Page:Stories as a mode of thinking.djvu/11

 Thinking on the subject of Witchcraft leads readily to thinking on the wider subject of Destiny, which Witches are supposed to reveal. In Shakespeare's play this has been treated with a mixture of Western and Greek ideas. But Destiny is even more prominent in the thinking of Oriental peoples; and Southey has worked up ideas of Hindoo religion into a brilliant picture.

Southey's Kehama is an Epic poem cast in the medium of Hindoo mythology, just as the Iliad is an Epic of Greek mythology, or the Paradise Lost an Epic of Scripture Story.—Many different kinds of literary interest unite in it.

1. Southey is remarkable for "poetic" power in the strictest sense of the term, that is, power of "creating," or maintaining realisability in the region of pure imagination. In this respect Milton and Southey form a class by themselves.
 * As illustrations take the conception of Mount Calasay (xix)—or the Palace of the Elements (vii. 10).

With this associate the more general "pictorial power."


 * Examples of word-painting are the Funeral (i)—the Glendoveer (vii. 3-8)—the Home Retreat (xiii)—the Festival of Jaga-Naut (xiv)—the Submerged City (xv. 10-xvi. 11)—The Regions beyond this World (xx-xxiii).

2. The Human Interest of the poem is the mutual devotion of Father and Daughter, becoming involved in a World-Struggle of Good and Evil, in which the intervention of Omnipotence is delayed to the last possible moment.

3. In Plot, Kehama is a master-piece (of the simpler species of plot): its form consists in the gradual drawing together of all the trains of interest to a single issue, the movement reversing with a surprise close to the end.

4. In the department of Metrical form, Southey belongs to a group of poets (Scott, Shelley, Byron) who apply Lyric rhythm to Narrative—Southey is distinguished by the elasticity and free play of his rhythm.
 * Among his feats of rhythm note the Curse (ii. 14)—Moonlight (v. 13)—Sapphic metre (x. 1)—especially, Fount of the Ganges (x. 3-4).

5. But the most distinctive characteristic of the poem is one which is more strictly "mythological," viz., that the personages and