be taken up. It is not exhausted there, but reappears in a modified form, under vituperative style-a later group, in which are included the Ludicrous and Humour.

I am fully conscious of the intense repugnance to be encountered in referring so much of the charm of literary works to the pleasure of malevolence. However readily this pleasure may be admitted as one of the incidents of human corruption, there is a tendency to deny its existence when it is expressed in unfamiliar phraseology. Nevertheless, I have done my utmost to deal fairly with the facts as I find them. In order to develop the literary bearings of Strength, the quality is set forth as having three forms-Maleficent, Beneficent, and Neutral, every one of which admits of copious exemplification.

2. This exhausts the first comprehensive Emotional Quality. The second, FEELING, needs and admits a still greater expansion. Its numerous varieties-Love (Erotic and Parental), Friendship, Patriotism, Compassion in general, Religion, Personified Feeling, Sorrow or Pathos-have to be surveyed and exemplified in full detail.

3. Next comes the group of Qualities centering in the LUDICROUS. To be complete, they are extended in sweep so as to comprise VITUPERATION, RIDICULE and HUMOUR. This is the second reference to the Malevolent side of our nature, and involves a certain amount of speculative controversy, as well as practical interest.

4. WIT is sufficiently distinctive to need a separate handling; while, owing to the extent and intimacy of its concurrence with the preceding group of qualities,

its illustration serves to provide additional examples of these.

5. MELODY is a potent factor in prose, and still more in poetry. Some of its laws are remarkably simple, and easy in their application: such as the proper succession of the letters in words, and of words in clauses, having reference to ease of pronunciation and variety of sound. The Harmony of Sound and Sense is less definite, although to some extent governed by rules, and amenable to the cultivated ear. Most difficult of all is the theory of Metres. When we pass beyond their analysis into technical constituents, and enquire into the laws of their adaptation and effect, we enter on a region where scientific principles soon come to a standstill. The topic needs a special monograph, with profuse citations from all the great exemplars of the metrical art.

6. The enumeration now given covers the largest portion of the field of poetic art, or emotional literature, and carries with it nearly every rhetorical prescription of special value. Yet there still remains a region of effects not fully accounted for. Whatever is comprised in the versatile word BEAUTY has been overtaken, partly under Aids to Qualities, and partly under Feeling. But it deserves to be noted that the SENSES, by themselves, yield a number of ideal constructions, highly stimulating, although inferior in that respect to the influence of the chief emotions. Not often is this class of effects sought in purity; yet they may become the prominent members of combinations with the others. The Hilarious and the Healthy, as manifestations of human feeling, have a character and a law to themselves, and have been represented in the poetry of all ages. Again, UTILITY can hardly be divorced

from the special emotions, but, as a collective statement of all that is valuable in the eyes of mankind, it stands to a certain degree remote from any one interest, and is not governed by the special peculiarities of the primary modes of feeling. More peculiar still is the effect called IMITATION, which readily lends itself to furthering the special qualities, but has yet an independent charm, which can be evoked with little or no reference to anything else. The most extensive literary developments of Imitative art occur in the realistic variety of Prose Fiction, and are too bulky to be produced even in the smallest specimens that would be of service. All that can be attempted is a bare analysis of the quality, with a very general reference to examples.

I do not here enter on a defence of the utility of Rhetoric in general, though many persons are still disposed to question it. Since the art first took form in Greece, it has seldom been neglected by writers aiming at superior excellence of style. In order to vanquish the difficulties of the highest composition, it is necessary to attack them on every side. Milton refers, with evident familiarity and approbation, to six of the remaining works of Greek Rhetoric. When Shelley, in describing his poetical education, names as one of his studies the metaphysical' writers, we may presume that he would take along with these, if not include under them, the modern expounders of Rhetorical theory and practice.

The direct bearing of the Rhetorical art is, of course, not Invention, but Correctness; in other words, polish, elegance, or refinement. It deals with curable

defects and faults, and with such merits as can be secured by method. It aids, without superseding, the intuitive perception of what is excellent in a literary performance.

There is not wanting, however, a possibility of rendering assistance to invention proper; somewhat similar to the indirect contribution of Logic to the Art of Discovery. All right criticism, in helping to reject the bad, urges to renewed search for the good. Nor is this all. By taking a broad and systematic view of the possibilities of style, Rhetoric prevents the available means of effect from being overlooked, and draws attention to still unoccupied corners in the literary field.

Next to the minute and methodical treatment of the Emotional Qualities, the chief peculiarity of the present work is the line-by-line method of examining passages with a view to assigning merits and defects. This, however, is not a new thing in literary criticism. It is occasionally practised by all rhetorical teachers; being found in Aristotle and in Longinus. Ben Jonson, in his celebrated eulogy of Shakespeare, wishes he had "blotted a thousand" lines. How thankful should we be if he had quoted a number of these! It was Samuel Johnson's sturdy overhauling of English Writers, in the Lives of the Poets, that first made the world familiar with the lessons of minute criticism. In his Dryden and Pope, there is a line-by-line commentary of many pages. Similar criticisms occur under Denham, Waller, Addison, Shenstone, Young and Gray. The controversy between Coleridge and Wordsworth, on the diction of poetry, led incidentally to many valuable applications of the line-by-line and word-by-word analysis. Leigh Hunt, in his admirable critical selec

tions, Wit and Humour and Imagination and Fancy, abounds in the same usage. Pattison's Notes on Pope are models of instructive criticism. All our great critics provide occasional snatches of this minute style.

Still, the

For pupils, the method would seem indispensable, in order both to arrest attention and to provide an exercise for judgment. Of course a work of art is a whole, and one chief test of any particular passage is its fitness relative to the general design. merits of an entire composition are the cumulated merits of the successive lines and sentences. A whole cannot be criticised without reference to its component parts.

It is still an open question, how far criticism can be made a matter of science, and how far it must continue to depend on unreasoning instinct. That there will always be an inexplicable residuum of literary effects does not invalidate the worth of whatever amount of explanation is attained or attainable. This will have to be judged on its own account, and with reference to the actual help that it affords to the literary student.

It is inevitable that, in a work containing some hundreds of critical decisions on the merits of the greatest authors that the world has seen, many of these decisions will be charged with blundering, presumption, and temerity. There is but one reply to the charge. The success of such an undertaking does not depend upon its immaculate literary opinions; its sole concern is with the teacher's greatest difficulty, to bring into play the judgment of his pupils. Many of Johnson's deliverances, on the merits of Dryden, Pope, and the rest, were hasty, insufficient and prejudiced; but they are scarcely less useful on that account, for stimu