Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/106

76 giving his attention to a single master or school,—to the Greek dramatists, to Dante, or Milton, or Goethe; more than one will expend his resources upon the mimic world of Shakespeare, yet leave as much for his successors to accomplish as there was before. Their privilege I do not assume; since these initiatory discourses have to do with the elements of which poetry is all compact, and with the spirit in fealty to which its orbs shine and have their being and rehearse the burden of their radiant progress:—

Still, I wish in some way to review this progress Two main divisions. of poesy. Essaying then, for the little that can be done, to look first at the broad characteristics of the field, we see that there are, at all events, two streams into which its vast galaxy is divided,—though they intersect each other again and again, and in modern times seem almost blended. These do not relate to the technical classification A passing reference to established orders. of poetry: to its partition by the ancients into the epic, dramatic, lyric, and the idyllic,—unto which we have added the reflective, and have merged them all in the composite structures of modern art. Time has shown that we cannot overrate the method of those