188 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
language or our letters. In it we have criticisms of books of almost 
every conceivable variety of topic, there is even sympathetic mention 
of books on pugilism, but there is no account of any books on 
Music. To emphasise the omission, Burney and Hawkins are both 
noticed, one as the father of Madame d’Arblay, the other as a rather 
eccentric member of Johnson’s circle, but there is nothing to indicate 
that they wrote two great historical works which are still read with 
pleasure and consulted with profit. Everyone who has looked into the 
matter will have observed this same neglect in bibliographies and 
dictionaries, and other works of reference. Information about Music 
and Musical Literature must be sought as a rule in specialised volumes 
intended for musicians alone. It shares, no doubt, the all-embracing 
hospitality of the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it has not yet won 
citizenship in the daily life and civilisation of our people. 
This is clearly an error, the perpetration of which is a serious loss 
to the country at large. Music is not only a source of noble pleasure 
—everyone admits that, at any rate in theory—it is a form of intellectual 
and spiritual training with which we really cannot afford to dispense. 
It is not merely a matter of pleasing the ear with successions of 
beautiful sound or stirring the emotions with vibrating tone and poignant 
rhythm. It is just as truly a language as French or Latin. It is just 
as truly a form of mental discipline as any subject in Science or 
Mathematics. That it can be studied with much more personal enjoy- 
ment than some of its compeers may perhaps be maintained; though 
on this score there is very little difference between it and literature; 
but even if that be granted, it is a very peevish asceticism which would, 
for this reason, depreciate its value in our educational system. The 
notes in a perfect melody follow each other by as sure logical necessity 
as do the words in a line of Shakespeare. They are not only beautiful; 
they not only appeal to the discerning ear by a thousand tones and 
associations ; they have also an inherent significance, which in music, as 
in poetry, is a sure criterion of the difference between good art and 
bad. 
No doubt there is here one salient difference between the two arts. 
In language a part at any rate of the significance depends upon the 
relation between the thing said and an external reality which it 
expresses or depicts ; in music the whole significance is intrinsic, deter- 
mined by the laws of its own form and the impulse of its own spirit. 
But though the kinds of significance are different, the fact of signifi- 
cance is equally present in both arts, and here I would venture to 
call in question two opinions, both of which seem to me entirely and 
fatally erroneous. One, which I saw a few days ago, in a volume of 
essays (and which, indeed, a reader of literary criticism may see almost 
once a week), is that poetry appeals to the intelligence and music to 
the emotions. The answer to this is that if poetry is to be summed 
up as an appeal to the intelligence, then Euclid was a very great poet; 
and if music has no further function than to appeal to the emotions, 
then it is nothing better than melodious nonsense. The other of the 
two is that any succession of notes constitutes a melody and that 
of such melodies intelligible music can be made up. The answer to 
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