Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/59

 that Greek contrasts, social and political, within the narrowest local limits, may have affected Athenian tragedy and limited its spheres of local propriety. The local differences of feudalism and the medieval towns were far indeed from producing any such limitations in the mysteries and miracle-plays. But why? Because a world-creed had in the mean time supplied Europe with a vision of the world's past and future before which all local and temporal distinctions appeared to vanish. But in the little commonwealths of early Greece, local differences formed the very life-blood of local character and patriotism; and it was not until the days of Isokrates and Alexander that the Greek ceased to be a citizen in order to become a cultured cosmopolitan.

§ 12. But the drama is far from being the only branch of literature from which literary relativity may be illustrated. The lyric—to use a vague but necessary generalisation—will supply the student of comparative literature with many evidences of its dependence on social and individual evolution. Mr. Palgrave (in the preface to his Golden Treasury of English Lyrics) has attempted to define the meaning of "lyric," but, as he himself admits, with no very remarkable success. Lyrical, he holds, "essentially implies that each poem shall turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation;" "narrative, descriptive, and didactic poems have been excluded;" so, too, "humorous poetry, except where a truly poetical tone pervades the whole;" and "blank verse, the ten-syllable couplet, with all pieces markedly dramatic, have been rejected as alien from what is commonly understood by song, and rarely conforming to lyrical conditions in treatment." We must be struck by the variety of elements on which this definition depends—elements of spirit, such as thoughts and feelings, and elements of form,