SPEECH AND SONG. 



103 



lects, but each dialect is being continually, though imperceptibly, 

 modified not only in construction but in pronunciation. The 

 pronunciation of an Englishman of Chaucer's day would be unin- 

 telligible to us, while that of one of Shakespeare's contempora- 

 ries would be as strange to our ears as the accent of an Aberdeen 

 fishwife is to the average cockney. If the speaking voice has a 

 distinctly sing-song character that is to say, if it proceeds by mu- 

 sical intervals the result is as grotesque as it would be to talk in 

 blank verse, or, as Sir Toby Belch says, " to go to church in a gal- 

 liard and come home in a coranto." On the other hand, the speak- 

 ing voice becomes most sympathetic in its quality when it ap- 

 proaches the singing voice, the musical character, however, being 

 concealed by the variety of its inflections. It is important that in 

 speaking a musical note should never be recognized ; the effect is 

 as unpleasant to our ears as an accidental hexameter in a sentence 

 of prose was to the ancients. 



Wide as the difference is between speech and song, the great 

 gulf fixed between them is partly filled up by intermediate modes 

 of using the voice which partake of the nature of both. Thus 

 there is the measured utterance of declamation, which may be so 

 rhythmical in time and varied in tone as to be almost song. On 

 the other hand, the recilativo of the opera approaches speech. Va- 

 rious intermediate forms between speech and song may be heard 

 in the ordinary speech of certain races, notably in Italians, Welsh- 

 men, and the inhabitants of certain parts of Scotland and Eng- 

 land. The Puritans, as is well known, uttered their formal and 

 affected diction in a peculiar nasal tone ; and the term " cant," 

 though properly belonging to their sing-song delivery, came to be 

 applied to the sentiments expressed by it. Many of the ancient 

 orators, to judge from the description left us by Cicero and Quin- 

 tilian, would seem to have sung their speeches, the style of dec- 

 lamation being, in fact, expressly termed cantus obscurior. As 

 they generally spoke in the open air, and to vast audiences, this 

 artificial mode of delivery may have been necessary in order to 

 make the voice reach farther than if they had spoken in a more 

 natural way. C. Gracchus used to have a musician behind him 

 while he spoke, to give him the note from time to time with a mu- 

 sical instrument called a tonarion. A similar plan might, with 

 much advantage to the " general ear," be adopted by certain mod- 

 ern orators, the crescendo of whose enthusiasm expresses itself in 

 increasing intensity of shrillness. 



Those who have not given much attention to the subject are 

 apt to think of speaking, as Dogberry did of reading and writing, 

 that it " comes by nature " that it is, in fact, an instinctive act, 

 which no more needs cultivation for its right performance than 

 eating or sleeping. This is a great mistake. Speaking, even of 



