A Catechism of Familiar Things Part 46

What is Poetry?

The glowing language of impa.s.sioned feeling, generally found in measured lines, and often in rhyme. Most ancient people had their poets.

_Glowing_, warm, energetic.

_Impa.s.sioned_, full of pa.s.sion, animated.

_Rhyme_, the correspondence of the last sound of one verse to the last sound or syllable of another.

Name a few of the ancient poets.

David was an inspired poet of the Hebrews: Homer, one of the earliest poets of the Greeks: Ossian, an ancient poet of the Scots: Taliesen, an ancient poet of the Welsh: and Odin, an early poet of the Scandinavians.

Who were the Scandinavians?

The inhabitants of Scandinavia, the ancient name of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

What people are regarded as the Fathers of Poetry?

The Greeks. Homer was the first and the prince of poets; he celebrated the siege of Troy in the Iliad and Odyssey, two epic poems which have never been surpa.s.sed. In the same kind of composition he was followed, nine hundred years after, by Virgil, in the Eneid; by Ta.s.so, after another fifteen hundred years, in the 'Jerusalem Delivered.' The Greeks also boasted of their Pindar and Anacreon in lyric poetry; and of Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, and Eschylus, in dramatic poetry.

Did the Romans possess any distinguished Poets?

Yes; among the epic poets were Ovid and Tibullus; among dramatists, Plautus and Terence; of didactic and philosophic poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Silius Italicus. All these were so many miracles of human genius; and their works afford the models of their respective species of composition. Most of the works of the ancients have in sentiment, if not in spirit, been translated into English.

_Miracles_, wonders.

_Genius_, natural talent.

_Respective_, particular.

_Sentiment_, thought, meaning.

Did not the same revolution which undermined the Greek and Roman empires, and destroyed learning, the arts and sciences, and the taste for elegance and luxury, also prove fatal to Poetry?

It did; the hordes of barbarians who overran Europe wiped out civilization in their progress, and literature, art, and science fled before the wild conquerors to find a refuge in the monastery and the convent. Here knowledge was fostered with the love and ardor which religion alone can impart. Finally, when the rude barbarians were converted, it was to the religious Orders that the world turned for the establishment of schools, and it is to the Church alone, in the person of her popes, her bishops, and her monks that we are indebted for the preservation of learning, and its revival in the fifteenth century.

What celebrated Poets marked this revival?

In Italy, Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch and Ta.s.so. These were followed, in France, by Racine, Corneille, Boileau, Voltaire, La Fontaine and Delille; in England, by Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Young, Collins, Gray, Byron, Coleridge, &c; in Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott; in Ireland, by Thomas Moore; in Germany, Klopstock, Goethe and Schiller.

Name some of the distinguished poets of our own country.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and many others whose meritorious works will be impartially judged by a future age.

_Impartially_, justly, without prejudice.

Name the different kinds of Poetry.

Epic, or historical; dramatic, or representative,--from drama, the name of all compositions adapted to recitation on the stage--in which are displayed, for instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt, all the pa.s.sions, feelings, errors, and virtues of the human race in real life; lyric poetry, or that suited to music, as songs, odes, &c; didactic, or instructive; elegiac, or sentimental, and affecting; satirical, or censorious; epigrammatic, or witty and ludicrous; and pastoral, or descriptive of country life.

_Historical_, relating to history.

_Lyric_, pertaining to a lyre.

_Didactic_, doctrinal; relating to doctrines or opinions.

_Elegiac_, relating to elegy; mournful, sorrowful.

_Elegy_, a mournful song: a funeral composition; a short poem without points or affected elegance.

_Satirical_, severe in language; relating to satire.

_Satire_, a poem in which wickedness or folly is censured.

_Epigrammatic_, relating to epigram,--a short poem ending in a particular point or meaning, understood but not expressed.

_Pastoral_, from _pastor_, a shepherd; relating to rural employments and those belonging to shepherds.

What is Astronomy?

The science which treats of the heavenly bodies, their arrangement, magnitudes, distances and motions. The term Astronomy is derived from two Greek words, signifying the _law_ of the _stars_; _astron_ being the Greek for star.

What can you say of its origin?

Its origin has been ascribed to several persons, as well as to different nations and ages. Belus, King of a.s.syria; Atlas, King of Mauritania; and Ura.n.u.s, King of the countries situated on the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic Ocean, are all recorded as the persons to whom the world is indebted for this n.o.ble science. Its origin is generally fixed in Chaldea. Some choose, however, to attribute it to the Hebrews; others to the Egyptians,--from whom, they say, it pa.s.sed to the Greeks.

What country is meant by Mauritania?

Mauritania is the name formerly given to a country in the northern part of Africa. Chaldea is the ancient name for Babylonia, now called Irak Arabi, a district of Asiatic Turkey.

By whom were the heavenly bodies first divided into Constellations or groups?

By the ancients. The phenomena of the heavens were studied in very early ages by several nations of the East. The Chaldeans, the Indians, the Chinese and the Egyptians have all left evidence of the industry and ingenuity with which their observations were conducted.

_Phenomena_, appearances.