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rime was occasional and ornamental. In modern English verse the relative proportion of end rime and beginning rime or alliteration is reversed, end rime being usual, regular, characteristic; while alliteration, or beginning rime, is occasional and ornamental.

Assonance is the recurrence of similar vowel sounds without reference to the accompanying consonants; as in these lines from Lowell:

The great shorn sun as you see it now
Across eight miles of undulent gold.

Sometimes, but rarely in English verse, assonance is used at the end of the line, instead of true rime. A great deal of the most delicate art in verse making is found in the use of assonance and alliteration.

Verse may be classified according to the nature of the thought it expresses, and the manner in which it treats that thought, into Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic. Epic verse is that which tells a story. This defini- Epic Verse. tion is too simple to be complete, but it gives the essential quality which has given its name to this type of poetry. We generally associate the ideas

of seriousness of manner and heroic action with the Epic; and the great poems of this class have these qualities. But considered as the name of a class, it seems best to include under the Epic all continued narrative and descriptive poems, such as Longfellow's "Hiawatha" and "Tales of a Wayside Inn,” and Lowell's "Sir Launfal." The first American poem of any pretension was in this form, Joel Barlow's

"Columbiad." It had, however, more pretension than performance, and is not worthy to be mentioned with the great Epics of English Literature. In fact, American Literature has not yet produced a great Epic worthy to be put in the same class with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton. It has produced, however, some very beautiful narrative poems, such as those already mentioned.

An important form of the Epic, though one slightly represented in American Literature, is that called the The Pastoral. Pastoral. It deals with rural scenes and characters,

Lyric Verse.

The Ode.

especially, as the name indicates, with shepherds and shepherdesses. The aim of this type of poetry is simplicity. The shepherds, however, in most examples of the English pastoral, are very unlike the actual men and women who care for sheep and cattle; and such verse seems to have a strong tendency to unreality.

Lyric verse is that originally adapted to be sung to the accompaniment of the Lyre. That is the origin of the name. The term is now used to include all short poems in which the personal and emotional elements are predominant. There is an endless variety of Lyrics of love, of war, of religion, and of conviviality. The Sonnet is a Lyric form which has been described. The most elaborate and artificial form of the Lyric is the Ode; seldom designed to be sung, and yet belonging to this class. The most famous example of this form in American Literature is Lowell's "Commemoration Ode." It is difficult to find or to frame a satisfactory definition

of the Ode; but we will gratefully accept that which Mr. Edmund Gosse has published: "a strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified theme." The Ballad is the form of the The Ballad. Lyric which most closely resembles the Epic; it being a short narrative poem, originally intended to be sung. Indeed, the Ballad is by some writers classed with the Epic, and may well be considered an intermediate form, having the narrative quality and often the simplicity of the Epic, while it is usually rapid in movement, brief and emotional in its appeal, qualities which belong to the Lyric. Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus" and Whittier's "Barbara Frietchie" are among the best-known American Ballads.

Another form, which may be considered as intermediate between the Epic and Lyric, is the Elegy. The Elegy. In length, it tends toward the proportions of the reflective Epic; but usually stops short of true Epic dimensions. In thought it is intensely lyrical, usually expressing serious reflections in view of sorrow or death. It is a marked characteristic of the poetry of the latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier part of the nineteenth centuries, and has one notable representative in our Literature, in Bryant's "Thanatopsis."

Verse.

Dramatic verse is that in which character, events, Dramatic and ideas are put before us by means of conversation and action, without narration, description, or exposition. In most of its greatest examples it is designed for representation on the stage. But the best Ameri

Prose Form.

Diction.

can Dramatic poems have not been so represented. George H. Boker's "Francesca da Rimini" is perhaps the only example of a successful acting Dramatic poem in American Literature.1

Prose Form seems a simpler matter than that of verse; but on account of that very apparent simplicity demands especial care for the creation or the appreciation of its artistic effects. To a certain extent the means by which the beautiful effects of verse are produced force themselves upon the attention; whereas, in prose, we often enjoy the result of the most laborious painstaking with no consciousness that there has been any effort put forth. All school books on rhetoric deal with the principles of prose writing more or less fully, and on this account it might seem that we need not pay much attention to that matter here. Still a brief discussion of some of the more essential principles will not be out of place.

After the obvious and elementary questions of grammar and syntax have been settled, the first point of importance to be considered is Diction. By this we mean the author's selection and use of words. Our modern dictionaries contain upwards of two hundred thousand words. Shakespeare, however, used only about fifteen thousand; and it is safe to assume that not many authors have a much larger vocabulary. Evidently there is room for great

1 For the fuller study of verse forms which the teacher may desire, the best available manuals with which I am acquainted are “A Handbook of Poetics," by F. B. Gummere, and " A Primer of English Verse," by Hiram Corson. "Ballades and Rondeaus," edited by Gleeson White, contains a good account of the French forms.

Norman.

differences in the selection of words. An author's Diction may be prevailingly Saxon or Norman; Saxon or or, to go back closer to the sources, Germanic or Latin. English is to a great extent a composite of these two elements, and the degree to which one or the other predominates in a writer will have a very important effect upon his style. There is a terse strength gained by a preference for the Saxon words, which, however, is sometimes gained at the expense of precision and elegance. Washington Irving is a good example of the author who wisely adapts his Diction to his subject, the proportion of Norman to Saxon words being far larger in an essay describing the tomb of a crusader, for example, than in the description of an English barn-yard in the same volume. Another point of importance in Diction is the proportion of short and long words; which, however, is likely to correspond closely to the proportion of Saxon and Norman. Some authors are much Figurative more literal in their style than others. Words may be used in an endless variety of figures of speech. I will not repeat the definitions of the usual Tropes and Figures which are given in the works on rhetoric; but call attention to the importance, as a point of style, of the use of words in Figurative senses. There is a recognized distinction between the words suitable for use in prose and those which may properly be employed in poetry. Some critics and some Poetic. poets have protested against the acknowledgment of this distinction, and have shown that the most poetic words may sometimes be employed in prose, and the

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or Literal.

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