Excerpt from The Historical Character of English Lyric The title which has been chosen for this lecture is perhaps open to criticism; but one of the first considerations which led to the choice of it was a wish to exclude, as far as possible, one of the thorniest, and not perhaps one of the most fruitful, of the innumerable questions of literary definition. The problems whether Lyric, as such and in the abstract, owes its differentia to form or to matter; whether its essence is subjective or objective; or whether this is to be found in such a very accidental and circumstantial essentiality as suitableness for actual singing, might of course be dragged into the present discussion, but only by a kind of not very heavenly violence. The historical character of those sorts or parts of poetry Which would generally be recognized as composing English lyric at successive periods might, reversing the ordinary practice of giving a short title be recognized as the 'long title of this paper. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.