snatches of song that thrill us with their joy and ecstasy, are yet, for the most part, absolute failures. For Catullus it can hardly be contended that he essayed any other kind of poetry than the lyric. Both poets sing out of their own feelings, sing out of their own hearts, their joys and longings, their sorrows and regrets. But even here there is a difference. Catullus sings what he really feels, of the passions that swept over his heart for the time, and to these he surrenders himself completely for the present, with no regard to the future. At this point the reader will doubtless recall the thrilling ode to Lesbia, "Let us live, my Lesbia, and love," glowing as it does with all "those myriad happy kisses," and the rapturous delight of that exquisite ode to his villa at Sirmio, "Rejoice, bright Sirmio, in thy master's joy." But with Shelley it was different. He sings not of what he actually feels, but of what he longs to feel; and sometimes his longing strikes a note of hopeless despair, as, for instance, in his inimitable ode to the skylark, in which his longing is truly pathetic. The entire lyric is shot through with a vein of sadness, cropping out most strikingly in that beautiful stanza:

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those
That tell of saddest thought.

This vein of sadness is not, however, peculiar to Shelley. Catullus also sounded a sad note, profoundly sad. But we can readily understand why he was sad, when we recall the perfidy of Lesbia, the woman he at first loved as much as his own life. She inspired his song when she first inspired his love; and when she proved false and betrayed his pure affection, his grief was intense and poignant. But even before this stage was reached, when he was experiencing, in the language of Polonius," the very ecstasy of love," he struck a sad note. Even in this rapture the thought of death loomed up before him like a Brocken specter. But naturally this feeling found its fullest expression in the beautiful and

touching ode to his dead brother, a dirge that breathes no hope of a union in a future world, and in that sad and last ode that he wrote addressed to his friend Conificius. It was these little poems that Macaulay had in mind when he said: "They affect me more than I can explain; they always move me to tears." If we had to choose any of Shelley's verses to put over against these, perhaps we should select the "Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples," closing with those pathetic and half-prophetic lines:

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,

And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Neither Catullus' nor Shelley's poetry is buoyant with hope. The latter, in the poem just quoted, distinctly avers that he has no hope:

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found.

Theirs is a poetry that seems to terminate with the present world; it does not look beyond the grave to the fruition of an eternal happiness and a glorified immortality. Their poetry lacks spirituality. In fact, neither poet was a spiritual teacher as Tennyson or Wordsworth, or even as Virgil, with certain qualifications, was; and so neither had any spiritual message to his time as these latter poets had. The explanation of this fact is not far to seek. Catullus' creed, if he can be said to have had a creed, did not of course recognize a spiritual life; and Shelley, it is well known, rejected "the consolatory revelation which tells us that we are spiritual beings and have a spiritual source of life." Their poetry is, therefore, not divinely inspired, though inspired it is. But it is an inspiration that has no spiritual element, an inspiration that does not appeal to the highest and noblest emotions that stir the soul and link man with divinity itself.

But however we may censure the lack or absence of the spiritual in the poetry of Catullus and Shelley, we must admire their glowing passion, their frankness, their simplicity, and their spontaneity. Their poetry reflects every emotion of joy or sorrow that touched their hearts, and their naïveté is exceedingly refreshing. They seemed to wear their hearts on their sleeves and made no effort at concealment. Indeed, Catullus was too frank, certainly, for modern tastes; and even in his own day, if he had consulted his own interest, he would have suppressed here and there coarse and unworthy passages which mar the beauty of several of his otherwise exquisite lyrics.

But, after all, the poetry of both the English and the Roman singer, if the now celebrated dictum of Matthew Arnold be applied, will alike be found wanting. It is lacking in the "criticism of life," in the broadest sense of that phrase. They both alike offer a "criticism of life," it is true, and Shelley's work brings in a rather severe indictment, but they do not touch life at many points, and there are certain phases of it which neither touches at all. Their range is somewhat narrow and limited. Their poetry appeals directly and chiefly to the young only. It is not addressed to the hearts of the more mature, who can look back upon life from the vantage ground of ripe years. Burning passion, sustained beauty, simplicity, and verve, the recognized qualities of poetry of the first water-all these their poetry possesses in a marked degree. But it does not prove satisfying to the heart in all the stages of life, nor to all classes of society. It lacks breadth of sympathy, and lacking this it does not lay hold upon all hearts. It has a perennial charm, but chiefly for the young only. Over these its spell is complete. But for those on the shady side of life it often quite fails to produce the illusion. That stage of life the poets themselves never experienced, for nature never destined their suns to cross the dial of life ere death claimed them. Their poetry, therefore, as some critic has said, shows the limitations of youth, shows what youth can do and what youth cannot do, even though it be coupled with

genius. The mission, then, of these two youthful poets, the passionate Catullus and the ethereal Shelley, so far removed from each other in point of time, but so near in sympathies and tastes, in the glowing ardor of their temperaments, in their susceptibility to the beautiful, in the spontaneous outburst of their emotions, and in their perfect frankness and simplicity withal, was primarily to the young, to teach them, in the phrase of Wordsworth, if not to see and think, at least to feel. EDWIN W. BOWEN.

COSMOPOLITANISM AND PARTISANSHIP.1

ONE hundred years ago, lacking a few months, George Washington lay dead at Mt. Vernon. As fast and far as the news could travel spread the grief of the people whose independence he had won and for whose national life he had stood sponsor. But it was not America alone that lamented his loss. In France Napoleon's triumphal ceremonies in honor of his Egyptian campaign were shadowed by services commemorative of the greater deeds of the noble American, while the channel fleet of Great Britain lowered in his honor the very flag he had fought against a quarter of a century before. Throughout the whole civilized world mourning and eulogy were the order of the hour, and when years later the nations were asked to contribute votive stones to his memorial shaft, they responded in a way that proved that he was still first, not merely in the hearts of his fellow-citizens, but in what the poet has called "the general heart of men." 2 Just a year ago the greatest English statesman since Pitt, William Ewart Gladstone, went to his grave lamented almost as much by Italians and Bulgarians as by Englishmen and Americans. As with Washington, the whole civilized world honored itself by honoring his memory. A few months later the founder of modern Germany, the most potent historical character since Napoleon, Prince Bismarck, passed to his reward. He was eulogized in the Fatherland and made the subject of much discussion throughout the world, but he was not mourned as Washington and Gladstone had been. Why was this?

3

1 An address delivered before the Literary Societies of Wake Forest College, North Carolina, May 24, 1899.

2 See the introduction to Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge's admirable "Washington" in the series of "American Statesmen."

3 See the fine tribute by Signor Luigi Luzzatti, Gladstone's successor in the Institute of France, in the Nuova Antologia for April 16, 1899. This answer to Mr. Gladstone's critics ought to be translated and given wide circulation, but it seems shameful that the duty of making it should have devolved on a foreigner.