Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/271

Rh P E T R Y 261 inarticulate tone can not only suggest ideas but express them can give voice to the Verstand, in short, as well as to the Vernunft of man. Even the Greeks drew a funda mental distinction between melic poetry (poetry written to be sung) and poetry that was written to be recited. It is a pity that, while modern critics of poetry have understood or at least have given attention to painting and sculpture, so few have possessed any knowledge of music a fact which makes Dante s treatise Dt Vulgari Eloguio so important. Dante was a musician, and seems to have had a con siderable knowledge of the relations between musical and metrical laws. But he did not, we think, assume that these laws are identical. If it is indeed possible to establish the identity of musical and metrical laws, it can only be done by a purely scientific investigation; it can only be done by a most searching inquiry into the subtle relations that we know must exist throughout the universe between all the laws of undulation. And it is curious to remember that some of the greatest masters of verbal melody have had no knowledge of music, while some have not even shown any love of it. All Greek boys were taught music, but whether Pindar s unusual musical skill was born of natural instinct and inevitable passion, or came from the accidental circumstance that his father was, as has been alleged, a musician, and that he was as a boy elaborately taught musical science by Lasus of Hermione, we have no means of knowing. Nor can we now learn how much of Milton s musical knowledge resulted from a like exceptional &quot; en vironment,&quot; or from the fact that his father was a musician. But when we find that Shelley seems to have been with out the real passion for music, that Rossetti disliked it, and that Coleridge s apprehension of musical effects was of the ordinary nebulous kind, we must hesitate before accepting the theory of Wagner. The question cannot be pursued here ; but if it should on inquiry be found that, although poetry is more closely related to music than to any of the other arts, yet the power over verbal melody at its very highest is so all- sufficing to its possessor as in the case of Shelley and Coleridge that absolute music becomes a superfluity, this would only be another illustration of that intense egoism and concentration of force the impulse of all high artistic energy which is required in order to achieve the rarest miracles of art. fUtion With regard to the relation of poetry to prose, Coleridge Kaetry once ass erted in conversation that the real antithesis of poetry was not prose but science. And if he was right the difference in kind lies, not between the poet and the prose writer, but between the literary artist (the man whose instinct is to manipulate language) and the man of facts and of action whose instinct impels him to act, or, if not to act, to inquire. One thing is at least certain, that prose, however fervid and emotional it may become, must always be directed, or seem to be directed, by the reins of logic. Or, to vary the metaphor, like a captive balloon it can never really leave the earth. Indeed, with the literature of knowledge as opposed to the literature of power poetry has nothing to do. Facts have no place in poetry until they are brought into relation with the human soul. But a mere catalogue of ships may become poetical if it tends to show the strength and pride and glory of the warriors who invested Troy ; a detailed description of the designs upon a shield, however beautiful and poetical in itself, becomes still more so if it tends to show the skill of the divine artificer and the invincible splendour of a hero like Achilles. But mere dry exacti tude of imitation is not for poetry but for loosened speech. Hence, most of the so-called poetry of Hesiod is not poetry at all. The Muses who spoke to him about &quot; truth &quot; on Mount Helicon made the common mistake of confounding fact with truth. And here we touch upon a very import ant matter. The reason why in prose speech is loosened is that, untrammelled by the laws of metre, language is able with more exactitude to imitate nature, though of course speech, even when &quot;loosened,&quot; cannot, when actual sensible objects are to be depicted, compete in any real degree with the plastic arts in accuracy of imitation, for the simple reason that its media are not colours nor solids but symbols arbitrary symbols which can be made to indicate, but never to reproduce, colours and solids. Accuracy of imitation is the first requisite of prose. But the moment language has to be governed by the laws of metre the moment the conflict begins between the claims of verbal music and the claims of colour and form then prosaic accuracy has to yield ; sharpness of outline, mere fidelity of imitation, such as is within the compass of prose, have in some degree to be sacrificed. But, just as with regard to the relations between poetry and music the greatest master is he who borrows the most that can be borrowed from music, and loses the least that can be lost from metre, so with regard to the relations between poetry and prose the greatest master is he who borrows the most that can be borrowed from prose and loses the least that can be lost from verse. No doubt this is v.l.at every poet tries to do by instinct ; but some sacrifice on either side there must be, and, with regard to poetry and prose, modern poets at least might be divided into those who make picturesqueness yield to verbal melody, and those who make verbal melody yield to picturesqueness. With one class of poets, fine as is perhaps the melody, it is made subservient to outline or to colour ; with the other class colour and outline both yield to metre. The chief aim of the first class is to paint a picture ; the chief aim of the second is to sing a song. Weber, in driving through a beautiful country, could only enjoy its beauty by translating it into music. The same may be said of some poets with regard to verbal melody. The supreme artist, however, is he whose pictorial and musical power are so interfused that each seems born of the other, as is the case with Sappho, Homer, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and indeed most of the great Greek poets. Among our own poets (leaving the two supreme masters undiscussed) Keats and Coleridge have certainly done this. The colour seems born of the music and the music born of the colour. In French poetry the same triumph has been achieved in Victor Hugo s magnificent poem &quot; En Marchant la Nuit dans un Bois,&quot; which, as a rendering through verbal music of the witchery of nature, stands alone in the poetry of France. For there the poet conquers that crowning diffi culty we have been alluding to, the difficulty of stealing from prose as much distinctness of colour and clearness of outline as can be imported into verse with as little sacrifice as possible of melody. But to return to the general relations of poetry to prose. If poetry can in some degree invade the domain of prose, so on the other hand prose can at times invade the domain of poetry, and no doubt the prose of Plato what is called poetical prose is a legitimate form of art. Poetry, the earliest form of literature, is also the final and ideal form of all pure literature ; and, when Landor insists that poetry and poetical prose are antagonistic, we must remember that Lander s judgments are mostly based on feeling, and that his hatred of Plato would be quite sufficient basis with him for an entire system of criticism upon poetical prose. As with Carlyle, there was a time in his life when Plato (who of course is the great figure standing between the two arts of metre and loosened speech) had serious thoughts of becoming a poet. And