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one possible solution; and your enthusiast is a fine florid fellow, dominates things for a while and shakes the world out of a doze; but when once he is gone, an army of quiet and uninfluential people set to work to remind us of the other side and demolish the generous imposture. While Calvin1 is putting everybody exactly right in his Institutes, and hot-headed Knox 2 is thundering in the pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side. in his library in Perigord, and predicting that they will find as much to quarrel about in the Bible as they had found already in the Church. one side, but assuredly

Age may have Age may have Youth has the

other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps

1 A famous Swiss theo- A Scotch theologian and logian. reformer.

that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?

I suppose it is written that any one who sets up for a bit of a philosopher, must contradict himself to his very face. For here have I fairly talked myself into thinking that we have the whole thing before us at last; that there is no answer to the mystery, except that there are as many as you please; that there is no center to the maze because, like the famous sphere, its center is everywhere; and that agreeing to differ with every ceremony of politeness, is the only "one undisturbed song of pure concent" to which we are ever likely to lend our musical voices.

VICTORIAN LYRICS

THE poets who wrote after the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 were conscious of new influences that were. making themselves felt in the social life of England. Most significant of these was the rise of the scientific spirit. Science brought inventions that revolutionized industry, but it went still further into the life of man by considering the relation of the individual to his environment and by questioning the very foundations upon which religious faith had been built. The age became more reflective and speculative and the poets grew more concerned with the significance of life. This was particularly true of Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, the two greatest of the poetic spokesmen for this period, and of Matthew Arnold as well. Tennyson was a conservative by training and valued highly the greatness of England's past. To him the poet was a seer, an interpreter of life who might wield great influence. He believed in traditional morality and although the skepticism of his day challenged him, he fought his way to a belief in God and in the necessity of faith in matters that are beyond human knowledge. Artistically his verse is in the line of tradition from Spenser and Keats, beautiful in detail, rich in diction, and melodious.

Browning's interest is always in the individual. To him the great poet was one who "chronicled the stages of all life." Himself a liberal, he went his individual way in poetry and developed a new form, the dramatic lyric. He lets some clearly imagined character reveal the secrets of his soul through the narration of some emotional or dramatic climax of his life. There is the same emotional intensity, the same unity of effect that is to be found in the lyric; the difference lies in the fact that the poet has followed the method of the dramatist in putting the emotion into the mouth of another. From these lyrics, however, one can get a realization of Browning's zest for life, his liberalism, his optimism, and his triumphant belief in immortality.

Matthew Arnold, keen student of life, never reached Tennyson's faith. To him. the world was full of disillusionment; man must find compensation in self-mastery and in the development of character. Dignity and poise are evident in his manner of poetic expression.

There were some Victorian poets to whom the present was not alluring and for whom the realities lay only in the imagination of man. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were among them, artists who sought to create beauty for its own sake.

Algernon Charles Swinburne was a pure lyrist. He sang with enthusiasm of the elemental things in Nature and in man,-of Fate, of romantic passion, of the love

of children, and, most inspiringly of all, of freedom. It is the soul of the poet, not thought and reflection, that he gives us, poured forth in a melody that is individually his own.

George Meredith, poet and novelist, was a man of great intellectual and imaginative power. With flashes of insight he reveals what is below the surface, in poems that show a fine sense of form. Modern Love is a sonnet-like sequence largely autobiographical; each of the lyrics here given, however, is complete in itself.

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Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah, why
Should life all labor be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last? 90
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

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