ELEGY

elegy, a short poem of lamentation or regret, called forth by the decease of a beloved or revered person, or by a general sense of the pathos of mortality. the greek word _[greek: elegeia]_ is of doubtful signification; it is usually interpreted as meaning a mournful or funeral song. but there seems to be no proof that this idea of regret for death entered into the original meaning of _[greek: elegeia]_. the earliest greek elegies which have come down to us are not funereal, although it is possible that the primitive _[greek: elegeia]_ may have been a set of words liturgically used, with music, at a burial. when the elegy appears in surviving greek literature, we find it dedicated, not to death, but to war and love. callinus of ephesus, who flourished in the 7th century, is the earliest elegist of whom we possess fragments. a little later tyrtaeus was composing his famous elegies in sparta. both of these writers were, so far as we know, exclusively warlike and patriotic. on the other hand, the passion of love inspires mimnermus, whose elegies are the prototypes not only of the later greek pieces, and of the latin poems of the school of tibullus and propertius, but of a great deal of the formal erotic poetry of modern europe. in the 6th century b.c., the elegies of solon were admired; they are mainly lost. but we possess more of the work of theognis of megara than of any other archaic elegist, and in it we can observe the characteristics of greek elegy best. here the dorian spirit of chivalry reaches its highest expression, and war is combined with manly love. the elegy, in its calm movement, seems to have begun to lose currency when the ecstasy of emotion was more successfully interpreted by the various rhythmic and dithyrambic inventions of the aeolic lyrists. the elegy, however, rose again to the highest level of merit in alexandrian times. it was reintroduced by philetas in the 3rd cent. b.c., and was carried to extreme perfection by callimachus. other later greek elegists of high reputation were asclepiades and euphorion. but it is curious to notice that all the elegies of these poets were of an amatory nature, and that antiquity styled the funeral dirges of theocritus, bion and moschus--which are to us the types of elegy--not elegies at all, but idylls. when the poets of rome began their imitative study of alexandrian models, it was natural that the elegies of writers such as callimachus should tempt them to immediate imitation. gallus, whose works are unhappily lost, is known to have produced a great sensation in rome by publishing his translation of the poems of euphorion; and he passed on to the composition of erotic elegies of his own, which were the earliest in the latin language. if we possessed his once-famous _cytheris_, we should be able to decide the question of how much propertius, who is now the leading figure among roman elegists, owed to the example of gallus. his brilliantly emotional _cynthia_, with its rich and unexampled employment of that alternation of hexameter and pentameter which had now come to be known as the elegiac measure, seems, however, to have settled the type of latin elegy. tibullus is always named in conjunction with propertius, who was his contemporary, although in their style they were violently contrasted. the sweetness of tibullus was the object of admiration and constant imitation by the latin poets of the renaissance, although propertius has more austerely pleased a later taste. finally, ovid wrote elegies of great variety in subject, but all in the same form, and his dexterous easy metre closed the tradition of elegiac poetry among the ancients. what remains in the decline of latin literature is all founded on a study of those masters of the golden age. when the renaissance found its way to england, the word "elegy" was introduced by readers of ovid and propertius. but from the beginning of the 16th century, it was used in english, as it has been ever since, to describe a funeral song or lament. one of the earliest poems in english which bears the title of elegy is _the complaint of philomene_, which george gascoigne began in 1562, and printed in 1576. the _daphnaida_ of spenser (1591) is an elegy in the strict modern sense, namely a poem of regret pronounced at the obsequies of a particular person. in 1579 puttenham had defined an elegy as being a song "of long lamentation." with the opening of the 17th century the composition of elegies became universal on every occasion of public or private grief. dr johnson's definition, "_elegy_, a short poem without points or turns," is singularly inept and careless. by that time (1755) english literature had produced many great elegies, of which the _lycidas_ of milton is by far the most illustrious. but even cowley's on crashaw, tickell's on addison, pope's on an unfortunate lady, those of quarles, and dryden, and donne, should have warned johnson of his mistake. since the 18th century the most illustrious examples of elegy in english literature have been the _adonais_ of shelley (on keats), the _thyrsis_ of matthew arnold (on clough), and the _ave atque vale_ of mr swinburne (on baudelaire). it remains for us to mention what is the most celebrated elegy in english, that written by gray in a country churchyard. this, however, belongs to a class apart, as it is not addressed to the memory of any particular person. a writer of small merit, james hammond (1716-1742), enjoyed a certain success with his _love elegies_ in which he endeavoured to introduce the erotic elegy as it was written by ovid and tibullus. this experiment took no hold of english literature, but was welcomed in france in the amatory works of parny (1753-1814), in those of chenedolle (1769-1833), and of millevoye (1782-1816). the melancholy and sentimental elegies of the last named are the typical examples of this class of poetry in french literature. lamartine must be included among the elegists, and his famous "le lac" is as eminent an elegy in french as gray's "country churchyard" is in english. the elegy has flourished in portugal, partly because it was cultivated with great success by camoens, the most illustrious of the portuguese poets. in italian, chiabrera and filicaia are named among the leading national elegists. in german literature, the notion of elegy as a poem of lamentation does not exist. the famous roman elegies of goethe imitate in form and theme those of ovid; they are not even plaintive in character. elegiac verse has commonly been adopted by german poets for their elegies, but by english poets never. schiller defines this kind of verse, which consists of a distich of which the first line is a hexameter and the second a pentameter, in the following pretty illustration:-- "in the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column. in the pentameter aye falling in melody back." the word "elegy," in english, is one which is frequently used very incorrectly; it should be remembered that it must be mournful, meditative and short without being ejaculatory. thus tennyson's _in memoriam_ is excluded by its length; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies. wordsworth's _lucy_, on the other hand, is a dirge; this is too brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy. _lycidas_ and _adonais_ remain the two unapproachable types of what a personal elegy ought to be in english. (e. g.) element (lat. _elementum_), an ultimate component of anything, hence a fundamental principle. _elementum_ was used in latin to translate the greek _[greek: stoicheion]_ (that which stands in a _[greek: stoichos]_, or row), and is a word of obscure origin and etymology. the root of lat. _alere_, to nourish, has been suggested, thus making it a doublet of _alimentum_, that which supports life; another explanation is that the word represents lmn., the first three letters of the second part of the alphabet, a parallel use to that of abc. apart from its application in chemistry, which is treated below, the word is used of the rudiments or _principia_ of any science or subject, as in euclid's _elements of geometry_, or in the "beggarly elements" (_[greek: taptocha stoicheia]_, of st paul in gal. iv. 9); in mathematics, of a fundamental concept involved in an investigation, as the "elements" of a determinant; and in electricity, of a galvanic (or voltaic) "element" in an electric cell (see battery: _electric_). in astronomy, "element" is used of any one of the numerical or geometrical data by which the course of a varying phenomenon is computed; it is applied especially to orbital motion and eclipses. the "elements of an orbit" are the six data by which the position of a moving body in its orbit at any time may be determined. the "elements of an eclipse" express and determine the motion of the centre of the shadow-axis, and are the data necessary to compute the phenomena of an eclipse during its whole course, as seen at any place. in architecture the term "element" is applied to the outline of the design of a decorated window, on which the centres for the tracery are found. these centres will all be found to fall on points which, in some way or other, will be equimultiples of parts of the openings. _chemical elements_. ancient ideas. like all other scientific concepts, that of an element has changed its meaning many times in many ways during the development of science. owing to their very small amount of real chemical knowledge, the generalizations of the ancients were necessarily rather superficial, and could not stand in the face of the increasing development of practical chemistry. nevertheless we find the concept of an element as "a substance from which all bodies are made or derived" held at the very beginning of occidental philosophy. thales regarded "water" as the element of all things; his followers accepted his idea of a primordial substance as the basis of all bodies, but they endeavoured to determine some other general element or elements, like "fire" or "spirit," or "love" and "hatred," or "fire," "water," "air" and "earth." we find in this development an exact parallelism to the manner in which scientific ideas generally arise, develop and change. they are created to point out the common part in a variety of observed phenomena, in order to get some leading light in the chaos of events. at first almost any idea will do, if only it promises some comprehensive arrangement of the facts; afterwards, the inconsistencies of the first trial make themselves felt; the first idea is then changed to meet better the new requirements. for a shorter or longer time the facts and ideas may remain in accord, but the uninterrupted increase of empirical knowledge involves sooner or later new fundamental alterations of the general idea, and in this way there is a never-ceasing process of adaptation of the ideas to the facts. as facts are unchangeable by themselves, the adaptation can be only one-sided; the ideas are compelled to change according to the facts. we must therefore educate ourselves to regard the ideas or theories as the changing part of science, and keep ourselves ready to accept even the most fundamental revision of current theories. the first step in the development of the idea of elements was to recognize that a _single_ principle would not prove sufficient to cover the manifoldness of facts. empedocles therefore conceived a double or binary elementary principle; and aristotle developed this idea a stage further, stating two sets of binary antagonistic principles, namely "dry-wet" and "hot-cold." the aristotelian or peripatetic elements, which played such a great role in the whole medieval philosophy, are the representatives of the several binary combinations of these fundamental properties, "fire" being hot and dry, "air" hot and wet, "water" cold and wet, "earth" cold and dry. according to the amount of these properties found in any body, these elements were regarded as having taken part in forming this body. concerning the reason why only these properties were regarded as fundamental, we know nothing. they seem to be taken at random rather than carefully selected; they relate only to the sense of touch, and not to vision or any other sense, possibly because deceptions in the sense of touch were regarded as non-existent, while the other senses were apparently not so trustworthy. at any rate, the aristotelian elements soon proved to be rather inadequate to meet the requirements of the increasing chemical knowledge; other properties had therefore to be selected to represent the general behaviour of chemical substances, and in this case we find them already much more "chemical" in the modern sense. elements of the alchemists. among the various substances recognized by the chemists, certain classes or groups readily distinguished themselves. first the metals, by their lustre, their heaviness, and a number of other common properties. according to the general principle of selecting a single substance as a representative of the group, the metallic properties were represented by "mercury." the theoreticians of the middle ages were rather careful to point out that common mercury (the liquid metal of to-day) was not at all to be identified with "philosophical" mercury, the last being simply the _principle_ of metallic behaviour. in the same way combustibility was represented by "sulphur," solubility by "salt," and occasionally the chemically indifferent or refractory character by "earth." according to the subsistence and preponderance of these properties in different bodies, these were regarded as containing the corresponding elements; conversely, just as experience teaches the chemist every day that by proper treatment the properties of given bodies may be changed in the most various ways, the observed changes of properties were ascribed to the gain or loss of the corresponding elements. according to this theory, which accounted rather well for a large number of facts, there was no fundamental objection against trying to endow base metals with the properties of the precious ones; to make artificial gold was a task quite similar to the modern problem of, e.g. making artificial quinine. the realization that there is a certain natural law preventing such changes is of much later date. it is therefore quite unjust to consider the work of the alchemists, who tried to make artificial gold, as consummate nonsense. _a priori_ there was no reason why a change from lead to gold should be less possible than a change from iron to rust; indeed there is no _a priori_ reason against it now. but experience has taught us that lead and gold are chemical elements in the modern sense, and that there is a general experimental law that elements are not transformable one into another. so experience taught the alchemists irresistibly that in spite of the manifoldness of chemical changes it is not always possible to change any given substance into another; the possibilities are much more limited, and there is only a certain range of substances to be obtained from a given one. the impossibility of transforming lead or copper into noble metals proved to be only one case out of many, and it was recognized generally that there are certain chemical families whose members are related to one another by their mutual transformability, while it is impossible to bridge the boundaries separating these families. work of robert boyle. the man who brought all these experiences and considerations into scientific form was robert boyle. he stated as a general principle, that only tangible and ponderable substances should be recognized as elements, an element being a substance from which other substances may be made, but which cannot be separated into different substances. he showed that neither the peripatetic nor the alchemistic elements satisfied this definition. but he was more of a critical than of a synthetical turn of mind; although he established the correct principles, he hesitated to point out what substances, among those known at his time, were to be considered as elements. he only paved the way to the goal by laying the foundations of analytical chemistry, i.e. by teaching how to characterize and to distinguish different chemical individuals. further, by adopting and developing the corpuscular hypothesis of the constitution of the ponderable substances, he foreshadowed, in a way, the law of the conservation of the elements, viz. that no element can be changed into another element; and he considered the compound substances to be made up from small particles or corpuscles of their elements, the latter retaining their essence in all combinations. this hypothesis accounts for the fact that only a limited number of other substances can be made from a given one--namely, only those which contain the elements present in the given substance. but it is characteristic of boyle's critical mind that he did not shut his eyes against a serious objection to his hypothesis. if the compound substance is made up of parts of the elements, one would expect that the properties of the compound substance would prove to be the sum of the properties of the elements. but this is not the case, and chemical compounds show properties which generally differ very considerably from those of the compounds. on the one hand, the corpuscular hypothesis of boyle was developed into the atomic hypothesis of dalton, which was considered at the beginning of the 19th century as the very best representation of chemical facts, while, on the other hand, the difficulty as to the properties of the compounds remained the same as boyle found it, and has not yet been removed by an appropriate development of the atomic hypothesis. thus boyle considered, e.g. the metals as elements. however, it is interesting to note that he considered the mutual transformation of the metals as not altogether impossible, and he even tells of a case when gold was transformed into base metal. it is a common psychological fact that a reformer does not generally succeed in being wholly consistent in his reforming ideas; there remains invariably some point where he commits exactly the same fault which he set out to abolish. we shall find the same inconsistency also among other chemical reformers. even earlier than boyle, joachim jung (1587-1657) of hamburg developed similar ideas. but as he did not distinguish himself, as boyle did, by experimental work in science, his views exerted only a limited influence amongst his pupils. phlogiston theory. in the times following boyle's work we find no remarkable outside development of the theory of elements, but a very important inside one. analytical chemistry, or the art of distinguishing different chemical substances, was rapidly developing, and the necessary foundation for such a theory was thus laid. we find the discussions about the true elements disappearing from the text-books, or removed to an insignificant corner, while the description of observed chemical changes of different ways of preparing the same substance, as identified by the same properties, and of the methods for recognizing and distinguishing the various substances, take their place. the similarity of certain groups of chemical changes, as, for example, combustion, and the inverse process, reduction, was observed, and thus led to an attempt to shape these most general facts into a common theory. in this way the theory of "phlogiston" was developed by g.e. stahl, phlogiston being (according to the usual way of regarding general properties as being due to a principle or element) the "principle of combustibility," similar to the "sulphur" of the alchemists. this again must be regarded as quite a legitimate step justified by the knowledge of the time. for experience taught that combustibility could be _transferred_ by chemical action, e.g. from charcoal to litharge, the latter being changed thereby into combustible metallic lead; and according to boyle's principle, that only _bodies_ should be recognized as chemical elements, phlogiston was considered as a body. from the fact that all leading chemists in the second half of the 18th century used the phlogiston theory and were not hindered by it in making their great discoveries, it is evident that a sufficient amount of truth and usefulness was embodied in this theory. it states indeed quite correctly the mutual relations between oxidation and reduction, as we now call these very general processes, and was erroneous only in regard to one question, which at that time had not aroused much interest, the question of the change of weight during chemical processes. lavoisier's reform. it was only after isaac newton's discovery of universal gravitation that weight was considered as a property of paramount interest and importance, and that the question of the changes of weight in chemical reactions became one worth asking. when in due time this question was raised, the fact became evident at once, that combustion means not loss but gain of weight. to be sure of this, it was necessary to know first the chemical and physical properties of gases, and it was just at the same time that this knowledge was developed by priestley, scheele and others. lavoisier was the originator and expounder of the necessary reform. oxygen was just discovered at that time, and lavoisier gathered evidence from all sides that the theory of phlogiston had to be turned inside out to fit the new facts. he realized that the sum total of the weights of all substances concerned within a chemical change is not altered by the change. this principle of the "conservation of weight" led at once to a simple and unmistakable definition of a chemical element. as the weight of a compound substance is the sum of the weights of its elements, the compound necessarily weighs more than any of its elements. an element is therefore a substance which, by being changed into another substance, invariably increases its weight, and never gives rise to substances of less weight. by the help of this criterion lavoisier composed the first table of chemical elements similar to our modern ones. according to the knowledge of his time he regarded the alkalis as elements, although he remarked that they are rather similar to certain oxides, and therefore may possibly contain oxygen; the truth of this was proved at a later date by humphry davy. but the inconsistency of the reformer, already referred to, may be observed with lavoisier. he included "heat and light" in his list of elements, although he knew that neither of them had weight, and that neither fitted his definition of an element; this atavistic survival was subsequently removed from the table of the elements by berzelius in the beginning of the 19th century. in this way the question of what substances are to be regarded as chemical elements had been settled satisfactorily in a qualitative way, but it is interesting to realize that the last step in this development, the theory of lavoisier, was based on quantitative considerations. such considerations became of paramount interest at once, and led to the concept of the _combining weights of the elements_. j.b. richter's work. the first discoveries in this field were made in the last quarter of the 18th century by j.b. richter. the point at issue was a rather commonplace one: it was the fact that when two neutral salt solutions were mixed to undergo mutual chemical decomposition and recombination, the resulting liquid was neutral again, i.e. it did not contain any excess of acid or base. in other words, if two salts, a'b' and a" b", composed of the acids a' and a" and the bases b' and b", undergo mutual decomposition, the amount of the base b' left by the first salt, when its acid a' united with the base b" to form a new salt a'b", was just enough to make a neutral salt a"b' with the acid a" left by the second salt. at first sight this looks quite simple and self-evident,--that neutral salts should form neutral ones again and not acid or basic ones,--but if this fact is once stated very serious quantitative inferences may be drawn from it, as richter showed. for if the symbols