pression of intensity. This fundamental quality allies itself intimately with any or all of the other essential qualities, heightening and strengthening them, and determining as much as any the poetic vitality of the work in which they are manifested.

Yet the addition of this element to any one of the others does not do away with the necessity for the balance of the other fundamental qualities. It is possible to have imaginative intensity in such excess and such isolation as to produce mere incoherence, unrestrained by reason or reality. That one can find abundantly exemplified in William Blake, and sometimes in Shelley, though Shelley's sense of form usually added some element of control. Intense realism we have found in Crabbe and Wordsworth, as one could find it also in Burns and Byron and many others, where the fury of the zeal for exposing the fact does not serve to raise the result into the realm of poetry. The doubtful standing of Satire in the field of poetry is due to the possibility of this situation. And the age of Pope affords ample evidence of the zealous cultivation of the power of expressing good sense in good form, without much resulting poetry.

On the other hand, the presence of intensity does much to produce the necessary balance. This is especially so in the cases where otherwise there might be an excess of the rational or matter-of-fact elements, because the tendency of emotion is to awaken imagination and so modify an exclusive attention to the literal truth or severe premeditation by the admixture of that heightening and idealization which feeling is prone to produce.

It appears, then, that though intensity is necessary in all types of poetry in order to produce the "elevating excitement of the soul," the ecstasy in which for an instant we see things sub specie æternitatis; and though it is a main force in producing the required equilibrium among the other elements, the fire that melts and fuses them; it is nevertheless peculiarly related to the imagination, rousing it and being roused by it with an intimacy of action and reaction found in connection with none of the other elements; and affording an explanation of the fact, often denied by the critics, but recognized by the general sense of the public, that in romantic verse more constantly than in any other kind are we likely to find burning the true poetic fire.

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CHAPTER VII

SENTIMENTALISM IN POETRY

In the foregoing chapters we have been con cerned with those elements of poetry which may be regarded as fundamental, and which seem to be present, though in varying proportions, in all poetry. In those which remain, we are to discuss the nature and relations of what we may call the minor qualities of sentiment and humor. Looked at from the point of view of poems in which they are prominently manifested, such elements are, of course, not minor, but may be the most striking characteristics: but from the point of view of poetry in general they are minor, since great poetry may exist without them.

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The word "sentiment" is employed in a considerable variety of senses; but in connec tion with literature and art it has a fairly defi nite meaning. It is used for the milder range of emotions, for emotion associated with thought and evoked by ideas, as opposed to

passion and to emotion more directly dependent on sensation. It constantly appears in connection with the adjective "tender"; and is the mainstay of the pathetic. So frequent is this association that sentiment is at times almost identified with the feeling of compassion; but such feelings as friendship, the love of home and country, the sense of honor, a kindly attitude towards the lower animals, with the other emotions generally called "humanitarian,” — all of these, when they do not exist with such intensity as to be called passion, are all included in sentiment. As an element in character the sentiments play a very important part; for, though they are not likely to be involved in the great crises of existence, they are in daily exercise, and are largely the causes of the prevailing tone of our ordinary life. The factors, for example, which are usually considered in the awarding of the title of "gentleman" belong chiefly to the class of what used to be called "fine feelings" or sentiments.

In literature, the effect of sentiment is somewhat analogous. It does not make or unmake poetry, but it may be chiefly responsible for its flavor and charm. A poem like The Cotter's Saturday Night has gained its great popu

larity mainly by the diffusion throughout it of those sentiments with which the ordinary man most readily sympathizes: the feeling of domesticity; the attraction of fireside and children at the end of the day's work; the mild reciprocal inclination of the man to the maid and the maid to the man, love in the stage when it may be still impeded by bashfulness; the family exercise of religion, here affecting the reader through old association rather than conviction; and, finally, the emotion of patriotism. While the great masterpieces deal with lofty passions, supreme crises, and heroic types, the function of sentiment, both in life and in literature, is the enrichment of the commonplace; and this, not by the larger exercise of imagination that discerns in it the universal, but by a humbler process of rousing tender ✓ feelings of sympathy and association. The abundance of this quality, along with a fine command of simple rhythms, is the main cause of the wide popular appeal of such a poet as Longfellow.

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But our main theme is not sentiment, but sentimentalism, a tendency closely related, in