Page:The spirit of place, and other essays, Meynell, 1899.djvu/39

Rh Now we need not assume that the lady of the lyrics ever lived. But taking her as the perfectly unanimous conception of the lyrists, how is it she did not discover these things unaided? Why does the lover invariably imagine her with a mind intensely irritable under his own praise and poetry? Obviously we cannot have her explanation of any of these matters. Why do the poets so much lament the absence of truth in one whose truth would be of little moment? And why was the convention so pleasant, among all others, as to occupy a whole age—nay, two great ages—of literature?

Music seems to be principally answerable. For the lyrics of the lady are "words for music" by a great majority. There is hardly a single poem in the Elizabethan Song-books, properly so named, that has what would in our day be called a tone of sentiment. Music had not then the tone herself; she was ingenious, and so must the words be. She had the air of epigram, and an accurately definite limit. So, too, the lady of the lyrics, who might be called the lady of the stanzas, so strictly does she go by measure. When she is quarrelsome, it is but fuguishness; when