that has been written in
poetry upon a particular subject. Japanese poetry has been classified and
sub-classified and double-indexed or even quadruple-indexed after a manner
incomparably more exact than anything English anthologies can show. I am
aware that this fact is chiefly owing to the ancient rules about subjects,
seasons, contrasts, and harmonies, after which the old poets used to
write. But whatever be said about such rules, there can be no doubt at all
of the excellence of the arrangements which the rules produced. It is
greatly to be regretted that we have not in English a system of
arrangement enabling the student to discover quickly all that has been
written upon a particular subject--such as roses, for example, or pine
trees, or doves, or the beauties of the autumn season. There is nobody to
tell you where to find such things; and as the whole range of English
poetry is so great that it takes a great many years even to glance through
it, a memorized knowledge of the subjects is impossible for the average
man. I believe that Macaulay would have been able to remember almost any
reference in the poetry then accessible to scholars,--just as the
wonderful Greek scholar Porson could remember the exact place of any text
in the whole of Greek literature, and even all the variations of that
text. But such men are born only once in hundreds of years; the common
memory can not attempt to emulate their feats. And it is very difficult at
the present time for the ordinary student of poetry to tell you just how
much has been written upon any particular subject by the best English
poets.

Now you will recognize some difficulties in the way of a lecturer in
attempting to make classifications of English poetry after the same manner
that Japanese classification can be made of Japanese poetry. One must read
enormously merely to obtain one's materials, and even then the result is
not to be thought of as exhaustive. I am going to try to give you a few
lectures upon English poetry thus classified, but we must not expect that
the lectures will be authoritatively complete. Indeed, we have no time for
lectures of so thorough a sort. All that I can attempt will be to give you
an idea of the best things that English poets have thought and expressed
upon certain subjects.

You know that the old Greeks wrote a great deal of beautiful poetry about
insects,--especially about musical insects, crickets, cicadas, and other
insects such as