Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/127

 the emendation of Bergk, we may thus express the meaning and metre of the song in English:—

It has been observed that a pair of these lines with slight alteration can form an hexameter; and, accordingly, the origin of the hexameter, with its strong cæsura, has been found by some writers in the junction of two such lines. However this may be, both the form and spirit of the Linus Hymn are thoroughly primitive; and whether we believe, with Müller, that it laments the tender beauty of the spring burned by the summer heat of Phœbus, or see in it the dirge of some human hero like the yearly lament of the Hebrew maidens over Jephthah's daughter, we cannot but feel in it the communal air of the choral lyric in which, as in the Ialemus song, or the Tegean Scephrus, or the Phrygian Lityerses, or the Syrian laments for Adonis, "not the misfortunes of a single individual but a universal and perpetually recurring cause of grief was expressed."

Again, this communal spirit meets us in traditionary choral songs of ancient Greece, consisting, like the Indian choral songs described by Dr. Schoolcraft, of a few words in which the principal thoughts were rather touched than worked out. Thus, as Plutarch tells us in his Life of Lycurgus (ch. xxi.), there were in certain Spartan festivals responsive choruses of old men, young men, and boys. The chorus of old men began and sang—