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 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.