Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/640

 636 Alden THE ENGLISH ODE TO 1660: an essay in Literary History, by RobertShafer. Princeton University Press, 1918. The ode is the most difficult of all lyric types to analyze or to pursue through the course of the history of poetry. It cannot be denned with accuracy, because the term has been used by poets themselves with such varied implications; and no one knows, when the word is met with, whether it is employed primarily with reference to metrical form or more internal qualities. These difficulties have been fully perceived by Dr. Shafer, and it is greatly to his credit that he has been able to expound the history of the subject with decent attention to the ambiguity of his topic but without resulting confusion of mind. For the purposes of a dissertation one might have advised him to confine himself either to the metrical or the literary aspect of the ode; yet it is probable that, the more one knew of the subject, the more certain one would be that the two aspects are not practicably separable. Dr. Shafer makes his own attempt at definition, saying that we must require of an ode that it be "a lyrical poem, serious in tone and stately in its structure; that it be cast in the form of an address; that it be rapid in style, treating its subject with 'brevity and variety'; and that its unity be emotional in character." There is of course opportunity for question here, especially concerning the omis- sion of any statement concerning the tendency toward flexible or varied metrical form; on the other hand it may be said that since this is only a tendency, it cannot be made a differentia for purposes of definition. The historical aspect of the subject is admirably handled. Dr. Shafer first brings together the principal accepted facts concerning the ode in the classical languages; then gives an account of the use of the term in English before 1600; then considers the knowledge and imitation of Pindar in the Re- naissance; and in the succeeding chapters analyzes in detail the work of odists from Drayton to Cowley. He pauses to ex- plore, conscientiously but not pedantically, any incidental matter which appears to need clearing up, and gives evidence either of unusual judgment or of particularly sound guidance (probably^both) in his use of the minor or ancillary bibliography of his subject. His literary sense and sense of humor, too com- monly dispensed with in dissertations, would also seem to be keen; but I wish that the latter had kept him from a prevail- ingly ponderous use of the editorial or scholastic "we." The chief value of this monograph, apart from its fitness to satisfy the curiosity which many of us must have felt respecting the early history of the ode in the Renaissance, is in laying a basis for the understanding of the later ode say from Dryden to Shelley, not to go further. It stops, therefore, reasonably