theatre fell into disrepute, to give their ma-
terial a narrative form. But we must also
take into account the dominant mood or
quality of certain poetic minds. Many pas-
sages in narrative and dramatic verse, for
instance, while fulfilling their primary func-
tion of telling a story or throwing characters
into action, are colored by what we have
called the lyric quality, by that passionate,
personal feeling whose natural mode of ex-
pression is in song. In Marlowe Tambur-
laine, for instance, or Victor Hugo Hernani,
there are superb pieces of lyric declamation,
in which we feel that Marlowe and Hugo
themselves -- not the imaginary Tambur-
laine and Hernani -- are chanting the desires
of their own hearts. Arnold "Sohrab and
Rustum", after finishing its tragic story of the
son slain by the unwitting father, closes with
a lyric description of the majestic Oxus stream
flowing on to the Aral sea. Objective as it all
seems, this close is intensely personal, per-
meated with the same tender stoicism which
colors Arnold "Dover Beach" and "A Sum-
mer Night". The device of using a Nature
picture at the end of a narrative, to heighten,
by harmony or contrast, the mood induced by

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