terary School.+ In like manner it is interesting and sometimes
illumining to know the literary school or tendency to which a writer
belongs. Every author has his limitations and idiosyncrasies. First of
all, he may be a writer of prose alone or of poetry alone. In prose he
may confine himself to a single department, as fiction or history; or in
poetry he may be chiefly lyric, didactic, or dramatic. Within these
narrower spheres he may identify himself with a single tendency or group
of writers. In history he may be philosophic or narrative; in fiction he
may be a romanticist or a realist; in poetry he may be subjective or
objective in his treatment of themes. Scott's romanticism, for instance,
which delights in mediaeval scenes and incidents, is very unlike
Dickens's realism, which depicts the scenes and incidents of actual
contemporary life. George Eliot's psychologic novels are different from
those of either Scott or Dickens. Bryant's clear descriptions of nature
stand in striking contrast with Poe's mystical melodies.

+23. Mood and Purpose.+ It is important to understand the mood and
purpose of an author. We are not in a position fairly to judge a work
until we know its spirit and object. Until we know whether the writer is
playful or earnest, joyous or sad, satirical or serious, we cannot give
his words the right tone and value; and until we see clearly what he is
driving at, we cannot properly estimate the successive steps in his
production nor judge of its worth as a whole.

The moods expressed in literature are exceedingly various. Since
literature is the expression of the intellectual life of man, it
embodies the various moods and passions to which human nature is
subject. Sometimes, for example, there is laughing humor, as in Holmes's
"The Deacon's Masterpiece." Sometimes there is violent anger, as in
Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." We feel his unrestrained
wrath, as he exclaims,--

"Prepare for rhyme--I'll publish right or wrong;
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song."

Sometimes the mood is one of pensive meditation, as when Gray sits alone
in the country churchyard amid deepening twilight:

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

Sometimes it is a righteous indignation that blazes and burns, as when
Carlyle excla