much in Chaucer's style, and equal to any picture that Chaucer hath. His "Lovers of Godrun is one of the best of the twenty-four of these tales of the Indo-European nations:

"So long he rode, he drew anigh
A mill upon the river's brim,
That seemed a goodly place to him,
For o'er the oily, smooth millhead
There hung the apples growing red,
And many an ancient apple-tree
Within the orchard could he see;

While the smooth mill-walls, white and black,
Shook in the great wheel's measur'd clack
And grumble of the gear within;

While o'er the roof that dull'd the din
The doves sat crooning half the day,

And round the half-cut stack of hay
The sparrows fluttered twittering."

Morris has more than Chaucer's copiousness in giving us lengthened pictures of scenery, for Chaucer's are very short; far more than Chaucer's melody, for nobody has been able to tell what was the great old writer's law of rhythm-it is doubtful if our poetry at that time had any; and the modern is his equal in painting human character; and in narrative.

With a quotation let us indulge ourselves from a recent Californian poet, Joaquin Miller, "Songs of the Sierras," 1871:

"The trees shook hands high overhead,
And bowed and intertwined across
The narrow way; while leaves and moss
And luscious fruit, gold-hued and red,
Through the cool canopy of green

Let not one sunshaft shoot between."

Let your author inflict on you these lines, that close with front rhyme:

Mid the wan billows of a ghastly sea-
Billows that coil like snakes of giant size-
And 'neath the pallors of a corpse-like moon,
Wrestles the bark that bears my destiny.

When reach I safety's shore and sunbreak's sheen?
I not despair! My Christ the tempest rides,
And glints of hope, with silver, crest the tides;
And solitude and storm my teachers be,

And all the moan and mystery of the sea.

Or Algernon Charles Swinburne sings to us of"The lisp of leaves, and the ripple of rain.”

CLXXXIV. Poetic Forms should come in here. Of themselves they deserve a lecture. P. L., vii., 99. Many fetters are laid on the poet, which he must wear so lightly and gracefully that they shall become ornaments; therefore it is but fair that he should enjoy certain liberties or licenses granted to him and not to the prose writers. To use "adown the vale," for "down the valley," would justly be deemed a piece of feeble affectation in prose; but is felt to be very suitable in a poet, and may help him to round off his poetic line. It is well, too, to possess turns of diction that say to us, as it were, "Come, now, let us abandon ourselves to poetic susceptibilities." These turns will serve a purpose similar to the sound of Sabbath-bells awakening us on a Sunday morning. A large number of these forms have already been registered under the figures above named, such as "adown" just mentioned; the very numerous archaisms of Spenser-not archaisms in his day, but to us beautiful bits of moss besprent with dew. But there are others not falling under any of these heads. There are many of the Scottish Doric words: unwise ye, if you are unacquainted with them; a rich variety of words, redolent of pastoral life; tufted with tufts of the beautiful, as is the hawthorn with bunches of bloom, or the willow with its early April catkins: such as "gloaming,"

"bonnie," "kye," "snell," "the slogan,'

"glen," "coronach," "eerie," "blithe." Study a glossary to Burns. Yet Marsh gives a warning that is wise:

"The power of substituting a hundred epithets for the proper name of the object to which they are applied, when their origin is forgotten, is a hinderance rather than a help; and even in poetical diction such words are little better than tinsel. To exemplify: To those who know that falchion is derived from the Latin falx, a sickle or scythe, the word suggests an image which sword does not excite, and therefore the picturesqueness of the poetic phrase in which it occurs. But to those who are ignorant of the etymology, it is simply what may be called a sensation-synonym for sword. It is recommended only by metrical adaptation, or simply by its unfamiliarity; it adds absolutely nothing to the expressiveness of the diction which employs it, and in most cases is, both to writer and reader, simply fustian."

In short, if your thought or description be not poetic when couched in the plainest and commonest language, you have reason sometimes to suspect that no soul of poesy is in it.

Yet, spite this caution, many a touch of beauty can poetic forms bestow, as in Cowper, "libbard" for "leopard:"

"The lion, and the libbard, and the bear
Graze with the fearless flocks."

So there are such words as "nathless," "ammiral," "Rhene," "Danaw," "erst," "cressets," " parle," "mage" (singular of magi), "eld." Or as in P. L., xii., 600. Or condescend to read from your author:

The queen

of night seems lost from heaven;

But though her silvery cirque may wane,

Returns the hour, spite rain and rack,

When, like cleans'd soul from death come back,
Her crescent fills again.

It must, however, be once again repeated that poetic

forms are ofttimes a delusion and a snare, tending to foster a brood of "literary-poets," far inferior to the pocts of simple strength and direct inspiration. To a considerable extent, Tennyson is a "literary-poet;" he is too fine-spun; his diction is too artistic; the bow he twangs has been carved and made so elegant that, like the bow in the fable, it has lost some of the invaluable rude strength which a true practical Robin Hood would rejoice in, if there were a great fight for home and fatherland. Surely, to say "rich enow" for "rich enough,' or to call a merchant ship "a dromond," is a style of talk never found on the lips of actual men. Let us despise tinsel, even when Tennyson patronizes such a thing.

We here press on you two great balancing truthsboth emphatic. If you despise either, your style will never be first class, and your judgment of writers will be often erroneous. First, the thought is always greater than the form. Ideas are more than the arrangement of ideas. Not the clothes are the chief thing, but the man, the truth. Despise whatever is frippery, and all the dandyism of set efforts to get at the ornamental. To seize a young oak, and try to toss its boughs and its leaves into pretty or noble shapes, by shaking it, is paltry work; but the princely growth is a grand thing to look at, when the free winds of heaven swing the tree, as if with an inspiration from the sky. Let it mainly be the throbbing vitality of your idea that shall call up the figures that suit it. But, on the other hand, lay to heart what that profound thinker, Taine, has said: “The source of the arts is the sentiment of form." It is of almost supreme importance that a valuable fact or thought be stated skillfully and artistically, and in the most felicitous and impressive form. In this the French is unequaled. Our writers of English are often very clumsy and unartistic both in prose and poetry. Therefore, be so familiar with figures that they will come to you without effort.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIGURES OF RHETORIC.

PART EIGHTEENTH.

Sudden Transition.-Allusion.-Hint, or Suggestion.-Ascription of Determination.-Periphrasis.-Superfine English.-Interpretation.-Proverbs.-The Third Person. -Odd Rhyme.-Odd Prose.-Household Words.-Pretended Depreciation.-Rhetorical Use of the Past.-Rhetorical Use of the Future.-Ascription of Rationality.— Nicknames.-The Doric.-Impersonation.-The Materialistic. The Singular Number.-Double Nouns and Double Words.- Celerity.- Epithetic. - Passing over from the Literal to the Figurative.-Threat.-Repose.

CLXXXV. SUDDEN TRANSITION, of kin to antithesis, is a form of writing powerful in oratory, and often used in wit. We send you to a very diverting poem by a Scotch bard, Professor William Tennant, "Anster Fair" its name. He thus depicts his heroine, the far-famedMaggie Lauder, well known in Scottish music. The verse is the celebrated ottava-rima of Italy:

"Her face was as the summer cloud, whereon

The dawning sun delights to rest his rays;
Compared with it, old Sharon's vale, o'ergrown
With flaunting roses, had resigned its praise;
For why? Her face with heaven's own roses shone,
Mocking the morn, and witching men to gaze;

And he that gazed with cold, unsmitten soul,

That blockhead's heart were ice, thrice baked beneath the pole.