he Golden Bough_ (Macmillan & Co., 1890-1915).

Grant Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_ (Grant Richards, 1897).

H. Bergson, _L'Evolution creatrice_ (F. Alcan, 1908).

F.B. Jevons, _The Idea of God in Early Religions_ (1910), and
_Comparative Religion_ (1913) (Cambridge University Press).

G.F. Moore, _History of Religions_ (T. & T. Clark, 1914).

A. Loisy, _La Religion_ (E. Nourry, 1917).

IV

RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY

WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM

PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD

When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
these main currents are:

(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.

(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.

Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.

How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the
literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of
poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
past; while the general line of advance is