LESSON 85.

THE DIFFERENT SPECIES OF POETRY.

224. PASTORAL POETRY. Pastoral Poetry is a description of rural objects and scenes of Nature, The scene, which is always laid in the country, must be distinctly exhibited. The characters will consist of persons wholly engaged in rural occu, pations. The subject will comprise such adventures as may occur to persons so occupied, and calculated to display their disposition and temper; the scenes of domestic felicity or disquiet; the attachment of friends and relatives; the rivalship and competitions of lovers, and the unexpected successes or misfortunes of families.

225, LYRIC POETRY took its rise from religious gratitude; it was first employed to express thanks for the blessings bestowed on man by his Creator; hence the harvest hymns, and other compositions of a similar nature. The Psalms of David exhibit this species of poetry in the highest degree of perfection. Among the ancients, Lyrics were appropriated, 1. To religious subjects; 2. to the celebration of heroes; 3. to moral and philosophical subjects; 4. to festive pleasure and amusement.

226. There are in English several Lyric compositions of considerable merit; among which are Milton's Allegro and Penseroso, the two rival odes of Pope and Dryden on St. Cecilia's day; Gray's Bard, Progress of Poetry, and his Ode on Eton

College; together with several odes by Collins, Akenside, Gay, Cowper, and Coleridge.

227. ELEGIAC. - The Elegy was first employed in bewailing the death of a friend, afterwards it was employed to express the complaints of lovers, or any melancholy subject. The passions of grief, despair, or resentment, generally, predominate in poems of this kind. But funeral lamentations and disappointed love seem most congenial to its character, as may be instanced in David's lamentation over Jonathan. Gray's Elegy in a country churchyard is a beautiful specimen of this species of composition.

228. DIDACTIC Poetry is intended to convey instruction either in the arts, in morals, or in philosophy. The fundamental qualities of excellence in this kind of composition consist in sound thought, just principles, and apposite illustrations. The principal Didactic compositions in English are Pope's Essay on Criticism, his Essay on Man, Young's Night Thoughts, Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, Armstrong on Health, and Pollok's Course of Time.

229. DESCRIPTIVE Poetry is intended to exhibit beautiful pictures of nature or art so as to communicate all the information and pleasure which the reader could receive from an actual survey of the objects. Examples. - Thomson's Seasons, Pope's Windsor Forest, Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village, Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, Denham's Cooper's Hill, Campbell's Pleasures of

Hope, and several of Cowper's and Sir Walter Scott's Poems.

230. SATIRICAL Poetry is a species of the Didactic, and professes to have in view the reformation of morals and manners, by censuring what is wrong, and exposing what is foolish. There are two sorts of satire; the one, by painting vice in its native deformity, endeavours to inflict upon the vicious deserved censure; the other, by exposing the whims, the oddities, the absurdities, and the crimes of men, seeks to improve or reclaim. Examples.-Pope's Dunciad and Satirical Epistles, Young's Love of Fame, Johnson's London, Cowper's Table Talk and Progress of Error.

231. POETICAL EPISTLES are commonly intended as observations on authors, or on life and characters; in delivering which, the poet does not purpose to compose a formal treatise, or to confine himself strictly to regular method; but gives scope to his ability on some particular theme which prompted him to write.

232. EPIC POETRY is the most dignified but the most difficult of execution of any species of poetic composition, concentrating all that is sublime in action, description, or sentiment. It may be defined, a poetical narration of an illustrious enterprise, completed by supernatural agency. The fable should be founded in fact, and fiction should only complete that outline which has been traced by the finger of truth. The machinery should be subject to the main design, and the action be simple and

uniform.-Examples. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Eneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

233. MOCK-HEROIC is a mixture of comic and heroic forming a jocose parody on some great poem. Of this kind is Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Here the poet adopts the sublime style of epic composition to describe a ridiculous contest between a few rats and frogs; and forces his reader to smile at the wide difference between the loftiness of his verse and the insignificaney of his heroes. Pope's Rape of the Lock is an instance of this kind.

234. TRAGEDY is an exhibition of the characters and behaviour of men in some of the most trying and critical situations of life, and describes their passions, virtues, crimes, and sufferings. Tragedy, when properly conducted, points out to men the consequences of their own misconduct, shows the direful effects which ambition, jealousy, love, resentment, and other such strong emotions, when misguided or left unrestrained, produce upon human life.

235. COMEDY is sufficiently discriminated from Tragedy by its general spirit and strain. While pity and terror, and the other strong passions, form the province of the latter, the chief, or rather the sole instrument of the former, is ridicule. Comedy aims at correcting improprieties and follies of behaviour, by giving us pictures taken from among ourselves, by exhibiting to the age a faithful copy of itself, and by satirising the predominant vices.

236. THE SONNET is a short poem containing fourteen lines, which are divided into two stanzas of four lines each, and two of three lines. In the first eight lines there must be only three rhymes.

237. EPIGRAM.-The word Epigram originally meant an inscription, which was generally engraved or written on pillars, porches, or the pedestals or bases of statues; but it now signifies a short and witty poetical composition, the point or humour of which is expressed in the latter lines.

238. The EPITAPH is nearly allied to the epigram and has a similar derivation, meaning, literally, an inscription. Like the epigram, too, it was orignally very simple in its structure, consisting frequently of a single line, or even of a few words, which served to attract the notice of the passenger.

In a good epitaph, the name, and something of the character of the deceased should be introduced; but every thing that is either light, trifling, or fulsome, should be avoided.

239. MADRIGAL is a little piece not confined either to the scrupulous regularity of a sonnet, or the pointedness of an epigram; but consisting of some tender and delicate, yet simple thought, suitably expressed.

For Exercises on this Lesson, a series of Questions may be proposed.