would be readable. Yet for the direct presentation, serious or humoristic, of character, mood and emotion, verse in the hands of a master will always remain an instrument of supreme power.

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There are certain other kinds of poetry, more or less akin to narrative, for which an interesting future may be predicted. The Victorians seem to have had a special predilection for the Dramatic Monologue, perhaps because they unconsciously felt their inability to cope with the problems of drama. Caliban upon Setebos and The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxed’s Church are notable successes; but several of Browning’s experiments should be a warning of the danger of lengthiness and over-elaboration in a form that allows of very little narrative interest or dramatic contrast. Great and sustained beauty of language can alone[Pg 60] justify a long poem of such a kind; and it is just in this respect that Browning was most deficient.

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Another attractive sub-species of narrative poetry is the Dramatic Dialogue or Interlude, which has lately been successfully revived by Mr. Sturge Moore and Mr. Abercrombie. The great master of this form, as also of the Monologue, is Theocritus, whose Syracusan Women, Kyniska, Thyrsis, and Simaitha will always remain as a challenging inspiration to succeeding ages. The great range of his material within the narrow limits of his surviving work, and his marvellous blend of naturalism and poetry, should be peculiarly suggestive to a generation like our own, with its eagerness to find new paths, or rediscover old ones, to poetic freedom.

It would be presumptuous in one who is not himself a philosopher to speak with assurance about philosophic poetry: yet I shall venture upon some[Pg 61] obvious reflections. Few would dispute that there has been only one specifically philosophical work which is also a great poem, the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. But those of us who love it best will, if we are candid, admit that it contains vast tracts of scientific and metaphysical discussion, which even fervid and eloquent genius has not wholly succeeded in clothing with the vesture of poetry. It is true that, for those few who have the courage and wisdom to read them, these sections should have a very high value as parts of a sublime imaginative vision of the universe; and they also contain many scattered episodes of divine poetic loveliness. But the claim of Lucretius to rank among the 

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