1. Sacred Odes.-- These are usually called Psalms or Hymns. They are composed on religious subjects, and are for the most part addressed directly to God.

Hymnic Poetry. - This is found in the literature of every nation. The Hebrew Psalms are among the highest specimens of lyric poetry. In modern times this species of poetry has been cultivated much more than in the early ages, in consequence of the extent to which Psalms and Hymns are used in the religious worship of all Christian churches. The number of Psalms and Hymns in current and reputable use in English is counted by thousands, and no inconsiderable portion of these have decided poetical merit.

Hymn Writers.-The principal writers of Hymns in English are Watts, Doddridge, Ken, Charles Wesley, Dwight, Newton, Montgomery, Heber, Mrs. Steele, Mrs. Barbauld, and Jane Taylor. Among more recent hymnists may be named Faber, Ray Palmer, Bonar, and Charlotte Elliott.

Other Kinds of Hymns.-The word Hymn is sometimes applied to compositions of a more extended character, and not intended for religious worship. Thus Spenser has written four hymns, on Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty, averaging nearly three hundred lines each. The religious odes among the ancients also were usually much longer than those which we now use in Christian worship.

2. Heroic Odes. These are lyric poems celebrating the praises of heroes, and are mostly occupied with martial exploits.

The odes of Pindar, in Greek, are considered the highest specimens of this kind of composition. "Alexander's Feast," by Dryden, is the grandest Ode in the English language. The best perhaps in our recent literature is Lowell's "Commemoration Ode."

3. Moral Odes. These include a great variety of subjects, being used to express almost every kind of sentiment suggested by friendship, humanity, patriotism, and so forth.

Collins's Ode on the Passions and Gray's Ode to Eton College are familiar to all readers. Collins and Gray are the two English writers who have most excelled in this species of composition.

4. Amatory Odes.-These, more generally known as Love Songs, are numerous in all literatures.

The most successful writers of this kind of verse among the ancients were Anacreon among the Greeks, and Horace among the Romans. No one writer in English stands pre-eminent in this department. Nearly all our great poets have written successful love verses. Thomas Moore probably has contributed more largely than any other writer to this particular branch of our literature. The Songs of Burns, though not so numerous as those of Moore, are less artificial, and show greater genius. Nothing but the Scottish dialect, in which most of the pieces are written, and which is a great drawback to ordinary readers, prevents Burns from standing at the head of our lyric poets.

5. Comic Songs.- These also have become very numerous. Being intended mainly for amusement, they are often written with great license as to their metrical construction, and sometimes with still greater license in regard to morals.

Bacchanalian Songs.- These, as the name imports, are songs to be sung in honor of Bacchus. In other words, they are drinkingsongs. They are subject to still greater irregularities than the kind last named. Their object is to promote good fellowship in drinking, and they are consequently a prolific source of drunkenness.

Bacchanalian Songs almost always partake of the comic character, and not unfrequently are amatory also. Indeed, these three kinds of song last named are closely allied, and the authors who have excelled in any one of them have usually excelled in all.

Sonnets.

The Sonnet, although no longer used in song, comes under the head of Lyric poetry.

The Sonnet was first cultivated in Italy, and it has there achieved its greatest successes. The Sonnets of Petrarch are as famous as the odes of Pindar, and show as high an order of genius. The Sonnet was first introduced into the English by Sir Thomas Wyatt, in the reign of Henry VIII. From that time to the present, nearly all "our poets of any note have written sonnets, and some of these compositions are among the very best treasures of which our literature has to boast.

IV. ELEGIAC POETRY.

An Elegy is a poem, usually of a sad and mournful kind, celebrating the virtues of some one deceased.

Its Form.- Elegiac poetry is rarely, if ever, in any other measure than the iambic, and the most celebrated elegies known to our lit-* erature, such as Milton's Lycidas, and Gray's Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard, are in iambic pentameter. The slow and stately movement of this line is particularly suited to the purposes of Elegy. Tennyson's In Memoriam, equally celebrated with the two poems just named, is in iambic tetrameter. Shelley's Adonais is in the Spenserian stanza.

An Epitaph is a very short Elegy, intended to be inscribed on a tomb or monumental tablet.

V. PASTORAL POETRY.

Pastoral Poetry* means properly that which celebrates shepherd or rustic life.

Among the Ancients. The early pastoral poets, such as Theocritus among the Greeks and Virgil among the Latins, described the manners, occupations, amusements, and loves of shepherds and shepherdesses, and these descriptions are characterized by great simplicity of style, suited to the subject.

Among the Moderns. Modern authors, who have written pastoral poetry, though often giving to their characters the names and occupations of rustics, have generally used this guise to cover wellbred and well-known city people. Thus Spenser, in the Shepherds' Calendar, speaks throughout of country lads and lasses, tending their flocks and cracking their rude jokes, but he means by them himself and his fellow-courtiers in London. The term Pastoral is now applied to any poem which describes placid country-life.

Eclogues. The pastoral poems of Virgil were called by him Eclogues, and this term has been much used for modern poems of the same sort.

Idyls, Theocritus, the first who wrote in this style, called his pieces Idyls. Hence the term Idyllic, as applied to pastoral poetry. Hence also the title "Idyls of the King," applied by Tennyson to a collection of his latest poems, though they have little of the character of pastoral poetry, as commonly understood.

*From the Latin word pastor, a shepherd.

VI. DIDACTIC POETRY.

A Didactic Poem is one which aims chiefly to give instruction.

Its Character. The poetry of this kind, though useful, is not in itself of so high an order as the others which have been named. Many critics, indeed, deny to compositions of this kind the character of poetry.

The Objection. If, say they, it is of the very essence of poetry that it aims to please, why should we assign this name to that which aims only to instruct? It may be good verse, but it is not poetry. Such is the objection, and it is not without some truth. But it is not the whole truth.

The Reply. The compositions now under consideration, while they aim to instruct, and aim mainly at that, aim also to please. The arguments and reasonings which they contain are made much more effective by being put into the poetical form. Besides this, a great poet ought, if any one, to know what is poetry, and what is not, and some of the greatest poets that the world has known have written pieces in verse for instruction on particular topics, and have called these pieces poems. Virgil's Georgics is a treatise on agriculture. Horace's Art of Poetry, and Pope's Essay on Criticism, are treatises. Yet it would require some hardihood to say that they are not poems.

Meditative Poetry. Under the head of Didactic poetry may very properly be included not only that which aims in a formal manner to instruct, but all poetry of a meditative kind.

Its Abundance. The poetry of this sort in English is very abundant, and much of it very valuable. We could ill spare from English literature Bryant's Thanatopsis, Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, Young's Night Thoughts, Thomson's Seasons, Cowper's Task, Pope's Essay on Man, and a host of other poems of nearly equal celebrity. Satire. - A Satire is a poem intended to hold up the follies of men to ridicule. It aims to reform men by appealing to their sense of shame. Satire is properly impersonal, exposing faults in general, rather than exposing individuals.

Lampoon. A Lampoon attacks individuals.

Prose is the term applied to all composition which is not in verse. It means the ordinary, straightforward manner of discourse, in distinction from the inverted forms so common in poetry.

Prose is from the Latin prosa, contracted from prorsa, and that from proversa, meaning straightforward.

The chief varieties of Prose composition are Letters, Diaries, News, Editorials, Reviews, Essays, Treatises, Travels, History, Fiction, Discourses.

I. LETTERS.

A Letter is a written communication addressed by the writer to some other person or persons.

Subject Important. - Comparatively few persons are required to practise any of the other varieties of composition which have been named, whether prose or verse. But almost every one has occasion to write letters, and the difference in the effect produced between a letter well written and a letter badly written, is as great as that between good and bad sermons, or between good and bad bread. Surely, then, the subject of letter-writing ought not to be omitted in any work purporting to treat of Prose Composition.

Variety. No species of composition admits of greater variety. Letters are as various in style as are the characters, the wants, the occupations. or the pleasures of men. Sometimes writers, in treating of literary or scientific subjects, cast their essays into the form