-history, philosophy, and poetry, and noting what has been done, what overlooked, in each.

2. In the department of literary criticism, some admirable works have to be named. The earliest and one of the best among these is the Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie (mentioned at page 166), from which we must find room for an extract, describing the invigorating moral effects of poetry:

Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it: nay he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the wellenchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner; and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste; which, if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or rhubarbarum they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth: so is it in men (most of whom are childish in the best things till they be cradled in their graves); glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, Æneas: and hearing them must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice: which if they had been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set out, they would swear they be brought to school again. That imitation whereof poetry is, hath the most conveniency to nature of all other: insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are made, in poetical imitation, delightful. Truly I have known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaul, which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesie, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage. Who readeth Eneas carrying old Anchises on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act? Whom do not those words of Turnus move (the tale of Turnus having planted his image in the imagination)

fugientem hæc terra videbit?

Usque adeone mori miserum est ?

The critical passages which occur in Johnson's Lives of

the Poets appear to be in the main just and sound. Shakespearian criticism has given rise to an entire library of its own. Fielding led the way, by the admiring yet discerning notices of the great dramatist which he introduced in his Tom Jones. The prefaces and notes of Pope and Johnson followed; at a later date appeared Hazlitt's Characters, and the critical notices in Coleridge's Literary Remains.

But the greatest achievement of literary criticism that we can point to is Hallam's Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. This is a book of which the sagacity and the calmness are well matched with the profound erudition. A certain coldness or dryness of tone is often noticeable, which seems not to be wondered at; for it is not easy to imagine that the man who spent so large a portion of his moral existence in surveying the labours and mastering the thoughts of men of the utmost diversity of aspiration and opinion, could have felt a very warm personal interest in any of their systems.

Among works on poetical criticism, we can scarcely err in assigning a high and permanent place to Mr. Thackeray's Lectures on the English Humourists.

3. In artistic criticism, the same remark might be hazarded as to Mr. Ruskin's Modern Painters and Stones of Venice. Nothing else of much importance can be named, except Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting and Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

ON ENGLISH METRES.

THERE exists no work of any authority, so far as I am aware, upon the metres used by our poets, except Dr. Guest's History of English Rhymes, which is too long and too intricate for general In the absence then of better guidance, the following brief description and classification of English metres may be of use to students.

use.

Metre is the arrangement into verse of definite measures of sounds, definitely accented. Thus the hexameter is the arrangement in lines of six equivalent quantities of sound, called feet, each of which consists, or has the value, of two long syllables, and is accented on the first syllable. The heroic metre, when strictly regular, is the arrangement in rhymed couplets of five feet, each foot being equivalent to an iambus (a short and a long syllable), and accented on the last syllable. In practice, spondees and trochees are often introduced, the accent is often laid on the first syllable of a foot, and there are frequently not more than four, sometimes not more than three, accents in a line.

Rhyme is the regular recurrence in metre of similar sounds. There are four principal kinds; the perfect, the alliterative, the assonantal, and the consonantal. In the perfect rhyme, the rhyming syllables correspond throughout; in other words, they are identical. It is common in French poetry, but rare in English, e. g. :

Selons divers besoins, il est une science

D'etendre les liens de notre conscience.-MOLIÈRE.