INTRODUCTION It is not easy to say quite exactly what an elegy is. The word, like all such words, like epic, lyric, dramatic, like poetry itself, comes to us from the Greeks. Its traditional derivation connects it with the natural utterance of grief, and whatever its origin may have been, the proper meaning of the word λeyos was certainly a lament. The kindred word, eλeyeîov, on the other hand, had no reference to subject, and merely meant a poem in a particular metre, which had been frequently used for elegies. And even λeyos itself is occasionally used in this metrical sense, irrespective of subject. The conception of an elegy was, in fact, left somewhat undefined by the Greeks and so it still remains. The task of distinguishing between the different kinds of poetry is, indeed, only less difficult than that of finding a definition of the nature of poetry itself. We all have some sort of vague idea of what we mean by an elegy, as of what we understand by the word poetry, but when we set ourselves to convert the vague idea into a clear and definite one we are likely to find that we have faced a difficult task. And I do not know of much help to be obtained in this case from the recognised critical authorities. Coleridge has, indeed, attempted a definition. "Elegy," he says, "is the form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It : xiii may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself, but always and exclusively with reference to the poet himself." But, though this is certainly stamped with the mark of Coleridge's subtle critical insight, I do not think it can be accepted as a quite satisfactory or final definition. The true elegy is unquestionably the product of the reflective mood, it is essentially "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and if we divide the productions of the poetic activity into the two great classes of lyric and dramatic, or, if you will, subjective and objective work, there can be no doubt whatever that elegy belongs to the subjective or lyrical faculty, and stands in marked contrast to the drama in particular, and to all poetry in which the poet's aim and hope is to be as little as possible himself, as much as possible the man or thing of which he writes. It is, we all feel it, the cry of the broken heart, the musing of the solitary wanderer, the utterance now of quiet melancholy, now of passionate grief, but always and everywhere of the poet's own feelings. It comes from the heart and should go to the heart. So far what Coleridge says is no doubt as true as it is suggestive. But his words seem to go a good deal further. Is it really the case that all poems which grow out of reflection, and more particularly, self-reflection, are necessarily elegiac? Are we always unhappy when thinking, and especially when thinking of ourselves? A thousand songs of joy are the sufficient proof of the contrary. Or, if Coleridge did not mean this, but meant to include all poems born of our thoughts about ourselves under the class of elegies, he is, it will be admitted, still wider of the mark. There is no vainer occupation than that of trying to force arbitrary meanings upon words of old-established use. No cunning of definition, no subtlety of language, no freaks of nomenclature, such as that in which Drayton indulges when he calls his epistles to Sandys and Reynolds "Elegies," will ever make the elegy anything but what Johnson's dictionary calls it, "a mournful song." That, at least, an elegy most undoubtedly is. Mournful, in one way or another, it must be, though those ways may lie as far apart as Wordsworth's quiet resignation and Shelley's passionate despair. Love, Grief, and Death are its three notes: sometimes only one of them is struck; but, when it is at its richest and sweetest, it is founded on a chord composed of all three. We are sure of our ground so far, and the only question is whether we can get a more precise definition. I do not know that we shall find any regular definition better than this of Coleridge. I have met with two which aim, even more than his, at formal and philosophical exactness, one of which regards elegy as "that form of poetry in which anything is described as at once desirable and not present," while the other makes the motive of elegy "an ideal either lost or not yet attained, or simply imagined." Both of these are useful and suggestive, but they have each, especially the first, a tendency to limit elegy to a greater extent than Coleridge has done, or than is done in the common acceptation of the word. This is the ordinary penalty of attempts at too great logical exactness, and we shall not perhaps do amiss in turning from them to the less |