Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/149

 simply appeal to the reader's sense of harmony through the medium of printed letters. Accustomed to artistic ideas based upon distinctions impossible in early social life, it is not strange that we neither possess the words, nor in many cases the imaginative powers, needful to carry us out of our own literary conditions into the primitive homes of literary development.

In the progress of this literary differentiation we may observe some striking changes, not of course capable of chronological data—for they have everywhere occurred insensibly in the course of social development—but none the less real because they lie outside the range of such measurements. The gradual severance of acting, dancing, and musical accompaniment from the words of the song marks a whole series of such changes partially illustrated by the rhapsodists of early Greek, and the Râwy or reciter of early Arab, literature. Another and greater change than any of these is introduced by the invention of writing, parting still farther the music and gesticulation (which once supplied excellent props to the memory) from the bare words, and turning the attention of the makers of literature to the study of metres as distinct from music and recitation. Finally, the rise of prose composition as a distinct species of literature, at first apparently constructed largely on the older metrical models (as, for example, in the rythmical prose of the Qur'ân), but afterwards passing by degrees into a plain reflection of public or private conversation, and finding its proper sphere in the speech or philosophic discussion, brings us far on the road to that severance of science from literature which characterises the most civilised communities. It is clear that the status of early song-makers must have undergone prodigious changes during this evolution of literary forms. It is clear that the communal culture