romantic and dramatic pages of "interspersed lyric" and sub-
merged melody, and make allowance for the fact that of all
the categories, the lyrical is the most lawless and has least
hesitation about breaking bounds. These are among the
difficulties that beset the record, driving the chronicler at
length to ask what the test is to be if it is to be widened to
meet all these illegal divagations? The test is, however, left
where originally it was. "Lyrical," it may be said, implies
a form of musical utterance in words governed by overmastering
emotion and set free by a powerfully concordant rhythm. So
soon as narrator or playwright, carried out of the given
medium by personal feeling, begins to dilate individually on
the theme, that moment he or she as surely tends to grow
lyrical.

This need not interfere with our conviction that the art has
its separate provenance and works towards a specific ideal of
perfection in form. After watching its course in the mazes
of a given language and a literature like the English, we are
only strengthened in our belief in its heaven-sent grace. With
Shelley, we accept the transcendent idea of its powers, as moving
toward the creative embodiment of a beauty, higher than
nature herself, that adds to the ideal wealth of mankind. The
lyric in this sense looks for a separate expression that is of a
part with the symmetry of a crystal or an exquisitely formed
flower. The art by which it survives is based on structural laws
that govern the rhythms of nature echoed in our own voices,
and on the æsthetic correspondence between the waves of
sound and the crescent and decrescent movements of our
musical thought.

This again brings us back to Aristotle's idea that Poetry
is an imitation or a copy of things and forms existing in nature.
In another view than his (and it is worth note that Aristotle
takes no separate cognisance of lyric in his categories), we
shall observe how often the song or lyric appears to seek
of itself to become the conductor of that greater emotion
which passes the sensual life. Thereby it justifies its claim
to be termed creative, and breaks into the circle of supreme

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