artistic perfection, is the legitimate heir of Keats; though Keats was the better Pagan; there was in him more of the first fine careless rapture. Shelley is of too rare and ethereal stuff to be compared with aught that lies below the skies. Byron is insincere and cynical. Wordsworth was lacking in passion and utterly devoid of humor, two qualifications of the first importance, which Tennyson possessed in a marked degree.

"Here in the twilights Tennyson wrought but by suggestion; may we not rejoice that that form of Beauty which glimmered like a star before his seeking eyes has now yielded to him the rapture of fulfilment?"

A paper from the pen of Miss Stockton, read by Miss Egner, followed, and a reading of 'Sir Galahad' by Miss Boyer. Miss Marie Kunkel, an accomplished vocalist, rendered a number of Mr. Leefson's songs to his accompaniment, and the evening closed with the singing of Tennysonian songs by the highly trained Ziska Quartette.

The First Study Meeting was held November 23, at which the chief feature was the discussion on the question, stated by Mr. Harrison S. Morris, "Are the Poets of the Pre-Raphaelite School indebted more to Keats than to Browning?" Dr. Woods, Miss Agnes Repplier, Professor Brooks, and others took part.

F. Sulzberger.

The Boston Browning Society held its fifty-sixth regular meeting at the Brunswick, Dec. 27, 1892, President F. B. Hornbrooke in the chair. The subject under discussion was Browning's Expressions of General Poetic Principles. After a reading from 'The Two Poets of Croisic,' by Miss Emily J. Ladd, Prof. Daniel Dorchester, Jr., read his paper on The Nature of Poetic Expression' (which will be given in full in POET-LORE for February). Mrs. Celia P. Woolley, Mrs. C. G. Ames, and Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton followed, all giving extemporaneous addresses bearing upon different phases of the general subject. Mrs. Woolley discussed 'The Poet's Personal Relation to his Poetry;' Mrs. Ames considered the core of truth, which, after some questioning, she found in Browning's dictum in 'The Two Poets of Croisic' that between "bards none gainsay as good," "there's a simple test Would serve, when people take on them to weigh The worth of poets," to ask "Which one led a happy life." Mrs. Moulton dissented from this at first, but, in giving many personal reminiscences of Browning's cheery humor, finally seemed to show to lovers of Browning, at least, that his poetry reflects the sunniest genius.

HE day is fast arriving when attention will be paid to the treasures of our older English poetry as such. It is natural enough that the study of the language in its philological aspects should be precedent to an appreciation of the literary side of the subject. This has, in fact, been the case. But as special students of English have been long familiarizing themselves with the linguistic problems in connection with Old English work, the ground has been prepared for those whose chief interest is in the humanities and who would use the acquired land as a field for the cultivation of the flowers of song. Signs are not lacking that what has been regarded as the private preserves of specialists will soon be the legitimate property of all lovers of literature. It is significant that an attempt to offer a literary translation of Beowulf,' our first great English epic, by an American scholar, Professor Hall of William and Mary College, is to be followed hard on by another from English hands, that of Professor Earle. Dr. Gummere's recent admirable work on Germanic Origins,' with its copious and spirited renderings from Beowulf' and other Old English poems, is, again, a book pointing the same way.

It is high time, then, to approach the hoary remains of English song, not so much in the spirit of comparative philology as in that of æsthetic appreciation. In this mood I write of what is in the opinion of most scholars the oldest English lyric which has been transmitted to us as flotsam from the wreck of the centuries. A foreword as to nomenclature. I use the term Old English as synonymous with Anglo-Saxon and as preferable thereto; it is the designation applied by progressive students to all our literary remains in England from the earliest monuments extant to about the middle of the twelfth century; thence to the year 1500, say, we may speak of Middle English; the remaining literature being denominated, of course, Modern English. Perhaps the strongest argument for thus naming our earlier literature is the emphasis it puts on the fact that we are dealing with but one tongue, seen in its varying stages of growth. An idea of the vital connection between 'Beowulf' and Browning is thus inculcated; whereas, if we say Anglo-Saxon, a feeling of something foreign in kind as well as distant in time is begotten. It is this oneness, this organic relation of the English language and literature through all stadia of its development which is now being accented by scholars, and hence those terms are best which are in conformity with that conception.

In spite of this assertion that our older poetry should be regarded as of a piece with what is more modern, it must be confessed frankly that at the first approach to it the student is likely to be repelled, or, at any rate, given pause. On the threshold he is met with a rude setting aside of verse canons and conventions of to-day, while he is bidden to breathe an atmosphere which substitutes a sharp and bracing keenness for the soft languors and southland allurements to which he may have been more accustomed. This poetry, forsooth! This is barbaric, inchoate, an outrage on the æsthetic, and unworthy even of the nether slopes of Parnassus. Somewhat so runs his thought. But persisting in the will to get at one with this strange product, the same student in due time begins to feel the tonic of the air; to habituate himself to the rough, bold grandeur of the scenery; to enjoy the natural cadences of the wind that harps in his ear. In other words, what seemed irregularity of

rhythm is seen to be a looser-moving but law-abiding metre ; harshnesses of word-use reveal their fitness and vigor; and a deep, rich music, a fuller-mouthed tone-color is heard, such as modern words and melodies are more miserly in offering; while uncouth inversions and sentence-gyrations resolve themselves into the fit and felicitous way wherethrough those gleemen of long ago vented the song and sentiment that was in them. And so there comes a real delight in the virile strength and grave sub-tones of music germane to Old English verse.

As is now pretty well understood, alliteration, employed with regularity and artistic consciousness, is to Old English poetry what rhyme is to modern, the latter being unknown. In offering a translation, then, of such verse, its alliterative character, as well as its rhythmic character, should be reproduced when possible. As to the law of the use of alliteration, it is enough to say here that every normal Old English line has four accents, divided by a cæsura, and that three of these the first, second, and third- take the alliteration on the rhythmically accented word. Add to this that the lilt or measure is prevailingly trochaic with such intermixture of dactyls as to give a freer and less monotonous effect, and an intelligent notion of the mechanics of Old English poetry may be had. Thus it will be seen that the oldest verse-type in English is opposed in its movement to what may be called the modern verse-type, par excellence; namely, the iambic pentameter as seen in blank verse. This fact suggests psychologic causes and offers a fascinating line of inquiry. How different the swing of the tripping trochees or leaping dactyls from the stately march of the line of Marlowe or Shakespeare! I subjoin a single Old English line with the stresses marked, by way of illustration:

"Hále hilde-deor Hróthgar grêtan."
("The hale hero, Hrothgar to greet.")

Two other characteristics of Old English verse remain to be mentioned, the metaphor, and parallelism. The metaphor is to our primary poetry what the simile is to its later development; it is a stylistic feature permeating all Old English writing, and it imparts an effect of vividness and force that give the literary product a dis

tinct complexion of its own. Readers of the Elizabethan dramatists are aware what a leading rôle is there played by the metaphoror kenning, as it is known in Old Norse poetry-when compared with its modern use. But with Shakespeare and his contemporaries the simile (which is really the metaphor expanded) is also made much of, sharing the rhetorical honors with its older fellow-figure. But in the Old English days, the simile was practically undeveloped; it was for a later and more self-conscious age to cultivate it. Thus, in the epic of Beowulf,' a composition of about 3,200 lines, there is but one simile in the modern expanded sense, while metaphors star every page. The gain in strength by this close-packed, terse figuration is immense.

Again, Old English shares with Hebrew poetry the characteristic of parallelism or repetition of the thought in slightly altered phrasing. The Hebrew Scriptures offer hundreds of familiar and well-loved illustrations: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Similar constructions continually meet the student of Old English verse, or indeed of Germanic verse in general, whether English, Low or High German, or Scandinavian. At bottom this so-called parallelism is, in all probability, the creature of the emotional impulse which by the law of its being demands a wave-like repetend of the thought expressed by clauses of parallel formation. The impulse, too, being emotional, is also rhythmical, and here is another reason for repetition. In Old English, however, what was in its genesis impulsive and of the emotions, became a formal mark of verse, and a most effective rhetorical device, when skilfully managed.

With these brief comments now upon some of the most obvious phenomena of Old English poetry on its subjective and objective sides, let us come at our oldest English lyric.

An exact date cannot be given to the poem variously known as 'Deor's Lament,' 'The Minstrel's Consolation,' or 'Deor the Scald's Complaint,' according to the names prefixed to it by English or German scholars; but it is safe to say that nothing of lyric song that has survived the centuries antedates it, and that its subject-matter points plainly to a time before the