LOVE POETRY OF BURNS. 159 The all-pervading association of love and the constant thought of the loved one are most fully expressed in 'Of a' the airts': I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair; I hear her charm the air: There's not a bonny flower that springs There's not a bonny bird that sings, But minds me o' my Jean. Chivalrous devotion and self-sacrifice are prominent in The Highland Lassie' and 'Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast'. Thus: Or did Misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, To share it a', to share it a'. As regards harmonizing_circumstances, Burns's use of allusions to the outer world are frequent and happy. Besides using Nature for the expression of feeling in harmony with it, he very often employs it by way of contrast to the emotion uttered; and, not unfrequently, the greater part of the song consists of references to natural objects employed in one or other of these ways. For direct harmony of nature with feeling, we may refer to Afton Water,' Wandering Willie,' 'Highland Mary,' and 'Mary in Heaven'; and for the stronger expression of feeling by contrast, we may quote 'Ye banks and braes,' 'My Nannie's awa',' and 'Menie'. In the Birks of Aberfeldy' we have nature minutely described, but for its own sake; the connexion with love, which appears in the refrain, hardly affects the description. In general, emotional fitness, rather than full representation of the objects, is aimed at; the stanza already quoted from 'Mary in Heaven' being more elaborate than usual (PART FIRST, p. 297). · Take the following as illustrating direct harmony: Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, As gath'ring sweet flowerets she stems thy clear wave. The quiet beauty thus depicted is in unison with the aspect of love described; and the action of the last two lines harmonizes with the feeling. The following shows the force of contrast : The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn, They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw, Burns has given expression to conjugal love in John Anderson' and 'Of a' the airts'. The pathos and the humour of love, which he also abundantly expresses, come more directly under other heads.* Browning has frequently dealt with love, and in ways peculiar to himself. In accordance with the general nature of his poetry, his object is not to set forth the aspects of the emotion that are commonly experienced and easily recognized, but to bring to light its most subtle characteristics and workings. The means most frequently employed by him is the monologue, which is so managed as to reveal the changing phases of the speaker's feelings. Hence his love poems often appear not so much the expression of love, as the study of it; and the words of the speakers leave the impression of self-analysis rather than the direct utterance of feeling. What is gained in originality and intellectual interest is to some extent lost in general impressiveness. Take as an example Two in the Campagna'. It is a picture of a man's love, expressed by himself to the woman beside him; and its burden is a complaint of the imperfection of his love, notwithstanding his earnest desire that it should be more perfect. How is it under our control To love or not to love? I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more. Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be? He can find no explanation or see means of help :— Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn. *It is worthy of observation that the sensual aspects of love are almost, if not altogether, excluded from the serious love songs of Burns. When they appear, it is in his humorous pieces, whether songs or poems. He is in this a contrast to Anacreon and others. LOVE IN BROWNING. -GEORGE ELIOT. 161 The situation is thoroughly original, and the utterance powerful; but it is so entirely apart from ordinary experience that it can hardly arouse sympathetic emotion, though it may furnish fresh material for thought. Unrequited love has been frequently treated by Browning, and in a manner different from most other poets. His favourite attitude of mind for the rejected lover is calm resignation, without anger, despair, or the lessening of respect for the person loved. This is the spirit portrayed in The Lost Mistress,' 'The Last Ride together,' and 'One Way of Love'. The purity and elevation of love are thus depicted with great power; but the effect is more allied to Strength than to Pathos. The situation of undeclared love, whose opportunity is removed by death, as pictured in 'Evelyn Hope,' though evoking the same calm strength of character, is more purely pathetic. Thus : I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! My heart seemed full as it could hold; There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, So hush, I will give you this leaf to keep: See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand. Browning's use of harmonizing circumstances is abun dant and appropriate, though often subtle in the application. Personification is happily employed to express this harmony. (See an example under PERSONIFICATION.) One of George Eliot's finest attempts at picturing beauty, both of person and of ways, is seen in 'Hetty Sorrel'. The description begins with a sort of generic view of Hetty's beauty, as that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief'. The defective side of such an attempt is partly the difficulty of making it combine with the actual form and features of Hetty, and partly the introduction of another interest, the interest of the child-like, which the description of a full-grown girl should not depend upon. Perhaps the intention was to bring out the idea of the unconscious and unreflective enjoyment of life, with which the character harmonizes throughout. The actual details do not receive the assistance of an orderly method, and we may doubt whether any imagination could figure this remarkable beauty. "It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink and white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle-of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting kitten-like maiden.” Much more should have been said of her figure and complexion to begin with, instead of repeating it in snatches, in the course of the story. The dress naturally goes with the person, especially when studied for effect. The author, however, takes care to exhaust for the present the still life picture, before adding the following sentences: 66 And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown in making up buttertossing movements that give a charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand, and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes". But the comparisons to the divine charms of a bright spring day,' when we strain our eyes after the mountain lark, or wander through the still lanes when the freshopened blossoms fill them with a sacred, silent beauty like that of fretted aisles'-though pleasing in themselves, are scarcely an aid to the conception of a beautiful girl. All comparisons should be subordinated to some definite form and picture, such as we could keep steadily before the mind, throughout the narrative. POETRY OF CONJUGAL AFFECTION. 163 This is the same author's delineation of the beauty of the arm 66 'Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm?—the unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the time-worn marble of a headless trunk. Maggie's was such an arm as that-and it had the warm tints of life.” The poetizing of Conjugal Love is already seen in the Iliad. Homer's happy instinct chooses the one situation most favourable to its display, that is, the conjoint interest of parents in their child; and other poets have followed in the same track. The parting of Hector and Andromache will be adduced in connexion with the parental feeling. The picture of our First Parents in Puradise Lost (IV. 288) is a fine ideal of the personal beauty appropriate to the two sexes respectively. It is conceived with Miltonic sternness. As an ideal, it labours under impossibility of fulfilment, and is not in itself interesting; authority without coercion, and absolute submission, qualified only by Sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. The attempt to picture wedded happiness, although less. frequent than the delineation of love-making, is still a poetic theme. The personal charms, and the first energy of youthful fire are gone. There remains, in the rarer instances, the concentrated attachment to one; while, in a still greater number, there is the mutual play of good offices, and the resolve to cherish the love affection as the main ingredient of happiness for both. With these conditions, and with power and obedience kept in the background, an ideal of conjugal happiness can be presented, such as not to be painfully at variance with human experience. PARENTAL FEELING. 1. With a view to exemplify the poetry of Parental Feeling, we must recall the distinctive characteristics of |