LYRIC POETRY is commonly understood to be that kind of poetry which is composed in order to musical recitation, but the epithet has been transferred to all kinds of verse partaking in any degree of the same nature as that to which it was at first applied. Thus we hear of lyrical ballads, the greater part of which might with as great propriety be called epical, and of lyric measures in Horace, where there is no ground to suppose that they were sung, and no fitness for the purpose of musical rehearsal. In a former article [Erie POETRY] we have endeavoured to point out a distinction between epic and lyric poetry more satisfactory than common language allows ; but there is surely no impropriety in giving a decided meaning to words which have usually been understood in a confused sense, particularly when, as in the present case, the same senses have been applied to each, so as not only to confuse, but to confound them. Pursuing then the course which we have pointed out, lyric poetry must be defined as that class of poetry which has reference to and is engaged in delineating the com poser's own thoughts and feelings, in distinction from epic poetry, which details external circumstances and events.
The history of lyrical poetry is perhaps subject to greater difficulties than any other species of composition. In that nation where it attained to its most perfect growth, it is precisely that class of its literature which is to us, except in regard to one author, a total blank. Pinder is nearly all that remains to us of the whole lyric poetry of Greece, and great as his reputation has deservedly been, we have no reason to consider him as paramount to his class, and very good reason for denying to him what has commonly been considered his right, that of presenting us with the purest type and example of a lyric poet. And scarcely any trace remains of that link between epic and lyric poetry which was the origin of Greek tragedy. This was perhaps the moat national form of lyric poetry among the Greeks, the others having been for the moat part rather the productions of individual imaginations, which gained popularity in proportion as they found sympathy, much in the way in which modern poetry makes its way into notice.
Ulrici, in his very elaborate work on the history of Greek poetry, gives two as the principal sources from which lyric poetry was derived —religious worship, and tho individual feelings of the people ; the first of which elements is traceable in one of the two kinds of epic, poetry, which we named hieratic, while the second is that in which consists the difference between epic and lyric poetry. He proceeds to divide Greek lyric into the Doric, .Folic, and Ionic kinds : which correspond nearly, the first to what is to be found In choruses ; the second to love-songs, such as Sappho's, and drinking-songs, or Beebe ; and the third to the elegy, epigram, and satire.
It has been remarked that both in epic and in lyric poetry the Romans possessed nothing like a school of poets, while in Greece there was a regular progression from epic to lyric schools, each of which supplied many individuals grouped round a principal figure in each class. Virgil and Lucan are the types of Roman epic poetry, and Horace stands almost alone as a lyric poet. But to attempt to give a history of Homan lyric would be little else than to enumerate every roan who wrote verses from Ennius downwards, for almost every one of them attempted that as well as all other kinds of poetry. The
whole of Latin poetry was in fact on a Greek model, even the most original of the Latin poets having borrowed his metres, though he might make everything else his own.
It might perhaps startle any one to be told that satire is a branch of lyric poetry, and that the most important branch of Roman lyric is satire. But a careful review of the definition with which we started cannot fail to explain this. Satire is essentially lyrical or subjective in its nature, and the Roman satire more so than the Greek, inasmuch as it partakes far' less of the nature of lampoon or ludicrous descrip tion, and deals more with general than with individual traits of character. In their satire it is that we must look for information ou Roman modes of thought and feeling. It was, or at least appears to Us to have been, the only outlet which the Imperial tyranny gave to the free and noble spirit of Rome in her best days, and it is quite astonishing how far this liberty was employed. What it was in earlier days we cannot tell, except as far as Horace's description of Lucilius avails. The words may mean almost anything, but we should be inclined to suppose that it partook much more of the nature of lampoon than in later times. To the satire we may add its powerful auxiliary the epigram, the same iu name but very different in nature from its Greek fellow, which ought rather to be called epigraph, or even epitaph.
The Horatian lyrics merged in the later ages of the empire into a species of poetry much neglected, we mean the rhyming verses of the monks, which often contain Hebrew sublimity expressed in most sonorous verses. They are curious as affording the best specimen of the transition from scansion to accent, that is, from the antique to the modern rule of versification.
English lyrical poetry is late iu Its full development, for to call our ballads lyrical is a misnomer, seeing that the prose and poetical romances often give exactly the same story in another shape. We need go nu further than the ballad Mort d'Arthur," so well known to readers of Percy's Reliques.' At the same time, though the form of these ballads is mostly narrative or epical, there is often a strong admixture of lyrical feeling, as in The Jew's Daughter," Sir Cauline, and others. Scarcely any poems occur before the time of Milton deserving the title of lyrical, except perhaps some of Giles and Phineas Fletcher's works and Shakspere's sonnets. In Lycidas," Il Pense rose, and L'Allegro,' we see almost the first, and perhaps the most beautiful examples our language eau boast. The prevalence of French taste until the revival of poetry at the close of the last century gave so artificial a character to the works of Dryden, Pope, and their successors, that we can hardly give the title of lyrical to any of them except the satires and a few fine odes. In our own day Wordsworth and Coleridge are too well known to require that we should poiut out how exclusively lyrical is the tendency of their works. Shelley has com bined more of what is called sensuous beauty with the rest of the qualities requisite to make up a lyrical poet ; and, among living poets, Tennyson may perhaps he mentioned as the greatest of lyrical poets.
(Ulrici's Oeschichte der Hellenischen Dichticunst ; Dunlop's Hist. of Roman Literature.)