ARGUMENT IN VERSE.

IN his singularly interesting address to the English Asso- ciation on Friday week Mr. Balfour discussed the value of poetry as a vehicle of argument or controversy. It is not our purpose now to follow his address in detaiL It is enough to say that he preferred poetry to prose as a means of argument, first because, being capable of ornament, it is more agreeable to read. Poetry allows a wider area of relevance to decorative enrichment. Then, verse has the attribute of compression, which is extraordinarily effectual in producing intensity. This

intensity is a real thing. It is not that an idea has been expressed briefly because the exigencies of fitting in the words required brevity. The idea shortly expressed in verse frequently would not gain lucidity by expansion into a paraphrase. Indeed, the quintessence of the thought would be obscured and lost by expansion. Compression, of course, may be overdone, and become what Mr. Balfour called a telegraphic concentration in which numerous links of an argument may be omitted. The author in that case assumes a quickness of perception in the reader which be often has no right to assume. Undue compression is the first source of vagueness and obscurity. And if poetry is often more lucid than prose—the vividness of the images seems to fly out from it with the sharpness of electric sparks —it is also more memorable. Poems that enshrine forgotten controversies live on because of their melody or their beauty of form. As Mr. Balfour said, they are like the spices in which mummies are embalmed. The dead and ugly thing is preserved because of the spices, not through its own durability.

We agree with all this. To our thinking, the very refining of words which is required—however instinctively employed— to produce the magic of sound and sense that makes poetry is also a process of lucidity or precision. But poetry is valuable as an instrument of argument for a much wider reason than this. Is it not that by the magic of rhythm and by the enchantment of metre it hypnotizes the mind and makes it at once both attentive and retentive P It was not without reason that some of the greatest of primitive historians were poets who chronicled the wonders of their land and its heroes in verse. Every child remembers what it learned in rhyme, while it forgets precepts in prose. In fine, poetry has both memorableness and lucidity.

Mr. Balfour quoted from Dryden and Pope, whose poetry provides capital examples of controversy. Dryden's poem, "The Hind and the Panther," was a party pamphlet written in praise of Roman Catholicism and at the expense of Protestantism when he was fresh from his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Macaulay praised the pathos, magnificence, and variety of this poem, and also the ductility of the language. Mr. Balfour very nearly assented to this high praise, though he saw that Dryden was barely capable of treating religion religiously. But we venture to think that a poem of Dryden's even less studied than "The Hind and the Panther" affords a better example of the use of poetry for argument and dialectic. How many of our readers, we wonder, have read "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man" P No doubt it is well known to Mr. Balfour, though he did not happen to mention it. The story of how it came to be written is, at all events, fairly well known. Dryden proposed to Milton that he should be allowed to write a version of Paradise Lost in rhymed couplets, and Milton, in a famous phrase, answered: "Ay, you may tag my verses if you with" Dryden's " improvement " upon Paradise Lost, of course, loses entirely the splendour and sonority of Milton, and for that reason has been laughed at ; but it fulfils to admira- tion the purpose of using verse argumentatively. Dryden was a great metaphysician, and the highly metaphysical argument between Raphael and Gabriel on the one side, and Adam on the other, about Fate and Free Will leaves one astounded by the skill, the dialectical vividness, and the lucid terseness of the poetry. We can do this splendid passage justice only by quotation :— "Raph. Praise Him alone, who god-like formed thee free, With will unbounded as a deity;

Who gave thee reason, as thy aid, to choose Apparent good, and evil to refuse.

Obedience is that good; this Heaven exacts, And Heaven, all-just, from man requires not acts, Which man wants power to do Power then is given Of doing good, but not compelled by Heaven.

Gab. Made good, that thou dost to thy Maker owe; But to thyself, if thou continuest so.

Adam. Freedom of will of all good things is best; But can it bo by finite man possest?

I know not how Heaven can communicate What equals man to his Creator's state.

Rapti. Heaven cannot give his boundless power away,

But boundless liberty of choice he may ; So orbs from the first Mover motion take, Yet each their proper revolutions make.

Adam. Grant Heaven could once have given us liberty ; Aro we not bounded now, by firm decree, Since whatsoe'er is pre-ordained must be Else Heaven for man events might pre-ordain, And man's free will might make those orders vain.

Gab. The Eternal, when he did the world create,

All other agents did necessitate: So what he ordered, they by nature do: Thus light things mount, and heavy downward go. Man only boasts an arbitrary state.

Adam. Yet causes their effects necessitate In willing agents ; Where is freedom then?

Or who can break the chain which limits men To act what is unchangeably forecast, Since the first cause gives motion to the last?

Rapti. Heaven, by foreknowing what will surely be,

Does only, first, effects in causes see, And finds, but does not make, necessity.

Creation is of power and will the effect, Foreknowledge only of his intellect.

His prescience makes not, but supposes things; Infers necessity to be, not brings.

Thus thou art not constrained to good or ill ; Causes, which work the effect, force not the will.

Adam. The force unseen, and distant, I confess; But the long chain makes not the bondage less."

Surely in prose it would not be possible to add to the intensity of this argument, so keenly felt on both aides. Raphael's argument that the divine prescience does not " make" events but only "supposes "them, thus leaving man still a free agent, seems metaphysically satisfactory till it is shattered by the very natural cry of the heart from the bewildered Adam: " But the long chain makes not the bondage less."

Presently Adam confesses his puzzled state of mind at greater length :—

"I find that I can choose to love or bate, Obey or disobey, do good or ill;

Yet such a choice is but consent, not will. I can but choose what he at first designed, For he, before that choice, my will confined."

Gabriel thereupon rebukes him for such "impious fancies," and Adam, alarmed at having been carried so far by his arguments, cries out :-- " Far, far from me be banished such a thought, I argue only to be better taught.

Can there be freedom, when what now seems free Was founded on some first necessity P

For whate'er cause can move the will t' elect, Must be sufficient to produce the effect ; And what's sufficient must effectual be:

Then how is man, thus forced by causes, free?"

—after all, reiterating, and actually emphasizing, his point. The argument then goes on

" Rapti. Sufficient causes only work the effect, When necessary agents they respect.

Such is not man ; who, though the cause suffice, Yet often he his free assent denies.

Adam. What causes not, is not sufficient still.

Gab. Sufficient in itself ; not in thy will.

Rapti. When we see causes joined to effects at last,

The chain but shows necessity that's past.

That what 's done is (ridiculous proof of fate!) Tell me which part it does necessitate ?

I'll choose the other; there I'll link the effect, 0 chain, which fools, to catch themselves, project!

Adam. Though no constraint from Heaven, or causes, be,

Heaven may prevent that ill he does foresee And, not preventing, though he does not cause, He seems to will that men should break his laws.

Gab. Heaven may permit, but not to ill consent;

For, hindering ill, he would all choice prevent.

'Twere to unmake, to take away the will.

Adam. Better constrained to good, than free to ill.

Rapti. But what reward or punishment could be, If man to neither good nor ill were free P The eternal justice could decree no pain

To him whose sins itself did first ordain ; And good, compelled, could no reward exact ; His power would shine in goodness, not thy act. Our task is done : Obey; and, in that choice, Thou shalt be bleat, and angels shall rejoice."

After that question-begging exhortation the angels, with a strategic prescience which is truly admirable, disappear— Raphael and Gabriel "fly up in the Cloud," while the other angels who had accompanied them "go off." And Adam, left with the burden of the metaphysical problem which has always tormented mankind, gloomily comments :—

"Hard state of life ! since Heaven foreknows my will, Why am I not tied up from doing ill?

Why am I trusted with myself at large,

When he 's more able to sustain the charge ? Since angels fell, whose strength was more than mine, 'Twould show more grace my frailty to confine. Foreknowing the success, to leave me free, Excuses him, and yet supports not me."

Another astonishing quality in Dryden's argumentative poetry is its passion. One would not expect passion in dialectics, yet there it is And how material a quality it is in ennobling the poetry—in making it real poetry, when the original impulse is only an historical or doctrinal thesis, and not a lyrical or epic emotion It seems, then, that an argu- ment may be a perfectly adequate cause of passion in poetry, for it is not possible to be passionate about nothing. As Jean Francois Millet said : "L'art ne vit que de passion, mais on ne pent pas se passionner de rien." Excellent examples of Dryden's passion may be found in "The Hind and the Panther," from which Mr. Balfour quoted a few lines. Take the following passage:— "What weight of ancient witness can prevail,

If private reason hold the pnblick scale?

But, gratious God, how well dust thou provide For erring judgments an unerring Guide!

Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light,

A blaze of glory that forbids the sight; 0 teach me to believe Thee thus conceal'd, And search no farther than Thy self reveal; But her alone for my Directeur take Whom Thou haat promied never to forsake !

My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires, My manhood, long misled by wandring fires,

Follow'd false lights ; and when their glimps was gone,

My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am, Be Thine the glory and be mine the shame.

Good life be now my task : my doubts are done,

(What more could fright my faith, than Three in One P)

Can I believe eternal God could lye Disguis'd in mortal mold and infancy ?

That the great Maker of the world could dye? And after that, trust my imperfect sense Which calls in question his omnipotence P Can I my reason to my faith compel, And shall my sight, and touch, and taste rebel ?

Superiour faculties are set aside, Shall their subservient organs be my guide ?

Then let the moon usurp the rule of day, And winking tapers show the sun his way ; For what my senses can themselves perceive I need no revelation to believe.

Can they, who say the Host should be descry'd By sense, define a body glorify'd?

Impassible, and penetrating parts ? Let them declare by what mysterious arts He shot that body through th' opposing might Of bolts and terra impervious to the light,

And stood before his train confess'd in open sight.

For since thus wondrously he pass'd, plain One single place two bodies did contain, And sure the same Omnipotence as well Can make one body in more places dwell.

Let reason then at her own quarry fly, But how can finite grasp Infinity ?"

We will now choose a very different example of sign- raentative poetry from Pope. It occurs in the "Moral Essays." Pope is asking whether the invention of a metallic currency has been more commodious or pernicious to man- kind. He suggests an answer at once in m alarmingly vivid picture of what a return to payment in kind would mean to a world already well used to money :—

"Could France or Rome divert our brave designs

With all their brandies or with all their wines What could they more than Knights and Squires confound, Or water all the Quorum ten miles round ?

A statesman's slumbers bow this speech would spoil, • Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil ; Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door; A hundred oxen at your levee roar.'

Poor Avarice one torment more would find, Nor could Profusion squander all in kind.

Astride his cheese Sir Morgan might we meet ; And Worldly crying coals from street to street,

Whom with a wig so wild and mien so 'mared,

Pity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed. Had Colepepper's whole wealth been hops and hogs, Could he himself have sent it to the dogs ?

His Grace will game : to White's a bull be led, With spurning heels and with a butting head. To White's be carried, as to ancient games, Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames."

This, surely, is a fine example of relevant ornamentation in verse. Bastiat with all his wit in prose could not have produced a more telling picture of the inconveniences of re- introducing barter into a civilized society.