320 Mr, Chorley on English Poetry in reference to Music. [Feb. J 5, 



to bear a single additional touch. — Southey, too, is ineligible for 

 music, owing to that certain coldness which has stood between him 

 and a wide and genial popularity. Yet the unrhymed verse of 

 " Thalaba,*' by the artftil variety of its structure, and the sonority of 

 its words, is a model for recitative. — Wordsworth is too meditative, 

 too calm, to invite any union with an art that renders pondering on the 

 part of the hearer impossible without damage. — The rank of Byron 

 among modern poets for music has hardly been rated high enough. 

 Not merely his songs, but the choruses in his lyrical dramas, and the 

 descriptive passages in his poems, are everywhere suggestive and lend 

 themselves readily to illustration. — Shelley's poetry, though much 

 sought after, is less excellent for the use in question ; his lyrics are 

 generally too mystical, too dreamy, and when clearer in expression, as 

 the "Ode to the Skylark," too thickly crowded with gorgeous and 

 changeful imagery to endure any addition of music, without conclusion 

 and loss of power resulting. But Shelley's dreaminess was voluntary ; 

 since of vigorous, direct language, a more forcible example could not 

 be cited than his tragedy of the " Cenci," from its first to its last 

 line. — Campbell was a great and versatile lyrist for music : witness his 

 " Mariners of England " — witness his " Exile of Erin ;" both become 

 standard poems unequalled, in their way, by English or Irish poets. 

 His longer poems, too, have yielded much good text for the musician, 

 — even in so gloomy and solemn a lyric as " The Last Man." — Joanna 

 Baillie is prominent among poetesses, not merely for the passion and 

 power in certain of her tragic scenes, but as a writer for music. Her 

 drama of ** The Beacon" claims express and respectful study, with 

 regard to the subject under treatment. — Moore was a born musician, and 

 one through whose every work the influences of the art were felt. With 

 faults of taste, tending to what is too artificial and ornate, his artistic 

 organization enabled him to perform feats with our language which 

 passed unnoticed, such as a liberal use of the letter S, and the 

 writing of verse full of meaning and poetry, with a syllable to a note, 

 — no effect of heaviness being thereby produced. 



Living writers being left without mention, it remained to be pointed 

 out how false ideas on the subject of English poetry as ineligible for 

 music had been perpetuated and spread. — The English musicians, as a 

 body, have been too imitative, too careless in selection, too regardless 

 in treating thdr words ; — the English singers, as a body, have delivered 

 the latter too unintelligibly and inelegantly, owing to a neglect of the 

 study of the English language. The discourse of Professor D'Orsey, given 

 February 1st, was referred to, in corroboration of the speaker's views, and 

 foreign singers from four countries were instanced, who, owing to the 

 necessity imposed upon them of attentively studying their words before 

 they sang the same, pronounced with a purity, elegance, and clearness 

 too seldom attained by our native professors. — The speaker, in conclu- 

 sion, bespoke indidgence for the imperfection hardly to be escaped 

 from when treating a subject so full of speculation and fact within the 

 limits of a single discourse. [H. F. C] 



