382 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



Victorian age. It is noticeable that those poets upon whom 

 we are apt to set the least store now, as Byron, Scott, 

 Hood, Campbell, Moore, Barry Cornwall, Mrs. Hemans, 

 possessed it in greater perfection than their more illustrious 

 contemporaries. 



I once asked an eminent ntusician, the late Madame 

 Goldschmidt, why Shelley's lyrics were ill-adapted to music. 

 She made me read aloud to her the * Song of Pan ' and those 

 lovely lines ' To the Night,' ' Swiftly walk o'er the western 

 wave, Spirit of Night ! ' Then she pointed out how the verbal 

 melody seemed intended to be self-sufficing in these lyrics, 

 how full of complicated thoughts and changeful images the 

 verse is, how packed with consonants the words are, how the 

 tone of emotion alters, and how no one melodic phrase could 

 be found to fit the daedal woof of the poetic emotion. 



' Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, 



Star-inwrought ! 



Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, 

 Kiss her until she be wearied out 



* How different that is/ said Madame Goldschmidt, * from 

 the largo of your Milton : 



' Let the bright Seraphim in burning row, 

 Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow ! ' 



1 How different it is from Heine's simplicity : 



' Auf Fliigeln des Gesanges 

 Herzliebchen trag' ich dich fort. 



* I can sing them,' and she did sing them then and there, 

 much to my delight ; * and I can sing Dryden, but I could 

 not sing your Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats ; no, and not much 

 of your Tennyson either. Tennyson has sought out all the 

 solid, sharp words, and put them together; music cannot 

 come between. 1 This was long ago, and it gave me many 

 things to think over, until I could comprehend to what 



1 Madame Goldschmidt sang these lines from the book of Handel's 

 Sampson. In Milton they begin with where, not let. 



