rance of Mrs.
Veal is _not_ poetry. But the exact line which separates grave novels
in verse like _Aylmer's Field_ or _Enoch Arden_, from grave novels not
in verse like _Silas Marner_ or _Adam Bede_, we own we cannot draw
with any confidence. Nor, perhaps, is it very important; whether a
narrative is thrown into verse or not certainly depends in part on the
taste of the age, and in part on its mechanical helps. Verse is the
only mechanical help to the memory in rude times, and there is little
writing till a cheap something is found to write upon, and a cheap
something to write with. Poetry--verse at least--is the literature of
_all work_ in early ages; it is only later ages which write in what
_they_ think a natural and simple prose. There are other casual
influences in the matter too; but they are not material now. We need
only say here that poetry, because it has a more marked rhythm than
prose, must be more intense in meaning and more concise in style than
prose. People expect a 'marked rhythm' to imply something worth
marking; if it fails to do so they are disappointed. They are
displeased at the visible waste of a powerful instrument; they call it
'doggerel,' and rightly call it, for the metrical expression of full
thought and eager feeling--the burst of metre--incident to high
imagination, should not be wasted on petty matters which prose does as
well,--which it does better--which it suits by its very limpness and
weakness, whose small changes it follows more easily, and to whose
lowest details it can fully and without effort degrade itself. Verse,
too, should be _more concise_, for long-continued rhythm tends to jade
the mind, just as brief rhythm tends to attract the attention. Poetry
should be memorable and emphatic, intense, and _soon over_.

The great divisions of poetry, and of all other literary art, arise
from the different modes in which these _types_--these characteristic
men, these characteristic feelings--may be variously described. There
are three principal modes which we shall attempt to describe--the
_pure_, which is sometimes, but not very wisely, called the classical;
the _ornate_, which is also unwisely called romantic; and the
_grotesque_, which might be called the mediaeval. We will describe the
nature of these a little. Criticism we know must be brief--not, like
poetry, because its charm is too intense to be sustained--but on the
contrary, because its interest is too weak to be prolonged; but