CHAPTER VIII

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ARTIST

From this brief raid upon the territory of poetic style, we return to

the fortunes of improvisation and its defeat at the hands of a more

deliberate art.[1142] Among the countless passages in which the poet has

talked of his profession, not the least notable is that _impromptu_ of

De Musset in which he says:—

Faire un travail exquis, plein de crainte et de charme,

Faire une perle d’une larme,

Du poëte ici-bas voila la passion,—

that is, of the poet whom one takes seriously, the artist, the solitary

maker of things beautiful. Quite different is the idea of the poet

implied in a pleasant little jest that passed between De Musset and

Sainte-Beuve. The critic had declared that in the majority of men there

is a poet who dies young while the man himself survives; whereupon De

Musset pointed out that Sainte-Beuve had unwittingly put his thought

into a good Alexandrine, and thus had helped to prove that the poet in

the case was not dead but asleep. Between this poet who dies young or

slumbers in each of us, and the artist in verse who makes pearls out of

tears, there is now only a fantastic and fugitive connection; in

mediæval times, in rude agricultural communities, and under primitive

conditions, this slumbering poet was awake and active, and the step from

his ranks to that of artistry was of the easiest and shortest kind. The

story of the poet is simple. Detaching himself from the throng in short

improvisations, he comes at last to independence, and turns his active

fellows into a mute audience; dignity and mystery hedge him about, his

art is touched with the divine, and like his brother, the priest, he

mediates between men and an imaginative, spiritual world, living, too,

like the priest, at the charges of the community. This was the upward

path; another path led the minstrel into ways of disrepute, where

dignity and mystery were unknown, where the songsmith was made a sturdy

beggar and an outlaw by act of parliament, and where there was little

comfort even in being the singing-man at Windsor. With the upward path

there is no space here to deal; the poet by divine right, moreover, has

had chroniclers enough and to spare, and it only remains to note the

later stages through which his communal brother passed on the way to

what seems an everlasting silence.

As the chosen singer stands out single from the throng and the throng

lapses passive into the background, so the poem which this singer makes

becomes a traditional and remembered affair, with epic movement and an

interest which causes art and substance of the song to outweigh any mere

expression of contemporary emotion. This, indeed, lingers in the chorus

or refrain of a ballad; but even the choral impulse passes away as the

story and the style of the poem increase in importance, and it

disappears behind the rhapsode,[1143] who chants or recites his verses

to a listening crowd. With permanent record, with the making of

manuscript,[1144] poetic art at its best ceases to be a matter of voice

and ear; two silent men, the poet and his reader, communicate by means

of the written or the printed page, itself the result of solitary

thought, and subject, at the other end of the process, to the same

deliberation and inference in the appreciation of it as the poet

employed in the making.[1145] But the obvious advantages of immediate

contact, of living voice, gesture, personal emotion, in the poet, and

palpable interest, whether active or passive, on the part of the

audience, made the disintegration and decay of this primitive group a

very slow affair. It survives even yet in the popular “reading,” and,

with higher pretensions, on the stage; but a far more interesting

survival, and more complete, is found among that people of strong poetic

impulses who gave the _improvvisatore_ his place of honour down to quite

recent times. The art was so common that it got the compliment of

parody; Pulci imitates the _improvvisatori_ in his _Morgante_,[1146] and

worse yet, the luckless bards who made extemporaneous verses at the

table of Leo X were whipped if these verses were not of the smoothest.

But this is only the shady side of the art. Quadrio[1147] thinks that if

the human mind anywhere puts forth its noblest powers, it is in that

craft called _canto all’ improvviso_;[1148] this, he says, was the

beginning of poetry, and is still one of its best achievements; and he

goes on to give some hints for the ambitious. Every one knows the

romantic figure of Corinne; but a better example for the present purpose

is Perfetti, an actual _improvvisatore_ whose feats drew attention

abroad as well as at home. He is mentioned in Spence’s _Anecdotes_; and

a few facts about him[1149] may be given here in order to show how the

fatal breach between poetry of mere entertainment, now in full process

of degeneration at the hands of the minstrel and balladmonger, and

poetry of creative and imaginative art, now veiled in mystery and seen

of none but consecrated eyes, was thought to be healed by the rapt

strains of these improvising poets of Italy. What grace, they argued,

could be lacking to one that was crowned at the Capitol, and stood in

the stead of Petrarch? Son of a cavalier and a noble lady, Perfetti

began very early his office as a bard; his Latin biographer, with vast

gravity, says the child made “what in our tongue is called rime” at

eleven months; small wonder that he became famous when still a youth,

and was welcomed at parties of every sort, weddings, social discussions,

what not, where he exercised his gift of extemporaneous song. Of a

summer night[1150] he would improvise songs in praise of some family,

singing under their windows, an amiable fancy. Cianfogni heard him on

these occasions, and says that the poems were often taken down in

writing by persons concealed from the poet’s view; but he rarely wrote

verses of his own, finding that sort of composition by no means to his

taste. He refused to undertake an epic, though the pope urged him thus

to rival Tasso and Ariosto. _Ottava rima_ was his favourite verse, and

he was fond of a musical accompaniment. His memory, too, was prodigious;

in brief, Cianfogni hopes that this Moses will lead poetry back from its

exile in a land of paper and print to its old glories of the living

voice and the hearing of the ear. The Latin pamphlet, which has some

interesting remarks on related matters in poetry, says that Perfetti

learned his art at Sienna from one Bindius “poeta extemporalis,” who

excelled in that sort of verse which Berni composed, and which was

called from its founder Bernesque. Come to his full powers, Perfetti

shunned no kind of poem, and excelled in every branch of the art. His

songs were repeated on all sides and passed current among the people;

while, for the rest, he could sing _majora_ too, winning applause from

the pope himself, and getting crowned at the Capitol in a function of

unusual splendour. Physically, his poetic ardour was formidable and

“almost passed belief,” eyes aflame, brow contracted, panting bosom, and

a flow of words so vehement and swift that his harp-player was often

left far in the rear; the song done, Perfetti could hardly stand for

exhaustion, and slept but little on the ensuing night.[1151] So

strenuous a life told on his health, one must think; at any rate, he

died of paralysis in July, 1747.

This account of Perfetti is amusing, but much may be learned from it.

Significant is the fact that he always sang his verses as he composed

them, kept to one fixed rhythm, and had a harp to accompany him,—music

once more in her original function as muse. Significant, too, is his

aversion from pen and paper, his sensible refusal to try epic and poems

of great length. That physical excitement and that reaction, too, are in

line with the old communal elation, and are at no great remove from

similar states of the body in medicine men, magicians, priests of the

oracle, and even the rapt poet of a traditional prime. Significant,

finally, is the feeling on the part of his friends that with him poetry

was going back to first principles, and could thus bathe in the fountain

of youth. But it was not to be. The communal fashion of poetry was

already a lost cause. _Soli cantare periti Arcades_; the “poet in every

man” is passive and not active; and the gift of improvisation comes now

in vain, for the conditions which once gave it sole validity are

vanished beyond recall. Shakspere’s kindred three, the lunatic, the

lover, and the poet, once frankly accepted as public and privileged

characters, sacred even, must now play the fool nowhere but in their own

houses.

* * * * *

Whatever it gained by the process, poetry has been forced to give up its

immediate power over men, and to console itself with what Herder called

a “paper eternity.” This triumphant artist, who now holds its destinies

in trust, stands at such a remove from its beginnings, his very art

seems so opposed to rude songs of the prime, and the public making of

verse[1152] has become so deject and wretched, that one must face again,

and this time in conclusion of the whole matter, a question of identity.

Is it all one and the same art? Has all this pother about refrain and

rhythm concerned the beginnings of actual poetry, or only hints and

forewarnings as alien to poetry itself as the brute beast is alien to

civilized man? Three answers may be made to this question. With

Aristotle, or rather with what one takes to be the meaning of Aristotle,

one may sunder as into two distinct arts the improvisation of primitive

throngs and the deliberate poetry of maker and seer. Here, of course, is

a denial of identity. Again, with Scherer,[1153] one may ignore

improvisation by throngs, recognize only the difference between oral and

written record, and assume for earliest poetry conditions analogous to

those of modern times,—the need for entertainment on the part of a

“public,” and the answering performance of an “entertainer” who

languishes or thrives according to the state of the literary market.

Here is identity outright, but far too much of it. Whatever the merits

of his _Poetik_, and it has great merits, Scherer was doomed to failure

from the first, because, as Bücher[1154] rightly objected, no one can

arrive at the spirit of primitive art by setting out from the categories

of modern art. Moreover, Scherer flies in the face of facts, while the

facts which go with that Aristotelian theory are surprisingly accurate.

Not a syllable in Aristotle’s brief account of poetic origins has been

assailed by all the evidence gathered for modern ethnology, and by all

the historical and comparative work undertaken on the basis of this new

material. Nevertheless, one hesitates before the Aristotelian theory of

absolute difference, just as one hesitates before the notion of absolute

identity. True, one must sunder the epoch of instinct, of throngs, and

of improvisation, from the epoch of deliberate and solitary art; but

this does not warrant one in granting to the second epoch alone the name

and fact of poetry. There is a third answer to the question, reasonable

in every way, which would neither transfer modern conditions to the

remote past, nor yet blot out one of the two periods of poetry, but

would see in all manifestations of the art, early and late, the presence

and play of two forces, one overwhelmingly conspicuous at the beginning,

the other overwhelmingly conspicuous now; forces which, in their

different adjustments, have conditioned the progress of song and verse

at every stage.

For it is clear that two forces[1155] have been always active not only

in letters but in human life, and that these forces answer to the

communal influence dominant in early poetry and the centrifugal,

individual tendency in modern verse. One phase of this dualism in poetry

has been discussed above;[1156] it is now in order to look at it not

with separation and analysis in view, but rather with an eye to the

higher synthesis. No one questions the antithesis between man solitary

and man social; and few will question the relative dominance of this or

that type for any given age of the world. There are times so stamped by

the individual impulse that all kinds of covenant, system, institution,

are attacked, and nowhere more fiercely than in affairs of religion and

of state. Seventeenth-century England is a case of this kind;

individuals rush off to the wilderness to think and dream, and then rush

back again to found a new sect. On the large stage the state is

Cromwell, and on the small stage Quakerism is George Fox. Again, and for

the other view, seventeenth-century France[1157] is a place of order,

tradition, and collective peace. True, names are also current along with

creed and rule, Bossuet, Boileau, and the great Louis himself; but it is

dogma and order, not disintegration, that they proclaim. Consent is

supreme here, as dissent is supreme across the Channel. In any line of

human effort, and at any given time, one of these forces is dominant.

But after all, it is only of a relative dominance that one can speak,

and these labels that the historian puts upon his entire epoch are good

until another historian, with another phase of it in mind, takes up the

brush. There is constant play of those opposing forces, and if the

collective spirit brought order, tradition, cohesion, to the late

seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, the individual spirit even

then fostered, as never before, the idea of a great man as mainspring in

social progress. So, too, if disintegration ruled in seventeenth-century

England, there was no lack of the collective and communal force; witness

the social organization and religious democracy of the Quakers

themselves. It was a time of sects and schisms; it was also a time of

commonwealths spiritual, political, and social.

With this constant play and change of the two forces in mind, one may

return to poetry itself and attempt a summary of the whole case, noting

the alternation of communal and individual impulses, and seeking, by a

study of their manifestations, to bring the beginning of the art into

line with its present condition. It has been shown how easily confusion

besets a discussion of that savage culture which is now declared

communal in every way, and now painted as individual to the extreme of

brute selfishness. So, too, when one says that early poetry was

overwhelmingly choral and communal, that modern poetry is overwhelmingly

individual, one has full warrant of facts; but it is well to remember

just what these facts are, and so avoid ill-considered criticism. Poetry

was a social creation and essentially communal at the start; although

some of the most careful investigations in the early history of

man[1158] are now putting stress upon the fact that for perhaps

thousands of years humanity was hovering on the far border of communal

organization, and led a mainly selfish and unsocial life. Man of this

period did not have to unite with his fellows for purposes of mutual

help and for defence against a common foe; like many wild animals, he

could have roved about in smallest groups, each member of which got its

own food for itself, often, as in favoured climates, with a minimum of

exertion. Hence, too, for long stretches of time, no need of organized

labour, of any economic system. But these needs all came at last;[1159]

and when primitive man confronted them, he began his social history, and

communal life was a fact. Here, too, in these rude communal beginnings,

consent and rhythm played their parts. Now it is no argument whatever

against the assumption that earliest poetry was strongly communal to say

that earliest social man himself was only feebly and tentatively

communal; the point is that where he was communal it was to a degree

rendered utterly impossible for the present, and almost incredible for

the past, by reason of the very social progress in which that communism,

that consent, formed the first step. So, too, when it is said that the

individual element in primitive poetic art was at a minimum, there is

nothing counter to this assertion in the fact that early man was close

to the absolutely individual and centrifugal state; whenever the

individual made himself felt in poetry, it was as an individual bound by

the new social tie, and his individual expression was a part of the

communal expression. But, as was just said, the new communal element, so

far as it went, was communal to an almost exclusive degree; not until

after long ages of alternating collective and individual forces, working

within the social union, was the individual socially free to make

himself master in a wholly social art. It is a fact full of significance

that the nearer social groups, like the Veddahs and the Botocudos, stand

to the brutish, unstable, isolated, and wandering life of earliest man,

so much the closer and more emphatic is their tentative expression of

social consent in the dance, which is almost a continuous ring of

humanity, with just two prominent characteristics: the tightest possible

clasp of individual to individual, and the most exact consent of rhythm

in the limbs that are free to move. Yet when the dance is past, and the

ring is broken, its individual members go back to a life marked by

hardly any social traits. As to labour, Bücher[1160] puts stress on the

priority of women in gregarious songs of toil; while men were stalking

game, the women combined in movements and chorals of work,[1161] and a

certain antithesis is not far to seek which would give women the primacy

in early stages of poetry, while men lord it almost exclusively in these

latter days. No woman, with the doubtful exception of Sappho, has

crossed the bounds of what is known as minor poetry; no woman, though

women sing and have most need of song from the cradle to the death-bed,

has been a great composer; no woman, not even George Eliot or any of her

clever cousins in New England, has yet laid hold of that quality which

goes with triumphs of the individual poet, the quality of humour. Why

women were so prominent in the communal poetry of the beginnings, is

easily answered and is a question to be asked; why women fail as

individuals to reach the higher peaks of Parnassus, is a question

perhaps not to be asked, although the answer might well seem a distinct

recognition of woman’s great services to the art. At certain stages of

poetry women have been nursing mothers without whose love and zeal for

song poetry would have fallen into evil ways indeed. In any case, woman

looms larger than man in that shadowy world of beginnings; her life was

more consistently social, and her quicker emotional nature, whatever it

may seem to modern eyes, gave her an advantage over the more stolid and

more solitary male.

How is one to bind these beginnings to the present condition of poetry?

With that alternation of social, choral impulses and impulses of the

individual, poetry is not simply swinging back and forth between two

positions, but makes a steady advance. As in social progress, at each

fresh occasion on which the individual isolates himself from society, he

takes with him the accumulated force that society, by its main function,

has stored up from traditions of the past, and as whenever he returns to

society, he brings back as his own contribution a fresh strength derived

from more or less unfettered thinking over vital problems, so it is with

communal and artistic forces in poetry. For the mere case of poetry as a

body of literature, on one hand, and the poet as an individual on the

other hand, this relation is plain enough, and speaks for itself. Poetry

does even more for the poet than the poet does for poetry. But when one

passes from materials to conditions and elements, asking for what is

social or communal in the modern poetry of art at its best, few answers,

if any, are to be heard. Some answer, however, is demanded, and it must

try to rise to the height of so great an argument. Where, then, is the

trace of direct communal elements in great poetry?

The modern artist in poetry triumphs mainly by the music of his verse

and by the imaginative power which is realized in his language, often

merely by the suggestion in his language; for poetry, as Sainte-Beuve

prettily remarked, lies not in telling the story but in making one dream

it. For present purposes, then, it will be enough to look at the formal

quality of rhythm and the more creative quality of imagination. Assuming

that the second chapter of this book proved what it set out to prove,

one must see in rhythm, or regularity of recurrence due to the

consenting cadence of a throng, the main representative of communal

forces; although repetition in its other forms goes back to the very

condition of choral poetry itself. Because the critics take rhythm and

verbal repetition largely for granted in the work of any great poet, and

look rather to his excellent differences in thought and in variation of

style, one must not ignore the immense significance of those communal

forces in the poetry of art. It is not the mere rhythm, grateful,

exquisite, and powerful as that may be, but it is what lies behind the

rhythm, that gives it such a place in poetry; it appeals through the

measures to the cadent feet, and so through the cadent feet to that

consent of sympathy which is perhaps the noblest thing in all human

life. The triumphs of modern prose are great, but they fail one and all

to take the place of rhythmic utterance; they fail even to do at their

best what poetry often does in its mediocrity. The short story commands

pathos to an almost intolerable degree; Balzac’s heartless daughters

bring old Père Goriot close to the plight of Lear, so far as this pathos

is concerned; and when Ibsen wishes to touch the quick of things in a

play, he does well, from his point of view, to discard jingling verses

and to use the prose of common conversation, thus bringing one face to

face with the pathos of bare and actual life,—very actual and very bare.

Pathos, indeed, all these prose triumphs show, and pathological is the

word for them. They belong to surgery. Poetry, recoiling from bare and

actual life, has a very different function. Significant is the popular

use of this word, poetry; when one says that the poetry has gone out of

one’s life, one means that something very like Ibsen has come in, that

one can no longer idealize life and can see in it only its flatness and

bareness. The cadence of those feet has ceased, and with it the hint of

consent and sympathy. For when the Veddahs leave their solitary and

often desperate search for food, come together, cling each to each as

close as may be in that arrow-dance of theirs, and sing for hours their

monotonous chorus, it is certainly not done in order that they may see

bare and actual life, but rather that they may escape it and forget it.

It is not surgery they seek, but medicine, and this either tonic or

opiate; indeed, the twofold function of poetry could be ranged under

such a head. Tonic were the cheery chorals of actual labour, old as

social man, songs of battle and the march, festal recapitulation of hunt

and work and fight. They idealized life; they appealed to sympathy, and

heartened the solitary by a sense of brotherhood. So, in these latter

days, tonic are the passages which stir the heart of a young man who

reads wisely his Goethe, and tonic too—why not?—all those jingling

platitudes beloved and quoted of the youth who make valedictory speeches

in the village school; tonic, in fine, whatever _gedenke zu leben_ rings

out from poets of the virile and the sane. And from the beginning to the

end, this tonic poetry falls naturally into the rhythm of a march. On

the other hand, poetry is an opiate; the solitary man ran to a choral

throng not only that he might find brotherhood and sympathy, but also

that he might forget himself,—a task which the wild chorus of Dionysos

could accomplish no less surely and thoroughly than the very grapes and

vintage of the god. Like these, poetry helped man to forget his

troubles; like these, the whirl and motion of cadenced dancing brought

about a kind of intoxication; and the graceful words with which Sir

William Temple concludes his essay on poetry have gained a deeper and

yet a more literal meaning through the researches of ethnology and the

proof which now lies before us of the extent to which primitive man has

found in dance and song a refuge from the bare hideousness of life. For

this early art, for this soothing and flattering function of it, the

main force lay in rhythm; and if one wishes to call rhythm the

conventional part of poetry, one degrades it not a whit by the name.

Early poetry was exactly that,—a conventional affair, an idealized view

of life, now tonic and now opiate in its aim. But whether to hearten or

to soothe, stimulant or sedative, poetry found its initial source of

energy in rhythm; most intimate of all the arts, and nearest to the

heart of man, poetry will part with this pulse of rhythm only when the

sea shall part with its tides.

Rhythm, then, binds in a single bond both the beginning and the end. But

its formula is one which any rimer can use with more or less skill, and

modern verse makes far wider and deeper claims, claims which no one has

thought to carry back to the beginnings of poetry. Where, in those early

days, was that rare quality of imagination to which the critic now

appeals when he sets off a masterpiece of poetry from its rivals? To

answer this question, one cannot cite mere history; chorus and refrain

and shards of rustic rime must be left aside; and one must even beg a

little help from æsthetics itself: _so muss denn doch die Hexe dran_.

Described in its simplest form, the quality of modern poetic imagination

seems to be a power, by suggestive use of musical and figurative human

speech, to put the solitary reader into the mood which would arise

naturally in him under the pressure of certain actual events or of a

certain actual scene. To repeat the phrase of Sainte-Beuve, “la poésie

ne consiste pas à tout dire, mais à tout faire rêver.” Even primitive

poetry was an idealization, an abstraction, a narcotic, a kind of waking

dream; modern poetry is also a dream, but with deeper and wider issues,

and with a purpose far more clearly defined. Now the great passages of

poetry, such as those which Matthew Arnold used as tests for excellence,

easily fall into one of the two categories; they revive, even create,

the mood felt either in the pressure of actual events or in the presence

of an actual scene. That beautiful line which Arnold quotes from Dante

is simply the imaginative and conventionalized sense of beatific worship

such as all men have felt in varying degree; while for the thousand

cases where nature is treated, there can be no doubt whatever of the tie

which binds even the most imaginative and solitary poet to the old

singing throng. Nature is nothing without man to interpret it; and

neither man nor nature could stand in this mutual relation had not

social consent and social processes created these abstract ideas, this

very “man,” this very “nature,” by the reciprocal working of communal

and individual forces. It was thus a social process which brought man to

read his condition and fates in terms of nature, or else to read nature

in terms of his own condition and fates. His own condition and fates

were ideas that came to him through a kind of social reflection; and

nature grew “poetic” only by reason of man’s social organization, which

sprang from consciousness of kind, took shape in consent, and has

begotten first the communal idea and then the idea of humanity. Only the

eye “which hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality” can see the “poetic”

side of nature; and even man’s mortality is a fact which came home to

him in this poetic sense only when social organization had put the

notion of humanity before his mind. So much is said of being “alone with

nature” as a necessary condition for the enjoyment of its poetic side,

and for sympathy with it, that one forgets what sympathy means. The

social foundation is now forgotten; without it, however, there would be

no poet’s solitary rapture at all. Sympathy of the poet at its highest

is only rising to a new pitch in the sense of kind; and although the

prayer of St. Francis[1162] has been quoted nigh unto death, one may be

allowed to revive it, not merely because of its wide sympathy, embracing

“my brother, the sun,” and all created things, but also because this

sympathy is the poetic expression of an idea which St. Francis put into

actual working on earth, in that community of brothers in the bonds of

divine and human love.

Nature, however, and the fates of man are not always so stupendous or so

abstract in their relations. There is a close, familiar tie, now cheery

in its kind, and now sad, in the coming and going of the seasons. How

much of modern poetry is bound up with this simple and obvious motive;

and how easily one finds here the connection between new song and old!

In a preceding chapter it was the difference we sought; here it is the

identity, not merely of rhythm, but of imaginative force. Much has been

said of that lyric appeal to the season and to the scene with which rude

songs of the dance, and, later, actual ballads, were wont to begin:

_Sumer ys ycumen in_, and _Lenten is comen with Love to toune_, are

fossil bits of English verse in this kind. So, too, as the coming season

was welcomed, the parting season had its lyric regret. What more is done

by the most imaginative poem of our day, than to revive in the solitary

reader that immediate delight or sorrow of the singing and dancing

throng? When one says that the poet ennobles this actual scene, and adds

something which was not present in sunshine and woods and waters and

green earth, not even in the song of the birds, what else does one mean

but that the poet has brought these things under the spell of human

emotion, precisely as the human emotion of the dancers mingled with the

scene of their festivity? Nothing is more common in folksong than lament

for wintry desolation, for the silence and absence of the birds. Walther

von der Vogelweide touches the old motive and the old cadence with

slight but graceful art; and it is “I” instead of “we,” although the

communal emotion is not far away. Then comes the full power of

imagination in a certain sonnet, and in a certain line of it:—

Bare, ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Take away the “ruin’d choirs,” and of course one takes away Shakspere;

but there is another alternative. Take away the older festal throngs of

summer, the sorrowing throngs at its close; take away that cadence of

consenting feet which echoes in the verse; take away the human sympathy

which was so fostered by this consent,—and those “ruin’d choirs” are

left as purposeless and idle as the void of space.

So, too, with other forms of imagination in poetry. Nature apart, and on

themes as abstract as one will, great artistic poetry is still powerless

to sever its connection with this communal imagination of sympathy and

consent. Some of the strong passages in later poetry derive their energy

from despair. “Man’s one crime,” says the Spaniard, “is to have been

born;” while between Fitzgerald and the tentmaker lies the credit for

that verse which bids God take as well as give pardon for the wickedness

of mankind. This is called sublime. When the savage beats and breaks his

gods, or reviles them in reiterated verse, he is called silly; but

perhaps his disillusions, put into choral statement, may bring him

something of that grim comfort which civilized man finds in a rhythmic

defiance not absolutely different in kind. Nor, again, was the passing

of a god, or of a system of gods, the same thing for communal chorus

with those mounting races in the prime, as with these belated and

stunted hordes. Defiance, however, apart, on the positive religious side

choral praise is still a fact; and choral comment on the ways of God

with man, that enthusiasm for which imagination is only a substitute,

that _sursum corda_ of congregational singing, that lapse of the

individual and that triumph of the community, are enough to check one’s

impulse to think of early communal singing in terms of a Gilbert and

Sullivan opera. It is hard, indeed, to pass back from conditions of

solitary and artistic imagination to conditions of communal imagination;

but the process is not impossible. If one will simply open a Shakspere

and read aloud the passage where Ophelia tells her father how Hamlet

came to her closet and bade her that silent farewell; the praise of

friendship chanted so finely by Hamlet to Horatio; the parting at dawn

of Romeo and Juliet; the declaration of Portia;[1163] the last speech of

Othello; Macbeth arming for the final fight; Prospero at the end of the

mask: familiar as these all are, the mere series of impressions will

give one a new sense of the varied creative power to be found in a

single field of poetry. Then, with all this ringing in one’s ears, let

one read aloud the shorter version of _Sir Patrick Spens_, and compare

its imaginative range with the imaginative range of Shakspere. Neither

simplicity alone, nor the change from drama to ballad, will cover this

difference.[1164] The strongest differencing element is the antithesis

of individual artistic imagination in widest range, and of sympathy

concentrated upon a small, but compact group. It is a step from the

great world to a little canton, from humanity to a clan; spaces have

shrunk, and sympathy almost lies in that actual touch of hand and hand,

which once did for primitive poetry what imagination now does for the

poet. At the heart of them both, however, drama and ballad, is this

sympathy and consent of kind. True, the ballad is late and has its share

of art; but the line drawn to it from the drama is a curve to be

projected into prehistoric conditions, and able to connect the crude

sympathy of kind expressed in choral repetition with noblest imaginative

achievements of the perfected art.

To create the communal elements, poetry had to pass through ages of

preparation. Dreary ages they seem now, and rudest preparation, in

contrast with present verse; but it may be said that the poetry was not

insipid for its makers and hearers, and the art was not crude for the

primitive artists. One must ignore with equal mind the romantic notion

of a paradise of poetry at the prime, as well as a too fondly cherished

idea of ethnology that belated if not degraded wanderers on the bypaths

of human culture are to stand as models for the earliest makers of song.

Let one think of that poetry of the beginnings as rude to a degree, but

nobly rude, seeing that it was big with promise of future achievement,

and not a thing born of mere stagnation. Circling in the common dance,

moving and singing in the consent of common labour, the makers of

earliest poetry put into it those elements without which it cannot

thrive now. They put into it, for the formal side, the consent of

rhythm, outward sign of the social sense; and, for the nobler mood, they

gave it that power by which it will always make the last appeal to man,

the power of human sympathy, whether in love or in hate, in joy or in

sorrow, the power that links this group of sensations, passions, hopes,

fears, which one calls self, to all the host of kindred selves dead,

living, or to be born. No poetry worthy of the name has failed to owe

its most diverse triumphs to that abiding power. It is in such a sense

that prehistoric art must have been one and the same with modern art.

Conditions of production as well as of record have changed; the solitary

poet has taken the place of a choral throng, and solitary readers

represent the listening group; but the fact of poetry itself reaches

below all these mutations, and is founded on human sympathy as on a

rock. More than this. It is clear from the study of poetic beginnings

that poetry in its larger sense is not a natural impulse of man simply

as man. His rhythmic and kindred instincts, latent in the solitary

state, found free play only under communal conditions, and as powerful

factors in the making of society.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INDEX

A

Accent, 39.

Addison, 136.

Adonis, 236.

Æschylus, 369.

Æsthetics, 119, 468.

Afghans, songs of the, 395.

Africa, songs of, 200, 204, 249 f., 252, 270 f., 289, 329, 394, 397 f.

Albania, poetry of, 217, 228.

Algeria, songs of, 203.

Allegory, 145, 307.

Allen, F. D., 85, 260.

Alliteration, 68 f., 75, 86 ff., 256, 267.

Amœbean, 123, 144, 200, 400 f., 408 ff., 458 f.

Animals, songs of, 8, 100.

Anthology, 32.

Arabic verse, 79.

Arabs, 395.

Arcadia, the, 61.

Aretino, 144.

Aristotle, 1, 42 ff, 113, 132, 136, 369 f., 433, 453, 459 f.

Armenia, songs of, 203.

Arnold, M., 410, 421, 468.

Arval hymn, 69, 260 f., 297 f., 334.

Aryan verse, 85 ff.

Ass, feast of the, 301.

Assyria, poetry of, 261.

Attila, 264; funeral of, 223 f.

Aubrey, 225, 289, 302, 304.

Augustine, St., 222.

Ausonius, 287 f.

Australia, songs of, 171, 330;

_vocero_ in, 248.

B

Babylon (ballad), 195 f.

Bacon, 33 f., 45, 435, 460.

Bagehot, 36, 169.

Bain, 57, 365.

Baldwin, J. M., 9, 16, 364, 384.

Ballad, 27 f., 64, 70, 72 f., 116, 130, 134, 156, 164 ff., 168 f., 172,

175, 314, 316 ff., 321, 327, 342, 415, 422, 454, 472;

epithets in the, 193 ff;

making of the, 184;

material of the, 179;

passing of the, 164 ff., 177, 211, 271 f., 292 f., 303.

Ballade, 257.

Ballads, not indecent, 169 ff.;

omissions in, 197 f.;

rank in, 177;

recited, 189, 326;

style of, 189 ff.

_Ballati_, 231.

Ballet, 433.

Ball-playing, 97, 337.

Balzac, 466.

Barbour, 265.

Baring-Gould, 168, 342.

Barnes, Dr. Thomas, 50.

Barth, 360.

Bartsch, 242.

Basques, the, 234, 395.

Bastian, 330, 361, 385, 428.

Batteux, 108.

Baudelaire, 32, 59.

Baumgarten, 38.

Beattie, 35.

Beaurepaire, 293.

Bechtel, 449.

Bell, 307.

_Béowulf_, 193, 222 ff., 331.

Béranger, 140.

Berger, A. E., 136, 164.

Bergk, 85.

Bernheim, 362.

Berni, 457.

Bertrand, 32, 59.

Bible, 48, 56 ff., 124 f., 186 f., 226 f., 261 ff., 271, 361, 423.

Biedermann, 75 f., 256.

Biology, 13, 363 f.

Bion, elegy of, 237.

Bistrom, 188, 198, 211.

Blacksmith, songs of the, 276 f.

Blackwell, 131, 454.

Bladé, 203, 218, 233, 234 ff., 279, 341.

Blank verse, preaching in, 80.

Blankenburg, 433.

Blémont, 170, 382.

Boas, 96.

Boat-songs, 98, 265, 272 ff., 289 f.

Böckel, 70, 72, 110, 168, 185, 270 ff., 307.

Böhme, 182, 281, 283, 308, 328, 343, 415.

Bolte, 426.

Borrow, George, 234.

Borrowing in literature, 351 ff.

Bosanquet, 56.

Botocudos, 94 f., 189, 209, 312, 330, 374, 390 f., 421, 439, 463.

Bourdeau, 362.

Boynton, J. H., 317 f.

Brandl, 413.

Brand’s _Antiquities_, 218, 276, 294, 296 f., 303 f., 306 f., 343.

_Branle_, The, 341.

Brazilians, songs of the, 246 ff.

Breath-lengths, 94, 100 f.

Brenner, 406.

Breton ballads, 183.

Bright, J. W., 148.

Brinkmann, 452.

Brinton, D. G., 190, 253, 313 f.

Broadwood and Maitland, 294 f., 302.

Brown, Baldwin, 251, 367 f.

Brown, Dr. John, 96.

Brown, T. E., 410.

Browning, R., 30, 347.

Bruchmann, 64, 70, 171, 428 f.

Brücke, 81.

Brugmann, 445.

Brugsch, 236.

Brunetière, 6, 26 f., 377, 389.

Bücher, 10, 63, 107 ff., 270 ff., 345, 369, 373, 386, 459 f., 462, 464.

Buck, Dr. Gertrude, 446, 448.

Buckle, 127, 175.

Budde, 62, 186, 218, 226 f., 262.

Bugge, 180.

Bujeaud, 166, 258.

Burckhardt, 141, 144, 158, 160, 425, 455.

Burdach, 432.

Burden, 275, 316 ff.

Burette, 346.

Burns, 170, 209, 308, 410.

Bushmen, 90.

C

Cædmon, 403.

Calmet, 124 f.

Campbell, J. F., 72, 179, 192, 400.

Cante-fable, 71 f., 97.

_Caracolu_, 231.

Carlyle, 51, 59.

Carmen, 68.

_Carmina Burana_, 207 f., 323.

_Carole_, the, 341.

Carstanjen, 359.

Carver, 249, 333.

Casaubon, I., 44 f.

Castrén, 200.

Catullus, 207, 217, 220, 258, 382.

Cell, the, 357 f.

Celts, _vocero_ of the, 239 ff.

Chambers, 323.

Chant, 80, 82 ff.

Chappell, 294, 305 f., 316, 319, 411.

Charles of Orleans, 150.

Charms, 205, 245, 283 f., 300.

Châteaubriand, 60.

Chaucer, 64, 146, 222, 229, 239, 447.

Child, Professor, 70, 164, 181, 307, 317, 319. 413 f.

Children, 9 ff., 102 ff.;

games of, 209, 297, 322 ff., 335 f., 344, 429;

songs of, 284.

China, drama in, 72;

songs in, 282.

Chorus, 27, 67, 70, 83, 86, 91 ff., 100, 105, 186, 219, 221, 236 f.,

238, 249, 257, 260, 262 f., 270 f., 295, 308 f., 315, 332, 420 f.,

422, 425, 440, 442 ff., 450, 454, 467, 471;

cereal, 255, 310;

Greek, 72, 186, 257, 261, 369, 372.

Church, the mediæval, 153.

Cnut, song of, 275.

Coleridge, 35, 51, 421.

Colour in ballads, 213 f.

_Commedia dell’ Arte_, 425.

Communal poetry, 116 ff., 122, 125, 129 ff., 158, 163 ff.;

elements of, 172.

Comparative literature, 352 ff.;

method, 31, 40.

Comparetti, 64, 177, 352, 355, 402, 443.

Comte, 152, 360, 378.

Condorcet, 10.

Consent, communal, 91, 101, 105, 107, 220 f., 255, 332, 348, 364, 376,

383, 386, 440, 461 f., 466.

Cook, voyages of, 331 f.

_Coplas_, 401, 405, 425.

Corsica, _vocero_ in, 231 ff.

Counting-out rimes, 201, 203 f.

Courthope, Professor, 181.

Coussemaker, 226, 280, 302 f., 324.

Crane, 325.

Crescimbeni, 229, 341 f., 456.

Criticism, 6, 31, 216.

Cumulative songs, 98, 200 ff., 278.

D

Dance, 84 f., 105, 106, 147, 174, 184, 188, 202, 209, 217, 222 f., 231,

246, 248, 250, 260 f., 275, 291, 299, 301, 305, 311 ff., 318 ff.,

322 ff., 327 ff., 354 f., 367, 370, 409, 412 f., 415, 428 ff., 431,

441, 443, 463 f., 466 f.;

in churches, 335;

by pairs, 321, 340 f.;

and rhythm, 69, 78.

Dances, panic, 338;

of the savage, 18 f., 90 ff., 95 f., 328 ff.

D’Annunzio, 60 f., 206, 230 f.

Dante, 45, 122 f., 142 f., 145, 341 f., 361, 468.

Darmesteter, 259, 395.

Darwin, 8, 24, 88, 357 f., 428, 431.

Daudet, 433.

Declamation, 82, 86 f., 99.

Degeneration, 16, 18.

Dekker, 47.

Déor, song of, 147, 266.

De Quincey, Thomas, 58.

Dialect, 190.

Dickens, 276 f.

Dilthey, 141.

Dithyramb, 66, 370.

Dixon, J. H., 294 f.

Donovan, 104 ff., 186, 345, 365, 368 f., 386, 392.

_Don Quixote_, 425.

Döring, 370, 420.

Douglas, Sir George, 167 f., 173.

Drack, M., 424.

Drama, 39, 66, 83, 106, 117, 189, 338, 424 ff., 434.

Drayton, 303.

Dryden, 59, 295.

Dualism, 116 ff., 136 ff.

Dubos, 35, 446.

Dunbar, 146, 151, 161.

Dunger, 406.

Düntzer, 68.

E

Earle, Professor, 197.

Ebert, 258, 306.

Egger, 215.

Egypt, poetry of, 271, 285;

_vocero_ in, 237 f.

Ehrenreich, 94 f.

_Elements, The Four_, 322 f.

Elliott, Ebenezer, 52.

Eloquence, 53.

Elyot, Sir T., 345 f.

Emerson, 35.

Emotion, 13, 83, 100, 105, 151 f., 155, 266, 364 f., 374 f., 386.

England, ballads of, 168, 183, 187, 326 f.

Enthusiasm, 126 f.

Epic, 39, 66, 117, 174, 179, 189, 324, 420, 422 ff., 434.

Erotic dances, 336, 367;

songs, 8, 20, 88 f., 239, 401 f., 407, 420, 460.

Eskimo, 96 f.;

songs of the, 243, 311, 313, 391, 400.

Esthonians, 272.

Ethnology, 14 ff., 92 ff., 375;

evidences of, 19 ff., 22.

Ethology, 6.

Euphuism, 61.

Evolution, curves of, 26 ff., 84, 163, 172, 178, 422, 472.

F

Fabyan’s Chronicle, 265.

Fame, 141 f.

Faroe Islands, songs of, 318 f., 337. 399 f., 428 f.

Fauriel, 217, 227, 415.

Fell, Dr., 80.

Festal origin of speech, 104 ff.

Finns, poetry of the, 166, 198, 213, 252, 270, 355, 402, 452.

Firmenich, 204, 219, 287 f., 292, 302, 308, 324, 408 ff.

Flanders, ballads in, 226, 294, 303, 324.

Fletcher, Alice C., 254; Rev. Mr., 308.

Flyting, 144, 200, 212, 227, 279, 287 f., 306 ff., 321, 391, 399 ff.,

429, 458 f.

Folksong (see Ballad), 106.

Fontenelle, 117.

Foresinger, 315, 318 f., 327.

France, songs of, 139, 320, 325.

France, Anatole, 9, 139.

Francke, K., 152, 182.

Freericks, 259.

Freytag, 360.

Fuegians, 253.

Funeral, songs of the, see _Vocero_.

G

Gab, 331.

Gaelic ballads, 192.

Garnett, 425.

Gascoigne, 45.

Gascony, ballads and songs of, 203, 233, 235 f., 247, 279 f.

Gautier, 33, 359.

Gayley and Scott, 6, 54.

Geijer, 327.

Gender, 445 f.

Genius, 126.

Gerber, 370, 449, 452 f.

Germanic epic, 191, 198, 209, 447 f.;

poetry, 64;

verse, 86 ff.

Germany, ballads of, 168, 182 f., 190, 216.

Gesture, 330, 428, 431.

Giddings, F. H., 360, 372, 385.

Gnomic poetry, 95, 421.

Goethe, 2, 49, 73, 116 f., 118, 315, 410, 433.

Goldsmith, 36.

_Goncourt, Journal des_, 359, 433.

Gorgias, 66.

Gottsched, 10, 13, 64, 124.

Grasserie, R. de la, 76 ff.

Gray, T., 162, 197, 451.

Greek communal poetry, 266, 271, 284 f.;

poetry, modern, 192, 217, 227, 273, 415.

_Greenes Funeralls_, 206.

Grimm, J., 65, 133 f., 136 f., 182, 256, 283, 300, 341, 350, 436, 439,

445, 449.

Groos, 102, 337, 365.

Grosse, 14, 18, 22, 90, 178, 239, 336, 345, 378 f., 381, 383, 385.

Grube, 299, 315.

Grundtvig, 167, 176, 275, 317.

Gruppe, 14, 443.

Guest, 316, 318.

Guilds, 142, 149, 153, 160, 165 f.

Gumplowicz, 15, 359, 378.

Gurney, Edmund, 55, 89, 256.

Guyau, 3, 40, 121, 348, 387.

H

Haeckel, 9.

Hahn, J. G., 217, 228.

Halliwell, 284.

Hamann, 125.

Hampson, 276, 301.

Hardy, Thomas, 25, 114, 292, 344.

Harmony, 92, 109.

Harrison, Frederic, 56.

Hartmann, von, 361.

Harvest, Highland, 289 f.

Harvest-home, 178, 280 f., 286, 291, 294 f., 309.

Harvey, Gabriel, 207.

Haym, 152, 382.

Hazlitt, 36.

Hebrew prophets, 262 f.

Hebrews, dance of, 336, 346.

Heckewelder, 309 f.

Hegel, 33, 53 f., 423.

Heine, 161, 410.

Heinzel, 159, 177, 209, 448.

Henderson, 181.

Hennequin, 6, 359, 378, 388.

Herder, 119, 122, 125 f., 131 f., 171, 346, 458.

Hero and Leander, 179, 196.

Herodotus, 238, 374.

Herrick, 305.

Hesiod, 216, 437.

Higginson, Colonel, 97 f.

_Hildebrand Lay_, 212.

Hirn, Y., 260, 328, 336, 460.

Historical school, 122 ff.

History, 53.

Hoffmann, 94;

von Fallersleben, 269.

Hogg, James, 173.

Homer, 44, 49, 175, 221, 285, 333 f., 337, 361, 370, 382, 423, 437,

447.

Homogeneous community, 167 f., 176 ff., 244 f., 357, 374 ff., 443.

Hook, Theodore, 396.

Horace, 107, 142, 186, 404, 411.

Hudson, 366.

Hugo, Victor, 49, 121, 142 ff., 362.

Humboldt, W. von, 41, 133, 357, 382.

Humour, 159 ff., 464.

Hungary, poetry of, 64.

Hyde, Douglas, 404 f.

Hylas, 238.

Hymn, 153 f., 442 f.

I

“I,” in children, 9.

“I,” the, in ballads, 182 ff., 187 f.

“I,” the, in the Psalms, 186 f.

Ibsen, 466.

Iceland, songs of, 318 f., 337, 400 f.

Imagination, 35, 37, 136, 391, 468 ff.

Imitation, 352, 362, 369, 375, 386 f.

Improvisation, 92, 95, 97, 113, 180, 199, 212 f., 222, 227, 234, 240,

273, 275, 287 ff., 292, 311, 355, 369 f., 394 ff., 396 ff., 401 ff.,

404, 415 ff., 418 f., 421, 424 ff., 428 f., 432, 441, 455 ff.;

two kinds of, 396.

Inarticulate sounds, 30, 253, 260.

Indians, American, 93, 189, 245 ff., 253 ff., 273, 309 ff., 313 f., 333

f., 394.

Individual, 139, 141 ff., 151, 153, 155, 183, 212, 371 ff., 377 ff.,

381, 382 ff., 389, 391 ff., 393 f., 407, 421, 429, 432, 452, 464;

and society, 110 f., 116, 126, 147.

Infant, 12 ff., 100.

Instinct, 355 f., 363 ff., 383.

Invention, 349 ff., 361, 386 f.

Iranian verse, 85.

Isis, _vocero_ of, 237 f.

Italy, improvisation in, 424 ff., 455 ff.

J

Jacobowski, 11 ff., 254, 345.

Jacobs, Joseph, 71, 164.

Jacobsthal, 69, 93.

Japan, poetry of, 64;

songs of, 282.

Jeanroy, 174, 179, 207, 258, 308, 320 f., 341 f., 401, 405.

Jeremiah, 230.

Jessopp, 286, 291.

Jews, poem of the, 205.

Jigs, 342, 426.

Job, 58, 261.

Johnson, Dr., 37, 289 f., 347.

Jonson, Ben, 34, 169, 316.

Junod, 105.

K

_Kalevala_ (see Comparetti), 64.

Kawczynski, 349 ff.

Keane, A. H., 378.

Keasbey, L. M., 463.

Keats, 157.

Keening, 240 f.

Kenning, 191, 209, 452.

Khorovod, 327.

_Kîna_, the, 226 f.

Kind, sense of, 115, 348, 385 f., 472.

Kingsley, Miss, 254.

Kipling, 388, 452.

Kirn (see Harvest-home), 290 f.

Kleinpaul, 176.

Koester, 221.

Kögel, 74, 189, 218, 220, 261, 298 f., 340, 417.

_Kollo_, the, 339.

Krejči, 373 f.

Krohn, 166.

L

Labour, songs of, 70, 78, 91, 107 ff., 202 f., 269 ff., 317, 369, 402,

419, 450.

_Lâc_, 340.

Lafitau, 248, 252, 311.

La Motte, 433.

Lamprecht, 360.

Landstad, 166, 414, 418.

Lang, Andrew, 436.

Lang, H. R., 459.

Language, origin of, 392, 450.

Lapps, the, 92, 129.

Largess-shilling, the, 297.

Latin communal poetry, 271, 273, 283, 285, 404 f., 424.

Layamon, 265.

Le Bon, 6, 360, 377 f., 382.

Lefebvre, 2.

Legend, 189.

Lery, 246 ff., 252, 312 f.

Lescarbot, 247, 252, 333.

Lessing, 84.

Letourneau, 7, 11, 42, 308, 430, 447.

Leyser, 46.

_Like Wil to Like_, 342.

_Limburg Chronicle_, 182.

Linos, 236 f., 285.

Lippert, 437.

Literary evolution, 23.

Lithuania, songs of, 116, 242, 269, 292.

Lityerses, 238, 285.

Livy, 424.

Longinus, 53, 58, 79.

Loquin, 167.

Lost arts, 17.

Lotze, 365.

Lounsbury, T. R., 447.

Lowth, 47 f., 262, 346.

Lucian, 219, 222, 324, 336.

Lucretius, 299, 436.

Lundell, 418.

Lyke-wake, 239 f.

Lyngbye, 194, 232, 399.

Lyric, 39, 117, 147, 173, 420 ff., 431, 434;

origin of, 8, 12.

M

McLennan, J. F., 22.

Maeterlinck, 60 f., 206.

Magic, 67, 283.

Mahomet, 1.

Maine, Sir H., 379.

Mallery, 428, 430.

Malmesbury, William of, 301.

Malory, 56.

Maneros, 238, 285.

Manley, J. M., 337.

Mannhardt, 238, 283, 294, 310, 343, 437.

_Mansöngvar_, 401.

Marcaggi, 229, 231 ff.

Marching-songs, 204, 269.

Masing, 119 f., 256.

Masson, 57.

Matriarchate, 10.

May songs, 281, 305 f.

Meier, John, 164.

Mendelssohn, Moses, 119.

Meredith, 114.

Mérimée, 231.

Metaphor, 161 f., 190 ff., 444 f.

Metre, 180.

Metres, origin of, 110.

Meumann, 81 ff., 88, 99.

Mexico, songs of, 334.

Meyer, E. H., 166 f., 216, 272, 279, 283, 300, 306, 417.

Meyer, Gustav, 172, 181, 405, 407 ff.

Meyer, R. M., 176, 188, 209, 256 f., 259 f., 267, 447, 452.

Michel, F., 183, 234, 395.

_Milieu_, the, 358.

Mill, J. S., 51 f.

Milton, 49, 207.

Minstrel, the, 181, 215 f., 272, 315, 322, 403, 454.

Mitchill, Senator, 19 ff.

Möller, 86 ff., 267.

Mommsen, 464.

Monboddo, 50, 354, 357.

Montaigne, 6, 129 f.

Montanus, 296.

More, Sir T., 427.

Morgan, Lloyd, 121, 363, 365, 387.

Morhof, 124.

Mucke, 378.

Müllenhoff, 154, 218, 222, 267 f., 284, 336 f., 388, 437.

Müller, D. H., 262.

Müller, K. O., 265.

Müller, Max, 136, 436, 440, 455.

Müller, W., 301.

Muse, 106.

Music, as muse, 106;

in poetry (see Rhythm), 55.

Musset, A. de, 453.

Myth, 284, 293, 434 ff.

N

Nash, Tom, 61, 280, 427.

Nature, 25, 126, 468 ff.;

and art, 118 ff., 133, 135, 137, 165;

in ballads, 188, 192 f., 321, 413.

Nauze, M. de la, 124.

Negro slaves, 97 f.

Neidhart, 323.

_Neniae_, 221, 244.

Neocorus, 218, 318 f., 321, 340 f.

Nerthus, 299 f., 339.

Newell, W. W., 179, 284.

Newman, Cardinal, 446.

Newton, 2.

Nietzsche, 24, 59, 371 ff.

Nigra, Count, 180, 185, 405.

Nisard, 169.

Noiré, 365, 392.

Norden, 65 ff., 74, 87, 145, 403.

Northall, 160, 276, 278, 284.

Northbrooke, 305.

O

Objective, 139 f., 158.

Ontogenesis, 9 ff.

Opera, 424, 431.

Oratory, 79 f.

Ortoli, 231 f., 279.

Overbury, 277, 291.

P

Pellissier, 461.

Pantomime, 336, 429 ff.

Parallelism, 62, 214.

Paris, Gaston, 150, 174, 185, 334, 341, 352.

Park, Mungo, 397 f., 422.

_Pastourelle_, 326.

Pater, Walter, 55, 61, 258.

Patten, 147.

Paul, 81, 360.

Peacock, T. L., 1, 10.

Pearson, 8, 10, 216.

Peele, George, 281.

Pennant, 239, 270.

_Pennillion_, 403.

People, mind of the, 360 f.

Percy, Bishop, 181.

Perfetti, 456 ff.

Persia, Comedy in, 428.

_Pervigilium Veneris_, 258.

Petrarch, 2, 45, 145.

Pfannenschmid, 238, 283, 286, 292 f., 343.

Phillips, 118.

Phœnician _vocero_, 236 f.

Phylogenesis, 9 ff.

_Planch_, 229.

Plato, 1, 33 f., 460.

Play, 365 ff., 369.

Play-excitement, 368.

Plutarch, 66, 270, 395.

Poe, 51.

Poet, the, 347, 388, 390 ff., 406, 433, 453 f., 465, 470.

Poetic sentence, 33, 53.

Poetics, 7.

Poetry, art of, 3;

attacks on, 1 ff.;

beginnings of, 4, 123, 464 ff.;

biological basis of, 8;

communal elements of, 433;

defence of, 1 ff.;

definition of, 4, 30, 51, 118, 158;

earliest form of, 210 f., 314;

elements of, 29, 163, 172;

historical treatment of, 5;

Latin, 141;

laws in, 74 f.;

meaning of, 4;

reading of, 63;

and science, 2;

singing of, 64, 72, 75 f., 139, 173, 180, 272.

Poland, songs of, 270.

Pope, 47.

Porthan, 198 ff., 269 f.

Portugal, songs of, 208, 320 f.

Posnett, 7, 142, 257, 260, 265, 336, 381 f., 440.

_Praefica_, 225, 229, 248.

Praetorius, 242.

Prickard, A. O., 43.

Processions, communal, 224, 298 ff., 304.

Prose, artistic, 65 ff;

periodic, 69;

poems in, 32, 38, 41, 59 ff.;

priority of, 63 ff., 75 ff.;

rhythmical, 67 ff.;

and verse, line between, 62.

Psalms, the, 36, 153, 186 f., 209, 261 f., 420, 438.

Psychology, 364 ff., 374 f., 8 ff., 81.

Pulci, 455.

Pulszky, 26, 383.

Q

Quadrio, 43, 455.

Quatrains (see _Schnaderhüpfl_), 213, 418.

R

Radloff, 71, 211 ff.

Rain-song, the, 300.

Ralston, 166.

Ranke, 360.

Recitative, 91 f., 104, 310.

Réclus, 378.

Refrain, 92, 97, 129, 174, 183, 190, 209, 225, 230, 232, 253 f., 256

ff., 287, 291, 308 f., 313 ff., 354, 415 f., 430, 443, 450;

in Germanic poetry, 267;

in Greek, 266;

nature of, 314 ff.

Refrains, agricultural, 279 ff.

Reifferscheid, 288.

Relativity, 14, 16.

Religious rites, 204, 220, 238, 260 f., 282 ff., 292, 300 f., 305, 313,

333 ff., 338 f., 392, 436, 444.

Renan, 2.

Repetition, 76, 193 ff., 205 ff., 231 f., 236, 245, 251, 255 f., 313,

416, 451;

classes of, 206;

incremental, 194 ff., 198 f., 208 f., 213 f., 252, 254 f., 319, 325

f., 423.

Rhythm, 246, 332, 345, 348 ff., 356, 383, 386, 390, 421, 432, 463, 465

ff.;

and music, 79;

nature of, 99 ff., 109;

derived from prose, 63 ff.;

as a social factor, 93.

Ribot, 100, 104, 140, 151, 364 f., 369, 384.

Riddles, 212, 452.

Rime, 56, 68 f., 75.

Rimed prose, 61.

Ritson, 307.

Robin Hood, ballads of, 327.

Romance, 179 f.

Romanes, 364, 398.

Romans, dance of the (see Arval hymn), 334, 345.

Ronsard, 45, 63, 122, 146, 150.

_Rose, Romance of the_, 362.

Rosières, 258 f., 266.

Rosenberg, 275, 317, 353 f.

Roumania, ballads of, 72.

Round, the, 341 f.

Rousseau, 127, 151, 157, 389.

Rückert, 315.

Rudimentary growths in literature, 17.

_Rundâs_, 406.

_Ruodlieb_, 341.

Ruscelli, 456.

Russia, ballads of, 166, 188, 198, 327.

S

Sachs, Hans, 281.

Sainte-Beuve, 6, 148 f., 388, 453, 465, 468.

St. Evremond, 447.

St Francis, prayer of, 155, 469.

St. Victor, 231, 233 f.

Saintsbury, Professor, 55.

Sandys, 303.

Sappho, 464.

Sarcasm, songs of, 288 f.

Satire, 404 f.

_Satura Menippea_, 73.

Saturnian verse, 68.

Savages, 9, 11, 13 ff., 19 ff., 65, 82, 90 ff., 95 f., 127, 374 ff.;

character of, 111;

poetry of, 252 ff., 308 ff., 370.

Scaliger, J. C., 3, 34, 43 f., 122 f.

Scandinavia, songs of, 188, 191, 270, 353 f.

Scéaf, 284 f.

Scherer, 8, 88 f., 133 f., 178, 336, 349, 381, 441, 446 f., 452, 454,

459 f.

Schiller, 49, 113, 119, 375.

Schipper, 315.

Schlegel, A. W., 9, 40 ff., 48, 101, 108, 119, 122, 132 ff., 254, 327,

346, 369 f., 396, 415, 423, 432, 435, 437.

Schlegel, F., 5, 38.

Schleicher, 398.

Schleiermacher, 39, 117, 420.

Schmeller, J. A., 405 f.

_Schnaderhüpfl_, 144, 200, 297, 299, 403, 405 ff.

Schoolcraft, 245, 248 f., 308 ff.

Schopenhauer, 371.

Schröder, 68.

Schuchardt, 403.

Schultze, 9, 374 f., 383.

Schwab, 427.

Schwartz, W., 438.

Science, 126.

Scotland, ballads of, 173, 183, 327;

songs of, 265, 273.

Scott, Sir W., 156, 168 f., 173, 181, 414.

Seasons, poetry of the, 470.

Selden, 2, 80.

Sentiment, 25 f., 147 f., 156, 159, 421, 432.

Sermons in verse, 80.

_Serranas_, 459.

Servia, songs of, 299 f.

Seville, dance in cathedral of, 335.

Shaftesbury, 46, 126.

Shakspere, 113 f., 316, 426 f., 470 ff.

Shaman, 221, 244, 338, 379, 392 f., 429, 442 f.

Shelley, Mary, 253.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 10, 336.

Siberia, songs of, 211 ff., 243.

Sidney, 34 f., 122, 130.

Siebs, 74.

Sievers, 62, 86 ff., 267.

Silius Italicus, 336.

Simile, 446 f.

Simonides, 220.

Simplicity, 190.

Simrock, 435.

Sittl, 221, 431.

Skeat, 291.

Skolion, 395, 403.

Smend, 186.

Smith, Adam, 14, 23, 50, 96, 256, 336, 354.

Smythe, H. W., 217, 258, 266, 285.

Society, 220, 368, 449 f., 462 f., 473;

and poetry, 1, 7, 52, 89 f., 101, 120.

Sonnet, 145.

Souriau, 55, 350.

Southey’s _Doctor_, 278.

_Spanish Tragedy_, the, 427.

Spencer, H., 18, 89 f., 243, 328, 350, 365, 372, 377 ff., 383, 385,

391, 398, 437, 442.

Spencer, Dr. John, 346.

_Spens, Sir Patrick_, 172, 472.

Spenser, E., 118, 122, 206, 241.

Spinning-songs, 277 ff.

“Spirituals,” 98.

Spontaneity, 65, 350 f., 355 ff., 369, 373.

Stedman, E. C., 120.

Steenstrup, 187, 190, 327, 343.

Stein, von, 427.

Steinthal, 352, 361.

_Stev_, 401, 418 f.

Stevenson, R. L., 314.

Storm, G., 355.

_Stornelli_, 401, 405.

Strabo, 64, 66.

_Strambotti_, 401, 404 f., 418.

Street-songs, 166, 169.

Style of poetry, 35, 54, 161 f., 189 ff., 434, 444 ff.

Sublime, the, 53.

Sully, 365.

Summer and winter, songs of, 306 f.

Swift, 61, 375.

Sword-dance, 268, 336 f.

Symonds, J. A., 426.

Sympathy, 115, 471 ff.

Syria, poetry of, 218, 227, 236.

T

Tacitus, 86, 205, 299, 336 f., 392.

Taine, 6, 359, 388.

Talvj, 167, 182, 395.

Tammuz, 237.

Tarde, 137, 348, 351, 356 ff., 362 f., 374, 376 f., 380, 423, 460.

Tartars, songs of the, 71.

_Télémaque_, 38, 46, 60.

Temple, Sir William, 46, 467.

Ten Brink, 176, 213, 306, 326, 361, 403, 424.

Tennyson, 82, 156, 190, 220, 388.

Texte, 359, 389.

Theocritus, 405, 418.

Thought, 83, 113, 139, 152, 374 f., 383, 420 f.

Thucydides, 17.

Tibullus, 277, 299.

Ticknor, 425.

Tille, 276.

_Tirade_, 211.

Tobler, 188, 194.

Tragedy, Greek, 257, 338, 369 f., 371 ff., 424, 444.

Translations in prose, 49, 55, 57 ff.

Trapp, 46.

Turgot, 15, 59, 126.

Tusser, 297.

Twining, 1, 43.

Tylor, E. B., 18, 24, 204, 238, 283, 379, 428, 436 ff.

U

_Ubi Sunt_, 148 ff.

Uhland, 220, 281, 298, 306, 338, 343, 415, 436.

Usener, 69, 84, 213, 350, 421, 423.

V

Valentin, 319.

Variation, 194, 209 ff., 213 f., 236, 256, 408 f., 423, 451.

Varro, 66.

Veddahs, the, 330, 390 f., 463, 466.

_Veisa_, 355.

Verbs, 450 ff.

Vergil, 58, 73, 207, 298, 306, 334, 404 f., 418.

Verse, oldest European, 85.

Verse (see Rhythm), 54.

Vico, 10, 128, 460.

Vigfusson and Powell, 257.

Vignoli, 440.

Vigny, De, 154, 373.

Villemarqué, 183 f.

Villon, 148 ff., 161.

Vinesauf, 229.

_Vocero_, 100, 168, 219 ff., 321, 419;

literary form of, 228 f.;

of savages, 243 ff.

Vogüé, E. M., de, 115, 144.

Vossius, G. J., 44, 123.

Vossius, I., 46.

W

Wackernagel, W., 320.

Wagner, R., 103, 120 f., 171, 327 f., 430.

Waitz, 327, 329, 379 f.

Wakes, 303.

Wales, songs of, 288 f.

Wallace, A. R., 365, 403.

Wallaschek, 13, 91 ff., 99 ff., 260, 328 f., 366, 381.

Walther von der Vogelweide, 430, 470.

War, songs of, 86, 268 f., 311, 388.

War-dance, 311, 331 f.

_Wasf_, the, 219.

Warton, Joseph, 47.

Watts, Theodore, 57.

Webster, John, 59.

Wedding, songs of, 202 f., 216 f., 324.

Weismann, 4, 363.

Werner, R. M., 420.

Westphal, 84.

Whately, 42, 48, 51 f.

Wheeler, B. I., 445.

Williams, Talcott, 16.

Wilmanns, 85, 87.

Witchell, 364.

Wold, 293.

Wolf, F., 71, 167, 176, 257 f., 280, 315, 327, 340.

Wolff, Eugen, 164, 432.

Women, songs of, 199 f., 222, 226, 228, 240 f., 250, 263 f., 269 f.,

329, 339, 341, 397 f., 419, 464.

Woodberry, G. E., 162.

Wordsworth, 150, 155, 162, 451.

Wright, Thomas, 303, 307.

Writing, invention of, 252.

Wundt, 360, 363, 366, 428.

X

Xenophon, 34, 337.

Z

Zell, 198, 260, 271, 283, 404.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1:

Twining, _Aristotle_, 2d ed., I. 183, thinks the original treatise was

written as a defence against the “cavils of prosaic philosophers” and

the objections of Plato.

Footnote 2:

In his curious book, _La Philosophie du Bon-Sens_, 1737, p. 15,

D’Argens speaks of Aristotle “dont les Ouvrages sur la Poëtique sont

aussi bons, que ceux dans lesquels il traite de la Philosophie sont

peu utiles.”

Footnote 3:

_De Futilitate Poetices auctore Tanaquillo Fabro Tanaquilli filio

Verbi Divini Ministro_..., Amstel., 1697. It was answered by the Abbé

Massieu in a _Defense de la Poésie_ (in _Hist. d. l. Poés. Françoise_,

Paris, 1739), a pious but heavy performance.

Footnote 4:

_Table Talk_, ed. Arber, pp. 85 f.

Footnote 5:

Lord Radnor in Spence’s _Anecdotes_, ed. Singer, p. 368.

Footnote 6:

_Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, pp. 89 ff., 255.

Footnote 7:

Ribot, _Psychology of the Emotions_, pp. 329 ff., rejects Guyau’s

emendation of Grant Allen, and backs Groos in his view of the play

theory.

Footnote 8:

“Gedanken über Musik bei Thieren und beim Menschen,” 1889, in

_Deutsche Rundschau_, LXI. 50 ff.

Footnote 9:

_Athenæum_, III. 67.

Footnote 10:

Criticism has been treated of late with scientific precision. See the

bibliographical array in Gayley and Scott’s admirable _Methods and

Materials of Literary Criticism_, Boston, 1899. From the imperial

critic, the “gentle reader” and patron represented by Montaigne, who

gives no reasons but his own likes and dislikes, as witness that

delightful essay on books, in its opening sentence, through the

official critics, down to M. Brunetière, the scientific critic,

faithful to the doctrine of evolution in general, and attentive to the

law in the particular case, it is to be noted how criticism has been

approaching the sociological domain, the study of poetry as an element

of human life. Sainte-Beuve was still a critic of poets and poems, for

all his “natural method”; Taine crossed the border and studied poetry,

the product, under sociological and ethnological conditions. See

Sainte-Beuve, _Nouveaux Lundis_, VIII. 87 f., 69 f.; IX. 70; and

Taine, _Derniers Essais_, Paris, 1894, pp. 58 f. M. Brunetière, in

carrying on the plan of Taine, and Hennequin, in opposing it, work on

sociological and historical ground, rather than in the old æsthetics.

Hennequin’s _Critique_ is “scientifique”; while a title like M.

Brunetière’s _Evolution of Species in Literature_ can be conceded to

criticism only by taking such liberties with the word as to leave it

practically undefined. Still, these men work for criticism if not in

it, and they give no reason for disputing what is said in the text

about the paucity of books on poetry as an element in human society.

They have the modern poet, the modern poem, in view; they wish to lay

down metes and bounds and adjust the law. Hennequin will found a new

science, “an immense anthropology,” made up of all the vital sciences

(_Crit. Sci._, pp. 185 f.); but his place is with the critics, and not

with scholars in historical and comparative literature. His

_æsthopsychology_ indicates devotion to the poetic impulse rather than

to the product. Mr. Granger (_Worship of the Romans_, p. vii) has

lately called up the word _ethology_, suggested by Stuart Mill (_Logic

of the Moral Sciences_, pp. 213 ff., 218), in line with a hint that

the foundations of comparative psychology must be laid in the study of

the people and of their habits of thought. Something of this sort has

been done by M. Le Bon in his _Psychologie des Foules_, quoted below.

Footnote 11:

Such are the _Comparative Literature_ of Posnett, and the less

didactic work of Letourneau, _L’Évolution Littéraire dans les diverses

Races Humaines_, Paris, 1894. The former was mainly pioneer work,

meant to open and define its subject; and in this it attained its end.

This sociological method has been applied, of course, in a critical

way, to many individual works, and to many periods of literature; not

so, however, with the poetic product at large.

Footnote 12:

There is more to be said for the partial origin of poetry in choral

songs of a sexual character sung after the communal feast of the horde

or clan. This “sex-freedom,” so revolting to modern ideas, left late

traces in history; and Professor Karl Pearson quotes Tsakni’s _La

Russie Sectaire_ to the effect that such license still prevails at

fairs and periodic festivals in Russia, combined with choral

dance.—Pearson, _The Chances of Death_, II. 243. There are Australian

festivals of this sort; and license of May-Day, of Shrove-Tuesday, and

the rest, is familiar in European survival. On the other hand, it will

be found that erotic poetry of the individual and lyric sort is almost

unknown among savages.

Footnote 13:

_History of Creation_, 2 vols., trans., New York, 1893, I. 355,

quoting from his _General Morphology_. He adds that by “tribe” he

means “the ancestors which form the chain of progenitors of the

individual concerned.”

Footnote 14:

_Der Fetischismus_, Leipzig, 1871, pp. 61, 74 f. A pretty little

parallel of savages and children in the worship of images and dolls

was drawn by M. Anatole France in a review of Lemonnier’s _Comédie des

Jouets_. See France, _La Vie Littéraire_, II. 10 ff.

Footnote 15:

_Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, New York, 1895, pp.

15, 335 ff.; _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, New York, 1897, pp.

9, 189, etc.

Footnote 16:

_Vorlesungen_, Stuttgart, 1884, I. 275.

Footnote 17:

_Critische Dichtkunst_, 1737, p. 87.

Footnote 18:

_Esquisse des Progrès de l’Esprit-Humain._

Footnote 19:

Essay on “Ashiepattle” in _The Chances of Death_, II. 53.

Footnote 20:

_Arbeit und Rhythmus_, p. 15.

Footnote 21:

_L’Évolution Littéraire_, p. 81.

Footnote 22:

_Ibid._, pp. 15 f., “répétition, approximative, abrégée surtout; mais

néanmoins elle est une répétition.” But at once he quotes some

striking facts, in order to prove his thesis (that song preceded

speech), and goes back for a child analogy to the book of B. Perez,

_L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, a book which the present writer

has been unable to consult.

Footnote 23:

_Die Anfänge der Poesie_, Dresden and Leipzig, 1891.

Footnote 24:

Work quoted, p. 96. Even old Gottsched, _Crit. Dichtkt._, p. 68,

called a child’s weeping “a song of lament,” and its laughter “a song

of joy.” “Every passion,” he says, “_has its own tone with which it

makes itself manifest_,” really a better hint of origins than this

scientific masquerading of Jacobowski.

Footnote 25:

_Primitive Music_, pp. 76, 78.

Footnote 26:

The best objection against this analogy in any definite use is made by

O. Gruppe, _Griechische Culte und Mythen_, p. 199. The child and the

savage, he points out, have each a small range of perceptions; the

ways in which they enlarge this range are diametrically opposed. One

does it productively; the other, receptively. See, too, a bit of

sarcasm over the complacent scorn for the “childish” savages felt by

civilized man, Grosse, _Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 51 f.

Footnote 27:

Dr. Brown, Adam Smith, Lord Monboddo, and others were leading

Englishmen in the movement to use the savage to explain early man.

Smith and Monboddo enjoyed this literary vivisection, the former once

watching “a negro dance to his own song the war-dance of his own

country, with such vehemence of action and expression, that the whole

company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got up upon chairs and tables.”

See the _Essays_, Edinburgh, 1795, “Of the Imitative Arts,” Parts II.,

III., and the fragment “Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and

Poetry.” The main credit, however, belongs to Turgot. In his “Plan du

Prém. Disc. sur l’Hist. Universelle,” _Œuvres_, II. 216, he uses the

savages of America to illustrate the state of primitive man. He is

also strong for the _milieu_. “Si Racine fût né au Canada chez les

Hurons...!” he says, II. 264; and his other illustrations are

suggestive (in the “Plan du 2. Disc.”). II. 265, he notes the

homogeneity of barbaric races.

Footnote 28:

_Outlines of Sociology_, trans. Moore, p. 85.

Footnote 29:

The outright degeneration assumed by Le Maistre need not come into the

account. Human progress is now conceded to be a resultant of opposing

forces of growth and decay. Mr. Talcott Williams has an interesting

paper, “Was Primitive Man a Modern Savage?” in the _Report of the

Smithsonian Inst._, 1896, pp. 541 ff. His main point is, that the

modern savage has deteriorated under pressure. Primitive man was in a

more or less “empty earth,” and was not crowded by his fellows. The

god of war is always a junior member of Olympus. So, too, Professor

Baldwin (_Social and Ethical Interpretations_, p. 214) argues for a

reign of peace, a “sort of organic resting-place,” in the child’s

second period, which answers to social coöperation, “the rest which

man took after his release from the animal.... The social tide then

sets in. The quest of domestic union and reciprocal service comes to

comfort him, and his nomadic and agricultural habits are formed.” One

is reminded of Scherer’s argument for an epoch of peace in early

Germanic culture attested by names which bear that stamp as compared

with the later and warlike Gerhards, Gertrudes, and the rest.

Footnote 30:

It is hardly necessary to warn against fallacies of illustration. Even

Bruchmann goes astray when he says the poem of Goethe is to the

primitive song as a cherry tree in bloom is to a cherry stone just

planted. To primitive man the primitive song was already a tree in

bloom, and his appreciation of it was in line with modern appreciation

of Goethe’s poem.

Footnote 31:

Or, indeed, any one tribe of human beings. Even in the very beginning

of human activity, that activity was, as now, conditioned by the

environment, and there were doubtless several types of primitive

existence. Evidently, then, there could have been different types of

social union even at the outset of social progress.

Footnote 32:

_Principles of Sociology_, 3d (American) ed., I. 93, 96. Dr. Eugen

Wolff is equally severe on the abuse, “Vorstudien zur Poetik,” in the

_Zst. f. Litteraturgesch._, VI. 426.

Footnote 33:

_Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 33 ff. For falling off in civilization among

Africans and others, see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 46, 48.

Footnote 34:

_Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society_,

Worcester, Mass., 1820, I. 313 ff.

Footnote 35:

In 1805.

Footnote 36:

See below, on the Darwinian theory of lyric.

Footnote 37:

_Polynesian Researches_, American ed., III., Chap. XII.

Footnote 38:

Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 85.

Footnote 39:

_Ibid._, VI. 606 ff.

Footnote 40:

See R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, p. 434.

Footnote 41:

_Studies in Ancient History_, First Series, new ed., 1886; see pp. 2,

35.

Footnote 42:

_Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 21 ff., 32 ff.

Footnote 43:

London, 1795, pp. xlii ff.

Footnote 44:

Nearer to the present subject are Smith’s excellent essay “Of the

Imitative Arts” and the fragment “Of the Affinity between Music,

Dancing, and Poetry.”

Footnote 45:

_Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, pp. 44 f. See also p. 180.

Footnote 46:

Compare Ribot’s idea of what he calls the æsthetic conquest of nature,

_Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 345, with Professor Patten’s

remorselessly economic theory that appreciation of these things

depends on cheap and warm woollen underclothing.

Footnote 47:

Pulszky, _The Theory of Law and Civil Society_, London, 1888, p. 107.

“Selfishness,” by the way, is not a good name for the quality he has

in mind; but the method is relevant.

Footnote 48:

“La doctrine évolutive et l’histoire de la littérature,” _Revue des

deux Mondes_, 15 Fev. 1898. See especially pp. 889, 892 ff. See also

his _Évolution des Genres_, particularly the chapter on Taine.

Footnote 49:

“Louis Bertrand, qui signait en bon romantique Aloïsius Bertrand,”

1807-1841, born at Céra in Piedmont.

Footnote 50:

Now very rare. It appeared, edited by M. Pavie, in 1842. See

Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits Littéraires_, II. 343 ff.

Footnote 51:

C. Asselineau in _Les Poètes Français_, Tom. IV., 1862, p. 697.

Footnote 52:

Sainte-Beuve gives four specimens of Bertrand’s “poems” in prose.

Brunetière, _Questions de Critique_, p. 202, quotes with approval

Gautier’s words: “Vouloir séparer le vers de la poésie, c’est une

folie moderne qui ne tend à rien moins que l’anéantissement de l’art

lui-même.”

Footnote 53:

Italics not in Shelley’s essay.—For these very sentences, so poetical

in their prose, see Hegel (on the poetic sentence), _Aesthetik_, III.

248 f.

Footnote 54:

_Reflexions_, ed. ¹ 1770, I. 508 ff. A poem in prose is like an

engraving; all is here save colour, all is there save verse. The

_Princesse de Cleves_ and _Télémaque_ are poems. Does not colour make

the painting, though? Verse the poem? In the next section he prudently

asserts, “qu’il est inutile de disputer si la partie du dessein et de

l’expression est préferable à celle du coloris.” It is a matter of

taste; _trahit sua quemque voluptas_. Both in poetry and painting

“genius” is the main thing,—so he had decided in earlier sections.

Footnote 55:

“En lisant un poëme, nous regardons les instructions que nous y

pouvons prendre comme l’accessoire. L’importante c’est le style,

parceque c’est du style d’un poëme que dépend le plaisir de son

lecteur.”—I. 303.

Footnote 56:

In the fourteenth chapter of _Biographia Literaria_. He has conceded

the convenience of calling all compositions that have “this charm

superadded”—rhythm and rime—by the name of poem.

Footnote 57:

_Essays_, Edinburgh, 1776, p. 296. “I am of opinion,” he says, pp. 294

f., _On Poetry and Music_, “that to poetry, verse is not essential. In

a prose work we may have the fable, the arrangement, and a great deal

of the pathos and language of poetry; and such a work is certainly a

poem, though”—note the concession—“perhaps not a perfect one.” Verse

“is necessary to the perfection of all poetry that admits of it,”—and

how, pray, is that limitation to be adjusted? “Verse is to poetry what

colours are to painting;” and, quoting Aristotle, “versification is to

poetry what bloom is to the human countenance.” Here are pribbles and

prabbles enough.

Footnote 58:

_Poetry and Imagination._

Footnote 59:

_Works_, ed. 1854, III. 309.

Footnote 60:

As preface to his _Lectures on the English Poets_.

Footnote 61:

M. E. M. de Vogüé has other views. To him _Robinson Crusoe_ is “un bon

traité de psychologie historique sur un peuple,”—an historic

psychology of the English race.—_Histoire et Poésie_, p. 194.

Footnote 62:

_Works_, Hartford, 1889, I. 213 f. Essay on Wordsworth, etc.

Bruchmann, in his excellent _Poetik_, Berlin, 1898, gives up the

attempt to mark off poetry from prose, speaks of a “neutral ground,”

and then defines poetry as “Steigerung durch Form und Inhalt; _die

Form ist Gesang, Rhythmus, Reim_” (p. 53). What more could the

defender of rhythm ask as working test?

Footnote 63:

When only one-and-twenty. _Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad

Poema Pertinentibus_, 1735.

Footnote 64:

_Jugendschriften F. Schl._, ed. Minor, I. 99; a study of Greek poetry.

Footnote 65:

_Athenæum_, III. 87 f., in Talks about Poetry.

Footnote 66:

_Aesthetik_, Berlin, 1842.

Footnote 67:

See p. 663.

Footnote 68:

_Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, p. 172.

Footnote 69:

_Ibid._, p. 150,—“ce poëte sans le rhythme.”

Footnote 70:

Gautier, too, thought that Flaubert had “invented a new rhythm” in

prose, and described it; see the report of this, _Journal des

Goncourt_, 1862, January 1. But later, in the same journal (1876,

February 24), Goncourt refers all this sort of thing to Chateaubriand:

“sa belle prose poétique, _mère et nourrice de toutes les proses

colorées de l’heure actuelle_....”

Footnote 71:

_L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique_, p. 312.

Footnote 72:

See Humboldt, _Werke_, VI. 230 ff.

Footnote 73:

“Briefe über Poesie, Sylbenmaas und Sprache,” first in Schiller’s

_Horen_, reprinted in the _Charakteristiken und Critiken_, I. 318 ff.;

_Werke_, ed. Böcking, VII. 98 ff.

Footnote 74:

_Wettstreit der Sprachen_, Böcking, VII. 199.

Footnote 75:

_Etwas über William Shakspere_, Böcking, VII. 55.

Footnote 76:

See below, p. 134, for a still more noteworthy and yet quite unnoticed

change of front made by Schlegel in the article of folksong.

Footnote 77:

It must be said for Schlegel that he is here—so, at least, it

seems—merely clearing the way for his historical and “genetic” study

of the art, and so is bound to have no hampering dogma, no _parti

pris_ in the case.

Footnote 78:

Notably that division of _epopœia_, “which imitates by words alone or

by verse.” The question is whether Aristotle meant in the first case

“words without metre” or “words without music.” See Twining’s fourth

note.—It has been pointed out that nowhere in the fragment does

Aristotle essay a formal definition of poetry.

Footnote 79:

_Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3.

Footnote 80:

_Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry_, 2d ed., I. 289. This view of Twining

is upheld in some highly sensible remarks by Mr. A. O. Prickard in a

lecture, _Aristotle and the Art of Poetry_, London, 1891. What

Aristotle clearly meant to say is that “metre is not the most

essential characteristic of poetry, _yet it would be a misuse of

language to call anything a poem which is not metrical in form_.”

(Italics not in original, p. 60.) Mr. Prickard agrees with Whately,

Twining, and many others, that the words of the passage in question,

and the instances given, do not make against this view; and

“elsewhere, Plato and Aristotle invariably assume that only what is

metrical is to be called poetry; nay, that metrical writing and poetry

are, for the common purpose of language, convertible terms. ‘In metre,

as a poet,’ says Plato, ‘or without metre as a layman.’ ‘A good

sentence,’ says Aristotle, ‘should have rhythm but not metre; if it

have metre, it will be a poem.’” See the _Phædrus_, 258, D., and

Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, III. 8.

Footnote 81:

A clear summary of the case as argued in Italy may be found in

Quadrio, _Della Storia e della Ragione d’ogni Poesia_, I. Bologna,

1739; II.-VII. Milan, 1741-1752. See I. 2 ff. Quadrio is outright for

the test of verse and for a generous rendering of Aristotle. He gives

the names of forgotten pleaders on both sides, and thinks the noes

have it against a traditional Aristotelian view; not to quarrel

forever, “Basta, che nacque la Poesia col Verso e col Canto: né,

propagata fra le nazioni, fu altrimenti mai lavorato che in

Verso.”—Spingarn, _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_, New York,

1899, pp. 9 ff., points out that Mantuan was for the verse-test,

Savonarola, Minturno, Daniello, against it.

Footnote 82:

“Censet hoc ipsum ... Caesar Scaliger, qui, _quod raro facit, hac

parte ab Aristotele recedit_,” says Vossius, _de art. poet._, § 7.

Footnote 83:

Iulii Caesaris Scaligeri ... _Poetices Libri Septem_ ... 1561, the

first edition, published three years after the author’s death.

Footnote 84:

See p. 3ᵇ: “Poetae igitur nomen non a fingendo ... sed initio a

faciendo versu ductum est. Simul enim cum ipsa natura humana extitit

vis haec numerosa, quibus versus clauditur.”

Footnote 85:

_Ibid._, “Infans quoque prius canit quam loquitur, videmus enim

plerosque haud aliter somnum captare.”

Footnote 86:

See p. 347ᵃ.

Footnote 87:

Gerardi Joannis Vossii _de artis poeticae natura ac constitutione_ ...

Amstelodami, 1647. §4, “Atque ut multi ex solo metro male colligunt

aliquem esse poetam: ita contrà aberrant alii, qui existimant, ne

quidem requiri metrum, ut poeta aliquis dicatur. Haec tamen sententia

à nonnullis ipsi tribuitur Aristoteli ... § 5. At alii censent

Aristotelem numquam agnovisse ullum poema ἄμετρον....”

Footnote 88:

Isaaci Casauboni _de Satyrica Graecorum Poesi & Romanorum Satira Libri

duo_, Parisiis, MDCV, pp. 352 f. “Certum heic discrimen statuitur

inter eam orationem quae poema dici potest, & quae non potest,

discrimen illud est metrum.... _Omnem metro astrictam orationem &

posse & debere poema dici._” The rest is instructive. Borinski, to be

sure, _Poetik d. Renaissance_, p. 66, says that Casaubon wished to

call Herodotus a poet; but a detached phrase of this sort—compare

Scaliger’s epic in prose—goes for little when it fails to force the

barrier and break down the writer’s definition. Dryden, on the other

hand, making “invention” the sole test of poetry, clashes badly with

his opinion (_Essay on Satire_) that “versification and numbers are

the greatest pleasures of poetry.”

Footnote 89:

As Howell translates the not too clear Latin “fictio rhetorica in

musicaque posita,” poetry is “a rhetorical composition set to music.”

See also an article in the _Quarterly Review_, with reference to the

_Convivio_, April, 1899, p. 303.

Footnote 90:

See his works, ed. Blanchemain, VII. 320.

Footnote 91:

The whole dispute about rime shows this “importance capitale” of verse

itself.

Footnote 92:

_Advancement of Learning_, ed. Wright, II. iii. 4 (pp. 101 ff.).

Clearer in the Latin version, his antithesis, “nam et vera narratio

carmine, et ficta oratione soluta conscribi potest,” is not identical

with the proposition that poetry is independent of rhythm. He says it

“is in measure of words for the most part restrained.”

Footnote 93:

_De Poematum Cantu et Viribus Rythmi_, Oxon., 1673. The reference to

origins is interesting: “illud quidem certum omnem poësin olim

cantatum fuisse.... Unde sequitur, quicquid non canitur aut cantari

nequeat, non esse poema.”

Footnote 94:

_Characteristics_, 5th ed., Birmingham, 1763, I. 254, note, and III.

264.

Footnote 95:

_Essays_, “Of Poetry.”

Footnote 96:

_Praelectiones Poeticae_, 4th ed., London, 1760; see I. 24.

Footnote 97:

_Programma de Vera Indole Poeseos Praelectionihus Praemissum_,

Helmst., 1719. See also his programme of 1720 introducing lectures on

the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace.

Footnote 98:

_Œuvres Complètes de M. de Fénélon_, Tome V., “Discours sur le poeme

épique,” pp. 34 ff. There are many discourses on this theme of

prose-poetry in the _Mémoires_ of the Academy of Inscriptions and

Belles Lettres. The Abbé Fraguier is dull but weighty for the test;

Burette, a real scholar, is sensible on the same side (_Mém._ X. 212

f., in 1730). The younger Racine is very feeble; after reading his

contradictory and vapid papers, one has Chaucer on one’s lips—“No more

of this, for goddes dignité!”

Footnote 99:

_A Knight’s Conjuring_, Percy Soc., 1842, pp. 25, 75.

Footnote 100:

_Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope_, anon., London, 1756. The

book is dedicated to Young, and in the dedication Warton gives these

general views of poetry.

Footnote 101:

Pope said, “There are three distinct _tours_ in poetry; the design,

the language, and the versification....” Spence, _Anecd._, p. 23. As

to prose poems, he could read _Telemachus_ with pleasure, “though I

don’t like that poetic kind of prose.” Its good sense was so great,

“nothing else could make me forget my prejudices against the style.”

_Ibid._, pp. 141 f.

Footnote 102:

_Praelectiones_, Pars Prima, Praelect. Tertia: “Poesin Hebraeam

metricam esse.”

Footnote 103:

“Sed cum omni poesi haec sit veluti propria quedam lex et necessaria

conditio constituta, a qua si discedat, non solum praecipuam

elegantiam desiderabit et suavitatem, sed ne nomen suum obtinebit.” It

should be added that Calmet, _de Poesi vet. Hebrae._, p. 15, is

against this verse test, “Essentiale Poeseos quaerimus in certo quodam

sermone vivido, animato, pathetico, figurisque hyperbolicis audacius

ornato. Nec solam versificationem Poetas facere, nec a pedum mensura

Poesin dici persuademur.” Then Plato.

Footnote 104:

_Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3.

Footnote 105:

The younger, of course.

Footnote 106:

_Dichtung und Wahrheit_, Book XI.; Hempel ed., III. 45.

Footnote 107:

“Wodurch Poesie erst zur Poesie wird,”—the _erst_ will bear a stronger

translation. Schiller, too, said that one must put into verse whatever

rises above the commonplace; and Goethe agreed with him: all poetry

“should be treated rhythmically.” Victor Hugo, in his Preface to

_Cromwell_, pp. 33 f., defends verse for the drama; prose has not

adequate resources.

Footnote 108:

Milton is thinking, too, of this in his well-known passage in the

treatise on Education. “I mean not here the prosody of a verse ...”

boys learn that in their grammars; but in time they must be taught the

great things,—“that sublime Art which in Aristotle’s _Poetics_ ...

teaches what the laws are of a true Epic poem, what of a Dramatic,

what of a Lyric, what Decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to

observe.”

Footnote 109:

_Essay on the Imitative Arts._

Footnote 110:

No. XXXV. of the _Lectures_.

Footnote 111:

_Of the Origin and Progress of Language_, II. 50; IV. 41.

Footnote 112:

See the _Transactions_ of the Society, Vol. I. Warrington, 1785, pp.

54 ff.

Footnote 113:

_Biographia Literaria_, Chap. XIV.—“Poetry of the highest kind may

exist without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects

of a poem.”

Footnote 114:

_The Poetic Principle._

Footnote 115:

_On Heroes_, “The Hero as Poet.”

Footnote 116:

III. iii. 3; another part of the passage is quoted above, p. 42.

Footnote 117:

_Dissertations and Discussions_, I. 89 ff., “Thoughts on Poetry and

its Varieties.” The article first appeared in 1833.

Footnote 118:

It would be more to the purpose if one went to the sources of poetry

and religion and studied the survivals of primitive rite. At seed-time

in Brandenburg, the women still go out to the fields and unbind their

hair in sign that the flax may grow as long as their tresses. With

such a ritual act goes nearly always a song, a repeated shout, a cry

to the powers of growth; and this, if one please, is poetry in its

making, while it is easy to think that the symbol would sooner or

later force itself into the words—“make our flax like this hair.”

Footnote 119:

_Aesthetik, Werke_, ed. 1838, X. III.: summary, pp. 269 f.—“So ist

denn jedes wahrhaft poetisches Kunstwerk ein in sich unendlicher

Organismus,” etc.

Footnote 120:

IX. 9. See the translation by Roberts, p. 65.

Footnote 121:

Hegel, work quoted, p. 257.

Footnote 122:

E. S. Dallas, _Poetics_, p. 8, is sound in idea, but less happy in

illustration, when he says that a poem without verse can be no more

than the movement of a watch without its dial-plate.

Footnote 123:

_Literary Criticism_, p. 134.

Footnote 124:

“Als der erste und einzige sinnliche Duft.” The passages to which

Gayley and Scott refer—_e.g._ Hegel, p. 227—do not change this

statement in the present application. Nobody pretends that rhythm is

the soul of poetry; it is a necessary form, a necessary condition.

Footnote 125:

_The Power of Sound_, London, 1880. Chap. III. is on the elements of a

work of art. On p. 51, again on p. 423 f., Mr. Gurney rejects poetry

in prose.

Footnote 126:

_Théorie de l’Invention_, thèse pour le doctorat ès Lettres, Paris,

1881, p. 142.

Footnote 127:

It is perhaps superfluous to point out that imagination is utterly

ignored in this analysis, and to recall Mr. Swinburne’s phrase that

“the two primary and essential qualities of poetry are imagination and

harmony.”

Footnote 128:

A curious passage which follows (pp. 149 f.), treats poetry as a

supply of coal, rapidly used and close to exhaustion, so far as

originality and freshness are concerned.

Footnote 129:

_Choice of Books_, pp. 81 f., 126.

Footnote 130:

_History of Æsthetics_, pp. 461 f.

Footnote 131:

Professor Masson in the _North British Review_, 1853, reviewed the

_Poetics of Dallas_, printing the review later as fifth essay in

_Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats_, London, 1874; the sixth essay “On

Prose and Verse,” repeats a discussion of De Quincey’s prose in the

journal just named for 1854. Poets are led, Masson says, by the “flag”

of imagery and the “flute” of verse; and while he inclines to the test

of rhythm, he comes to no conclusion. Bain (_On Teaching English_,

1887; see Chap. VII. and pp. 249 ff.) also inclines to the test, but

hedges after the manner of his brethren.

Footnote 132:

_Encycl. Brit._, article “Poetry,” which defines its subject as “the

concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and

rhythmical language.... In discussing poetry, questions of

versification touch ... the very root of the subject.”

Footnote 133:

In the sense, of course, that it absorbed the best labour of two

centuries.

Footnote 134:

The same argument, of course, applies to Plato, as in the “hymns” to

Eros, noble prose indeed; and in less degree to such passages as De

Quincey on the Ladies of Sorrow.

Footnote 135:

_Œuvres_, Paris, 1810, IX. 227 ff., “De la Prose Mesurée.” See also

pp. 185 ff.

Footnote 136:

See his _Petits Poëmes en Prose_, in _Œuvres Complètes_, Paris, 1869,

IV. p. 2,—an interesting preface.

Footnote 137:

_Young Ofeg’s Ditties_, trans. Egerton, London, 1895.

Footnote 138:

_Also Sprach Zaruthustra_, III. “Das Andere Tanzlied.”

Footnote 139:

His defence is very fine and languid and aristocratic,—“inutile

dispute _de mots_,” he protests at last: _Œuvres Complètes_, Paris,

1852, V. 84, 295 (“Examen des Martyrs”).

Footnote 140:

A foreigner is no judge in these things; but he may say how much more

the lucidity of Mérimée, of M. Anatole France, appeals to him than the

poetic prose of Flaubert’s _Salammbô_.

Footnote 141:

Has any one noted in the opening chapter of the _Trionfo della Morte_

a prose refrain, “Gocce di pioggia, rare, cadevano,” repeated with

considerable effect?

Footnote 142:

_Ibid._, p. 396. The structure is strophic and very artistic in its

complication.

Footnote 143:

See D’Annunzio’s dedication of this romance, and his artistic creed,

quite an echo of the preface to Baudelaire’s poems in prose.

Footnote 144:

There is often in these prose-poems, so much praised now, a startling

reminder of the golden style of certain despised folk who wrote

cadenced and coloured prose in their romances three centuries ago. And

not only in romances; Tom Nash tried rimed prose, both with

alliteration and with actual rime, by way of helping the antithetical

clause. See the “Anatomy of Absurdity,” in Nash’s _Works_, ed.

Grosart, I. 6 ff., 24: inferre: averre; praise: daies; nose: rose: and

the lilt of “to play with her dogge, than to pray to her God.” The

_Arcadia_ is not so much a rimed or rhythmical prose, as swelling and

sonorous. For mediæval rimed prose, see Wackernagel, _Gesch. d.

deutsch. Lit._, 2d ed., I. 107 ff., and Sievers, _Altger. Metrik_, p.

49,—the latter for Germanic relations.

Footnote 145:

“Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in the _Preussische

Jahrbücher_, LXXIII. (1893), 460 ff. See p. 465.

Footnote 146:

Driver, _Introd. Lit. Old Test._, p. 361, says that rhythm, _the

restrained flow of expression_, separates poetry from prose.

Footnote 147:

Professor Sievers has announced “a discovery of the principles of

Hebrew metre,” and his exposition will be welcome. See

_Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, 5

February, 1899.

Footnote 148:

Professional “readers” nearly always kill a poem by reading it as

prose. Tennyson read his own verses almost in a chant. De Vigny,

_Journal d’un Poete_, p. 70, says, “tout homme qui dit bien ses vers

les chante, en quelque sorte.” Ronsard, _Œuvres_, ed. Blanchemain,

III. 12 f., asks the reader of his _Franciade_ one thing: “Be good

enough to pronounce my verses well, and suit your voice to their

emotion, not reading it, after the way of certain folk, as a letter,

... but as a poem, with good emphasis.” So Quintilian; but the

elocutionist has no bowels of mercy.

Footnote 149:

_Geography_, Introd., I. ii. 7, translation of Hamilton.

Footnote 150:

_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, I. 434.

Footnote 151:

_Critische Dichtkunst_, pp. 70 f.

Footnote 152:

Bruchmann, _Poetik_, pp. 161, 124, 22.

Footnote 153:

Aston, _Japanese Literature_, p. 13.

Footnote 154:

The younger Racine is startling with his assertion that “poetry is the

daughter of nature, while verse is the work of art.” _Mém. Acad.

Inscr._, XV. 307 ff., “De la poesie Artificielle....”

Footnote 155:

Curiously enough, J. Grimm, though not too clear in his statement, is

with the rationalists, in spite of his “divine origin” for poetry and

the “mystery” of self-made song, which he advocates elsewhere; for in

his _Ursprung der Sprache_ (reprint, 7th ed., 1879, p. 54) he says

poetry and music had their origin in the reason, emotion, and

imagination of a poet, and gives a genetic process not unlike that set

forth by Mr. Spencer: “denn aus betonter, gemessener recitation der

Worte entsprangen gesang und lied, aus dem lied die andere dichtkunst,

aus dem gesang durch gesteigerte abstraction alle übrige musik.”

Footnote 156:

_Die antike Kunstprosa_, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1898. Mr. Spencer’s theory,

analogous in some respects to Norden’s, is considered below.

Footnote 157:

This notion itself—see the extract above from Strabo—Norden, I. 35,

refers to a desire to glorify the golden age, and to set its poetry

over against the prose of degenerate modern days.

Footnote 158:

II. 762.

Footnote 159:

_Ibid._, I. 78.

Footnote 160:

_Tam apud Graecos quam apud Latinos longe antiquiorem curam fuisse

carminum quam prosae_, etc. Varro in Isiodor. _Orig._, I. 38, 2,

quoted and discussed by Norden, I. 32 f.

Footnote 161:

“I suppose, of course,” said a writer of considerable reputation, to

whom the project of the present work was mentioned, “you will begin

with Homer.”

Footnote 162:

Indeed, the very arguments from Greek oratory hardly seem convincing.

Let any one read the section of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ (III. viii.),

where he speaks of prose rhythm. What is this rhythm without metre but

the quality, far more musically developed in Greek, which one also

recognizes in the harmony of any modern artistic prose?

Footnote 163:

Work quoted, I. 30 f. See also I. 37, note; I. 156 ff.; II. 813 f.

Footnote 164:

See, however, E. Schröder, “Ueber das Spell,” _Zst. f. deutsches

Alterthum_, XXXVII. 241 ff. _Spell_ and _lied_, he says, are related

in terms of epic and lyric charms or incantations, and form the basis

of the common antithesis of “say” and “sing” (p. 258). The epic part

of a charm, he thinks, was recited, while the lyric part was sung.

Unfortunately, Schröder comes to no very definite results; and, like

most writers on early verse, he neglects the communal and choral

conditions of primitive poetry.

Footnote 165:

Düntzer, _Zeitschr. deutsch. Gymnasialwesen_, 1857, pp. I ff., the

unwearied commentator, who has had so much experience in the practical

reduction of poetry to prose, decided for this view, and doubtless

with some show of right. A _carmen_, he said, was anything,—oath,

formula, law, incantation,—spoken in loud and solemn tones. So Livy,

I. 26, on that _lex horrendi carminis_. This may be true for the

medicine man, but it is not true for the throng.

Footnote 166:

The λέξις ειρομένη and the λέξις κατασταμμένη; down to Herodotus the

Greeks, it is said, spoke and wrote in the former style: Norden, I.

37, note. He appeals to specimens gathered from folklore.

Footnote 167:

_Altgriechischer Versbau_, p. 55.

Footnote 168:

“Musikalische Bildung der Meistersänger,” in Haupt’s _Zeitsch. f.

deutsches Alterthum_, XX. 80 f.

Footnote 169:

The reason why a folksong often fails to have a musical effect, says

Böckel in the introduction to his collection of Hessian ballads, p.

civ., is because it is taken down from a single singer, whereas all

these songs are essentially choral, and need the voices of a throng.

This hint is valuable in many directions; for example, see below on

social singing at labour.

Footnote 170:

_Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsychol. u. Sprachwissensch._ IV. 85 ff.

Comparetti is also unfortunate in his use of this essay to prove that

poetic prose came before verse. See his _Kalewala_, p. 37.

Footnote 171:

_English Fairy Tales_, 1898, p. 247. Ferdinand Wolf, a man not given

to hazy and romantic views, dismisses the _cante-fable_ as “jedesfalls

... eine Entartung,” a degenerate state of the communal ballad.

_Proben port. u. catal. Volksromanzen_, Wien, 1856, p. 20, note 2.

Footnote 172:

Alfred Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, I. 135, citing Kuno Meyer, and saying

that certain prose is “younger in appearance,” need not assume it to

have “suffered from change,” but may take a simpler view. The verse

may well be of older date.

Footnote 173:

This account is taken from Bruchmann’s _Poetik_, p. 217, and

Letourneau, _L’Évolution Littéraire_, pp. 198 f., who gives other

details. J. F. Campbell, _Popular Tales_, etc., 2d ed., IV. 84,

mentions cases of dual performance in the Highlands, where a bard sang

to his harp heroic passages, and a narrator “filled up the pauses by

telling prose history.”

Footnote 174:

_Altgermanische Metrik_, pp. 165, 168.

Footnote 175:

Rudow, _Verslehre und Stil der rumänischen Volkslieder_, Halle, 1886,

pp. 5, 28 f., 31.

Footnote 176:

Böckel, _Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen ... mit

kulturhistorisch-ethnographischer Einleitung_ (the latter a valuable

collection of material), Marburg, 1885, pp. clxxxiii. f.

Footnote 177: