318 Mr, Chorley on English Poetry [Feb. 15. 



from the taste not having received timely development ; or from physical 

 impediments — it being not possible that Scott should have written his 

 poetical romances, his lyrics, and prose passages in his works, without 

 an instinct for musical fbrm and cadence. So, too, every orator who 

 moves his audience by eloquence as distinguished from convincing it 

 by argument, must have musical feeling : else would his periods halt. — 

 On the other hand, there have been poets skilled in music, whom the 

 excess of their knowledge has led into license, and seeming irregularity 

 of versification, only to be overcome by the most exquisite adroitness 

 on the part of the reader. Mr. Browning and Leigh Hunt are 

 instances. 



As an art. Music has always had conditions and caprices of its own 

 as remarkable as its connection with other arts. Melody, as we under- 

 stand it, is modern. The music of the Hebrews and the Greeks is, so 

 far as we know, semi-barbarous. Even the music produced in Italy 

 during the great era of Italian painting bears no proportion to the 

 perfection of the other art. 



Some of the requisites of the poetry fitted for music, as an art, were 

 named. There must be beauty of thought and imagery without super- 

 subtlety. Passion must be not too much interrupted ; description not 

 overlaid by superfluity of detail. Language must be clear, sonorous, 

 avoiding alike bombast and familiarity — the sentences intelligible as 

 they pass, and the phrases, however varied, bearing a proportion one 

 to the other. These rules apply to the poetry of all nations ; but 

 the nationalities of Italy, Germany, and France, have influenced their 

 application characteristically. — In Italy, the great classical poets are 

 not susceptible of musical treatment. The minor ones, and those 

 who wrote for the stage, have arranged the commonest sentiments in 

 the simplest manner ; regarding the vowels more than the ideas, and 

 the display of the voice rather than the expression of original senti- 

 ment. The language of Italian comic opera admits and encourages 

 positive dissonance of sound pronounced rapidly. — In Germany, so 

 soon as the school of national art began to separate itself from that 

 of Italy, a desire for something deeper in poetry, and something more 

 precisely expressive in music, began to exert itself; sometimes, how- 

 ever, pedantically, in a bit-by-bit expression of every word as it rose, 

 which is false in taste, and tending towards cumbrousness.-^In France, 

 all the fine arts are singularly self-consistent ; largely indebted to 

 foreigners, who have been, nevertheless, obliged, one and all, to con- 

 form, in order to hold their ground. As in their architecture, paint- 

 ing, and drama, point and piquancy, sometimes at the expense of 

 beauty and simplicity, are indispensable ; the compound as a whole 

 being complete, however artificial. 



In England the poets, from Chaucer downwards, are a richer, 

 various, and more numerous choir than those of any other country. 

 Not so its musicians. The national melodies of Great Britain and 

 Wales are full of beauty and interest ; but these, and the ballad poetry 

 recited to them, are not so much works of art, as materials for art. 



