here can only be that which
I have said at the beginning of this lecture,--namely, the enlargement of
the old moral ideas, and the deeper comprehension of their value in all
relations of life.

CHAPTER X

SOME POEMS ABOUT INSECTS

One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is
the want of an index. The importance of being able to refer at once to any
subject treated of in a book was not recognized until the days when exact
scholarship necessitated indexing of the most elaborate kind. But even now
we constantly find good books severely criticized because of this
deficiency. All that I have said tends to show that even to-day in Western
countries the immense importance of systematic arrangement in literary
collections is not sufficiently recognized. We have, of course, a great
many English anthologies,--that is to say, collections of the best typical
compositions of a certain epoch in poetry or in prose. But you must have
observed that, in Western countries, nearly all such anthologies are
compiled chronologically--not according to the subject of the poems. To
this general rule there are indeed a few exceptions. There is a collection
of love poetry by Watson, which is famous; a collection of child poetry by
Patmore; a collection of "society verse" by Locker-Lampson; and several
things of that sort. But even here the arrangement is not of a special
kind; nor is it ever divided according to the subject of each particular
poem. I know that some books have been published of late years with such
titles as "Poems of the Sea," "Poems of Nature"--but these are of no
literary importance at all and they are not compiled by competent critics.
Besides, the subject-heads are always of much too general a kind. The
French are far in advance of the English in the art of making anthologies;
but even in such splendid anthologies as those of Crepet and of Lemerre
the arrangement is of the most general kind,--chronological, and little
more.

I was reminded to tell you this, because of several questions recently
asked me, which I found it impossible to answer. Many a Japanese student
might suppose that Western poetry has its classified arrangements
corresponding in some sort to those of Japanese poetry. Perhaps the
Germans have something of the kind, but the English and French have not.
Any authority upon the subject of Japanese literature can, I have been
told, inform himself almost immediately as to all