own pages in the most liberal manner snatches of Tanka, texts of Buddhist scripture, or striking phrases supplied by their memory from older writers, stringing them together, however, in a way which does much credit to their ingenuity. Plagiarism, it may be remarked, is hardly recognised as an offence by the Japanese.
The Nō are not classical poems. They are too deficient in lucidity, method, coherence, and good taste to deserve this description. Still they are not without charm. Jeux-de-mots are not everything in them, and the reader who has the patience to unravel their intricacies of language will not go altogether unrewarded. If their vein of poetic ore is less pure than that of the Manōoshiu and Kokinshiu, it is also richer. They embrace within their scope a world of legendary lore, of quaint fancies, and of religious sentiment, to which the classical poetry of Japan is a stranger. And if we miss the perfection of form which characterises the dainty little Tanka, we have instead a luxuriance and variety which go some way to indemnify us for its absence. It is to be regretted that so promising a literary departure should have proved ultimately abortive. After the sixteenth century the Nō ceased to be written. The current of the higher Japanese thought had by this time turned away from Buddhism and everything that belongs to it, and was setting strongly towards Chinese philosophy. Though the Nō were still performed, the impulse to write new ones was apparently no longer felt.
As dramas the Nō have little value. There is no action to speak of, and dramatic propriety and effect are hardly thought of. The plot is frequently something of the following description:—
A priest appears on the scene. He announces his
