From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise.
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweetbrier or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine.
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack or the barn-door
Stoutly struts his dames before.
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singing blythe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Now in all this, Milton, as I have already said, is telling us, not what he feels, but what he sees; he does not say how or why he is glad, he simply makes us glad with him. The depth of his rare insight, the force of his rare genius, alike constrain us, the first, to see with him, the other, to sympathise with him. In "Il Penseroso" he works in exactly the same way, describing objects in a kind of progression from sombre to sad, and attaining his effect always by description of and reference to such objects as are external to himself.

In this manner, also, Coleridge produces his effect in the "Ancient Mariner." Take, for instance, that well-known

verse

Water, water everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot-oh Christ!

That ever this should be,

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

And this feature, which is a specialty of Coleridge's, we have again in "Christabel "; as, for example, in the

description of the Lady Geraldine, when Christabel sees

her in the forest:

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a silken robe of white,

That shadowy in the moonlight shone.
The neck, that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare,
Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.

I ween 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly!

These various quotations will serve to indicate sufficiently the distinctive features of this objective school of poetry. Turn we now to the second theory concerning poetry, viz., that which makes it to depend on the appreciation and personality of the poet himself. This class we may call subjective, and as an instance I will take that noble bit from Browning's poem of "Easter Day," where he describes an inscription in the Catacombs at Rome which relates to one of the early Christian martyrs :

I was born sickly, poor, and mean,
A slave,—no misery could screen
The holders of the pearl of price
From Cæsar's envy; therefore twice
I fought with beasts, and three times saw
My children suffer by his law.
At last my own release was earned;
I was some time in being burned,
But at the close a hand came through
The fire above my head and drew
My soul to Christ, whom now I see.
Sergius, a brother, writes for me
This testimony on the wall.

For me I have forgot it all.

Here, then, Browning transmits to us a subjective effect. His own soul is stirred up, and it is his way of looking at

the rude portraiture there on the wall that we adopt. It is the lines of the features he so lovingly and reverently draws that we see; not the lineaments that the poor martyr's three children kissed, that Sergius, the brother, knew, and that are feebly outlined there on the dark, dank rock.

These instances must suffice. I shall have constant occasion to refer to the two classes of poetry I have defined; but from the examples I have given it is not hard to see that between the two kinds there is an entire difference of tone and texture: a difference residing partly in the expression, but essentially in the conception of the poet's thought. Looking to the strict philosophical signification of the two terms I have, with some looseness, ventured to use, I may sum up my remarks by saying that objective poetry I make to depend on the effect produced upon the mind by objects of thought external to the thinker; subjective poetry I relegate to the mental operation of the thinker himself, independently of all externals. Two very eminent names may be connected with this subject. Lord Macaulay I might adduce as the representative critic and champion of the objective school. He, in his essay on Milton, distinctly affirms that the poet's office is to portray, not to analyse: and he goes so far as to imply, if not to say, that the highest forms of poetry are only possible to rude states of society, wherein men see and feel, rather than see and think. Carlyle, on the other hand, connects the poet, as of old, with the Vates-makes his power depend not less on the great heart than on the clear vision. The poet is still the seer, but he is also the prophet, who sees and sings not merely of the husks of things. In short, Carlyle relegates poetry to the poet's personality, rather than to his capacity—makes it depend on his character rather than on his circumstance. We may be content, I think, to hold fast both forms without unduly exalting either-remembering that while the

C

objective poet, on the one hand, is apt to become tawdry and diffuse, we find also that the subjective poet is no less apt to become morbid and diseased.

I bring these general considerations within the scope of our subject, by directing your attention to the difference in tone between modern and ancient poesy; or perhaps it would be more nearly accurate to say, between the poetry of a cultivated and of an uncultivated age. This difference is in many points. Such, for example, as that suggested by Dallas when he asks how it is that the poets of the Elizabethan time are constantly speaking of morning and the dawning day, while those of the Victorian era are as constantly referring to evening and the setting sun. But these minor points I pass in submitting that the general drift and tendency of modern poetry is subjective, while the favourite attitude of the older poets is objective; and without dwelling further on it, I may just say that if this theory be correct, it is singularly suggestive in view of the directly reverse tendency which certainly obtains in matters, and methods of science. Of course, I do not assert that this rule is absolute. Shakspeare is no more completely objective than is Browning absolutely subjective; but I submit that the statement is in the main correct. I could in support of it, at any rate, adduce many illustrations. Group, for instance, four poets, two ancient and two modern, and compare each type. Chaucer and Browning are each characteristically dramatic in method, while Spenser and Tennyson are distinctively lyric. Now if we compare the prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" with the prologue, as I may call it, to "Christmas Eve," we shall find that, similar in effect as the two pieces are, the constant tendency of the older poet is to describe from the outside inwards, while the modern poet is as constantly seeking to account for the outside of his characters by subjective appreciation of their mental condition. In the same way,

Spenser, in the first book of the "Faerie Queene," having to describe the struggle of the Red Cross Knight with Despair, does so by first personifying that Despair, and then by describing minutely his habitation, garb, and, in fine, all his external conditions:

That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullen mind:

His griesly locks, long growen and unbound,
Disordered hong about his shoulders round,
And hid his face, through which he rolled his eyne,
Look't deadly dull, and stared as astound;
His raw bone cheeks through penurie and pine,
Were shrunk into his jaws as he did never dine.

Now contrast this with Tennyson's description in "The Two Voices" of this same despair. We have no longer a sullen, miserable man— -"his garments nought but many ragged clouts"-the conflict is no longer to be waged with the arm of flesh; the enemy is no longer, so to speak, objective to outside of ourselves; but we have within us doubts, hesitations, fears, mistrusts-all subjective, all dependent on our own minds, all referred to by Tennyson in the opening of his poem:

A still, small voice said unto me,
Thou art so full of misery:
Surely 'twere better not to be.

Further pursuit of these analogies would lead me too far; but continuing to illustrate the different tone of modern as compared with ancient thought, I may recall to your minds the medieval conception of Satan as wrought out by Dante in the "Inferno," and I may compare it with the same conception as set forth by Goethe in "Faust." Both are perfect in their way; but the difference is radical