The form remains, the function never dies;

While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We men, who in our morn of youth defied

The elements, must vanish; be it so!

Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.

So, in his Miscellaneous Sonnets, the note is struck, as he sings of life and death and immortality. Thus, from first to last, this thoughtful poet of the English lakes is embodying his musings in lyric form, even his long reflective poem, "The Excursion," containing passages not a few of genuine emotive impulse. Critics of Wordsworth's verse have far too often erred in demanding that poetic feeling shall be always strongly and openly expressed in order to save the poetry from the charge of didacticism, the fact being that the feeling expressed under some degree of restraint, if, indeed, it be genuine, is often all the more potent thereby. Though Wordsworth was not a lyrist in the same sense in which Burns and Byron were lyrists, this is not to say that he had not in his soul the natural lyric ardor, and did not in his way embody it in verse. Read where we will, there is a deep undertone of healthy and inspiring sentiment, and always under the control of judgment. One of the chief reasons why Wordsworth has been the subject of high eulogium at the hands of impartial criticism, and why his fame is steadily growing with the cen

tury, is seen in the fact that he has dealt in his verse with the primary human instincts and aimed to minister to their needs. After all, the heart of man was his engaging theme, and it was on this emotive theme that he spent his best thought and gave it as he did to the world.

Thus, a living English poet of promise, William Watson, gratefully pays this tribute to him:

Enough that there is none since risen who sings
A song so gotten of the immediate soul,

So instant from the vital fount of things
Which is our source and goal;

And though at touch of later hands there float

More artful tunes than from his lyre he drew,

Ages may pass ere trills another note

So sweet, so great, so true.

E

CHAPTER VI

The Lyrics of Lord Byron

VEN Matthew Arnold would concede that the study of the character and writings of Lord Byron is an interesting one. Since the days when he was in the prime of his poetic power there has been a kind of fascination about him, always sufficient to charm and captivate the reader. Hence the large number of biographies of him, of criticisms, of treatises, and data respecting him, so that what we may term Byroniana would constitute a substantial library in itself. Moore and Macaulay, Goethe, Saint Beuve, and Taine, and Henley, and scores of others have spoken and written, and the theme is still a fresh one. Even those most alive to his defects and errors are not slow in calling attention to his varied gifts and to the permanent impress he has made on British and European letters. "The most celebrated Englishman of the nineteenth century," says Macaulay, while Carlyle, on the other hand, asserts "that no genuine productive thought was ever revealed by him to mankind."

Whatever difference of opinion may exist, however, as to Byron's personal character and general literary influence, it may be said, in confirmation of the special topic before us, that he was, first of all, a British lyrist, a genuine singer of the school of