For the achievement of all pure lyric poetry such as the ode, the song, the elegy, the idyll, the sonnet, the stornello, it is evi dent that the imaginative force we have called relative vision will suffice. And if we consider the matter thoroughly, in many other forms of poetic art—forms which at first sight might seem to require absolute vision—we shall find nothing but relative vision at work.
Even in Dante, and even in Milton and Virgil, it might be difficult to trace the working of any other than relative vision. And as to the entire body of Asiatic poets, it might perhaps be found (even in view of the Indian drama) that relative vision suffices to do all their work. Indeed the temper which produces true drama is, it might almost be said, a growth of the Western mind. For, unless it be Semitic, as seen in the dramatic narra tives of the Bible, or Chinese, as seen in that remarkable prose story The Two Fair Cousins translated by Remusat, absolute vision seems to have but small place in the literatures of Asia. The wonderfulness of the world and the romantic possibilities of fate or circumstance, or chance—not the wonderfulness of the character to whom these possibilities befall—are ever present to the mind of the Asiatic poet. It was left for the poets of Europe to show that, given the interesting character, given the Achilles, the Odysseus, the Helen, the Priam, any adventure happening to such a character becomes interesting.
What then is this absolute vision, this true dramatic imagina tion which can hardly be found in Asia—which even in Europe cannot be found except in rare cases? Between relative and abso lute vision the difference seems to be this, that the former only enables the poet, even in its very highest exercise, to make his own individuality, or else humanity as represented by his own individuality, live in the imagined situation ; the latter enables him in its highest exercise to make special individual characters other than the poet's own in the imagined situation.
"That which exists in nature," says Hegel, "is a something purely individual and particular. Art, on the contrary, is essen tially destined to manifest the general." And no doubt this is
true as regards the plastic arts, and true also as regards literary art, save in the very highest reaches of pure drama and pure lyric, when it seems to become art no longer—when it seems to become the very voice of Nature herself. The cry of Priam when he puts to his lips the hand that slew his son is not merely the cry of a bereaved and aged parent ; it is the cry of the in dividual king of Troy, and expresses above everything else that most naïve, pathetic, and winsome character. Put the words into the mouth of the irascible and passionate Lear and they would be entirely out of keeping.
Lyric, Epic, and Dramatic Singers.—It may be said then that, while the poet of relative vision, even in its very highest exercise, can only, when depicting the external world, deal with the general, the poet of absolute vision can compete with Nature herself and deal with both general and particular. If this is really so, we may perhaps find a basis for a classification of poetry and of poets. That all poets must be singers has already been maintained. But singers seem to be divisible into three classes: first the pure lyrists, each of whom can with his one voice sing only one tune; secondly the epic poets, save Homer, the bulk of the narrative poets, and the quasi-dramatists, each of whom can with his one voice sing several tunes; and thirdly the true dramatists, who, having like the nightingale of Gongra many tongues, can sing all tunes.
It is to the first-named of these classes that most poets belong. With regard to the second class there are not of course many poets left for it ; the first absorbs so many. But, when we come to consider that among those who, with each his one voice, can sing many tunes are Pindar, Firdausi, Jami, Virgil, Dante, Milton', Spenser, Goethe, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Schiller, Vic tor Hugo, the second class is so various that no generalization save such a broad one as ours could embrace its members. And now we come to class three, and must pause. The third class is necessarily very small. In it can only be placed such names as Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Homer, and (hardly) Chaucer.