

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.

(4) Descriptive Poetry.-Description enters into every kind of poetical composition, but there are some poems that are purely descriptive. To this class belong Drayton's Polyolbion, Thomson's Seasons, Denham's Cooper's Hill, Pope's Windsor Forest, Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village, &c. Perhaps the finest specimens in the language are Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

Pastoral is a species of Descriptive poetry. It consists of descriptions of rural life and scenery, of the simplicity and loves of shepherd swains and village maids. Shenstone, Collins, and many others of our early poets have written beautiful specimens of it; the finest example in English is Shenstone's Pastoral ballad. It is rarely attempted by modern poets, perhaps because much of the charming simplicity of country life has disappeared from amongst us.

(5) Didactic Poetry.-Under this head are included all poems the prime object of which is to instruct, whether in arts, morals, or philosophy. Tusser's Hundred Points of good Husbandrie, Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, Pope's Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man, Young's Night Thoughts, Blair's Grave, Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, and most of Cowper's poems, are of this kind. The finest didactic poem in English is Wordsworth's Excursion.

Satirical Poetry is a species of didactic, as its object is to improve manners and promote real virtue by depicting

blended; and this our great dramatist has accomplished with a truth and power that has never been equalled. Numerous instances of this might be adduced from the plays of Hamlet and Lear.

vice in its true colours, and by holding up to ridicule hypocrisy and cant. Dryden, Pope, Butler, Dean Swift, Burns, and Tom Hood are our most famous satirical poets. Pope's Dunciad and Hood's Ode to Rae Wilson may be taken as fine, though widely differing, specimens.

(6) The Sonnet.—This is a short poem of fourteen lines, which was introduced into our language from the Italian by the Earl of Surrey in the reign of Henry VIII. It is always in iambic pentameter and in rhyme. The rhymes have a somewhat complicated arrangement; sometimes there being no more than four different ones in the whole poem, and seldom more than six. From this it will be seen that the sonnet is the most artificially constructed of all our poems, the poet being restricted both in metre, rhyme, and length. Besides this, it must be complete in itself: its subject-matter must be of such a nature that it can be exhausted even in so short a compass. Although Shakspere and Milton frequently made use of it, and embodied some of their most beautiful thoughts in this form, it continued to be looked down upon by English writers as an alien, unsuited to our northern tongue, and too crippling to the airy fancy of the poet. It is to Wordsworth that we owe the uprooting of these prejudices, and the high position which the sonnet now holds in poetry. He speaks of it as 'the key with which Shakspere unlocked his heart,' 'the small lute that gave ease to Petrarch's wounds,' 'the glowworm lamp that cheered mild Spenser,' and continues, that

When a damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains-alas! too few.

Wordsworth's own beautiful specimen contains all that can be said on the subject:

The Sonnet.

Nuns fret not at their convents' narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells,
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness Fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

(7) The Epigram.—This is a short poem on some single thought; brevity and wit being its essentials, the point generally coming at the end.

On One who made long Epitaphs.

Friend, for your epitaphs I'm grieved;

Where still so much is said,

One-half will never be believed,

The other never read.

Pope.

On an M.P. who wrote a severe Critique on the Pleasures of

Memory.

They say he has no heart, but I deny it;

He has a heart-and gets his speeches by it.

Rogers.

The Epitaph, like the epigram, is short and pointed, and it may be witty or not. It is written to eulogize, or satirize some defunct individual; and, as its name implies, is supposed to be inscribed on his tomb.

On Sir Isaac Newton.

Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light.

Pope.

METRE.

Rhythm, as has been before defined, is the undulation of sound produced by the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables, which mainly distinguishes poetry from prose.

Metre is the measure of rhythm, answering to the beat in music. It requires that there shall be a certain number of syllables in a verse or line, and that these syllables shall be accented in a particular way.

A Foot is the unit of metre, answering to a bar in music. It consists of a group of either two or three syllables, one of which is accented.

A Verse is a cycle of feet constituting one line of poetry.

A Couplet is two consecutive lines in rhyme.

A Triplet is three consecutive lines rhyming together.

A Stanza is a group of verses, varying in number according to the poet's fancy, and forming a regular division of a poem.

Scanning is the process of dividing a verse into its component feet.

Cæsura (or cutting) is the pause which takes place in reading a verse of poetry.

These pauses generally, but not always, correspond to pauses in the sense. The most usual places for cæsural pauses to occur are at the end of the second or the third foot; but, especially in iambic measure, they may be introduced at almost any part of the verse, and, according to their position, the character of the melody is varied: e.g.

The cæsural pause is sometimes considered to occupy the place of an omitted unaccented syllable. The laws which regulate the cæsura in classical poetry have no bearing whatever upon English verse.