JfYTHM ARMONY dtattrtl Wmwwttg ff itag THE GIFT OF \.VvJL.....SsX(wa\jL%*^»^.. A... x^>c».. It is profound in insight, searching in analysis, broad in spirit, and thoroughly^ modern in method and sympathy. — The XJniversalist Leader. " Its title gives no intimation to the general reader of its attractiveness for him, or to curious readers of its widely discursive range of interest. . . . Its broad range may re- mind one of those scythe-bearing chariots with which the ancient Persians used to mow down hostile files." — The Outlook, III.— Poetry as a Representative Art. 8°, cloth extra . $1.75 11 1 have read it with pleasure, and a sense of instruction on many points." — Francis Turner Palgrave y Professor of Poetry ', Oxford University. " Dieses ganz vortremiche Werk." — Englische Studien, Vhiversitat Breslau. "An acute, interesting, and brilliant piece of work. . , . As a whole the essay deserves unqualified praise." — N. Y. Independent. IV. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts. With 225 illustrations. 8° $2.50 m " The artist will find in it a wealth of profound and varied learning ; of original, sugges- tive, helpful thought ... of absolutely inestimable value." — The Looker-on. "Expression by means of extension or size, . . . shape, . . . regularity in outlines • . . the human body . . . posture, gesture, and movement, . . . are all considered ... A specially interesting chapter is the one on color." — Current Literature. " The whole book is the work of a man of exceptional thougntfulness, who says what he has to say in a remarkably lucid and direct manner." — Philadelphia Press. V.— The Genesis of Art Form. Fully illustrated. . 8° . . $2.25 " In a spirit at once scientific and that of the true artist, he pierces through the mani- festations of art to their sources, and shows the relations, intimate and essential, between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture. A book that possesses not only sin- gular value, but singular charm." — N. Y. Times. "A help and a delight. Every aspirant for culture in any of the liberal arts, including music ana poetry, will find something in this book to aid him." — Boston Times. 41 It is impossible to withhold ones admiration from a treatise which exhibits in such a large degree the qualities of philosophic criticism." — Philadelphia Press. VI.— Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music. Together with Music as a Representative Art. 8°, cloth extra . $1.75 " Prof. Raymond has chosen a delightful subject, and he treats it with all the charm of narrative and high thought and profound study." — New Orleans States. " The reader must be, indeed, a person either of supernatural stupidity or of marvellous erudition, who does not discover much information in Prof. Raymond's exhaustive and instructive treatise. From page to page it is full of suggestion." — The Academy (London). VII. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Fully illustrated. 8° . $2.50 11 Marked by profound thought along lines unfamiliar to most readers and thinkers. . . . When grasped, however, it becomes a source of great enjoyment and exhilaration. . . .No critical person can afford to ignore so valuable a contribution to the art-thoueht of the day."— The Art Interchange (N* Y.). * " One does not need to be a scholar to follow this scholar as he teaches while seeming to entertain, for he does both." — Burlington Hawkeye. " The artist who wishes to penetrate the mysteries of color, the sculptor who desires to cultivate his sense of proportion, or the architect whose ambition is to reach to a high standard will find the work helpful and inspiring." — Boston Transcript. G.P.PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC TOGETHER WITH MUSIC AS A REPRESENTATIVE ART TWO ESSAYS IN COMPARATIVE ESTHETICS GEORGE LANSING RAYMOND, L.H.D. PROFESSOR OF ^ESTHETICS IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AUTHOR OF "THE ORATOR'S MANUAL," "ART IN THEORY," "THE REPRESENTATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF FORM," "POETRY AS A REPRESENTATIVE ART," "PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND ARCHITECTURE AS REPRESENTATIVE ARTS," "THE GENESIS OF ART-FORM," "PROPORTION AND HARMONY OF LINE AND COLOR IN PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND ARCHITECTURE," ETC. SECOND EDITION REVISED G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON S7 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND I9O9 Copyright, 1894 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Entered at Stationers' Hall, London ttbe ItnfcfterbocRcr prcee, flew JtJor* PREFACE. T_T IS tendency is to systematize that, which is beyond the reach of systematic exposition," " to formulate ideas and qualities not reducible ... to formulae," " full of learning and suggestive as the book is . . . one is lost in its infinite wrinkles," " fills the mind . . . with a tremendous lot of fancies," — such are the comments with which some are now qualifying their acknowledg- ments — very late in many cases — of the essential differ- ences between the thought presented in this series of essays, and in previous works upon the same subject. Were there proof that a single writer of such comments had made a sincere endeavor to follow the lines of thought which in these essays have been developed in accordance with the simplest principles of logic and common sense, the opinions thus expressed might be entitled to grave consideration. As it is, they are very apparent utterances of superficial impressions, such as naturally occur to any one who has not looked into a subject deeply enough to be fully aware of its complexities, or of the essential im- portance and possibility of analyzing them. As applied to the essay on " Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music," the pre-judgments of every one of these critics would agree with that of the first of two au- thors conversing, a year or more ago, in language somewhat as follows: " No one can explain the methods underlying IV PREFACE. the subtle harmonies of Swinburne's lyrics." " Not the first who attempts it, perhaps ; but do you think it intrin- sically impossible ? " " If he could explain the methods, he could produce the effects ; and we can't have two Swinburnes." " Are you sure of your inferences? I may be able to explain exactly what it is in the shading or coloring of a picture, in the pose or gesture of a figure, which represents the meaning that attracts and charms me. But, unless myself a painter, I can't make a figure like it." "What object would your explanation gain then ? " And this was the reply : First, a philosophic object. The causes underlying the effects of art are in themselves as interesting as any un- derlying the effects of nature — like the rising and falling of the tides, the coming and going of the storms, the sprouting of the leaves in spring, and their falling in the autumn. And, second, a practical object. If a man be a painter, to let him know precisely what it is that charms us in a color or an outline may enable him by a few touches to change an unsuccessful product into one fitted to charm all those whose tastes agree with our own. And so with a poet. Those who have ever attempted verses know the constant danger of having the forms — metre, alliteration, assonance, rhyme— to which their thought is harnessed, run away with it and wreck it. Yet without the aid of these, what could carry the thought a single step in an artistic direction ? The poet must learn to get along, not without them but with them ; yet in such a way as to keep them in subjection, as exemplified in what is done by the acknowledged masters. And there is another practical object to be gained. This is to enable critics and through them, and in connec- tion with them, people in general to understand and hence PREFACE. V to appreciate and enjoy that in art which is excellent. At present, it has to be acknowledged that to attain this object seems wellnigh beyond hope. Owing to a lack of breadth and balance characterizing the practical limitations of American culture, a man here who tries to treat art philosophically finds his way blocked at the very thresh- old of his undertaking by two almost insurmountable obstacles. One is that few of our philosophers have had sufficient aesthetic training to be interested in that which concerns art ; and the other is that few of our artists — including our art-critics, though there are noteworthy exceptions — have had sufficient philosophical training to be interested in that which concerns philosophy. Ac- cordingly, as a rule, the philosopher never looks at the art-book at all ; and the art-critic on whom the public relies for information concerning it, does so merely be- cause he cannot dodge what is tossed directly at him as a reviewer ; but the little that he sees of it he usually misapprehends and very frequently misrepresents. These statements are not uncharitable. They are essen- tially the opposite. Otherwise, if articles published in some of our foremost journals — journals that would be universally placed upon every list of the first half-score critical authorities in our country — could not be attributed to a lack of intelligence, one would be obliged to attribute them to a lack of integrity. For instance, it is a simple logical process, before defining the exact limitations of a subject, to show its relations to other subjects by separa- ting it from its surroundings ; in other words, to advance from the generic to the specific ; and nothing, to a well- trained mind, could appear more unjust than to represent the beginning of this process as if it were the end of it. Yet a criticism upon " Art in Theory," published in " The VI PREFACE. Independent " of New York, opens with this sentence : " The definition of art that it is ' nature made human ' may do in a way for the literature of a certain broadly naturalistic school, but will hardly answer for art in its wider general relations." The reader would certainly infer from this — and nothing further is quoted as a text for the wholly unwarranted " enlargement " that follows — that the phrase taken from the book was the final re- sult of an endeavor to distinguish carefully the character- istics of aesthetic art ; and that the author who had formu- lated the definition was not aware that it was too broad for the purpose. The last thing that any one would conceive would be that what is really said of this defini- tion on page 6 of " Art in Theory " is the following : "Nature made human, or nature remade by the human mind, is, of course, a very broad definition of art — one that scarcely begins to suggest all that is needed for a full understanding of the subject. But ... it will serve as a starting-point for what is to follow " ; or that in the very next sentence, at the opening of the next chapter, is begun a distinction between art as thus defined and aesthetic art. Again, in the same book, the argument for the theory of beauty that is presented is reinforced by showing the substantial agreement with reference to certain under- lying requirements of beauty between all the prominent writers on aesthetics, no matter how greatly they may differ in other regards. The concise yet comprehensive state- ment and classification of these views, for such a purpose, would, alone, to a thinker, justify the preparation of the entire volume. But a criticism in " The Nation " not only fails to recognize the force of this concurrence of opinion ; but even why it should be supposed to have any force. PREFACE. Vll \ " The author's reading," the public are told, "on every- thing even remotely connected with the subject, has been immense, and quotations from every one under the heav- ens are as plentiful as blackberries in his pages . . . they over-load them," etc. Of course, a comment like this could not be phrased in such language, except as an expression of inability to apprehend the object of the quotations, and not only this, but even the elementary fact that it is desirable for an author, before contributing to a subject, to take pains to inform himself with refer- ence to what others have already contributed to it, and, if possible, to avail himself of their contributions even to the extent of beginning to develop his system where their systems have ended. Once more, in " Art in Theory," an endeavor is made to find a simple and single conception of beauty fitted to meet the requirements of those who attribute it to essentially mental results like association, adaptability, and conform- ity to ideals, and also, at the same time, of those who attribute it to essentially physical results like quality or complement in tone or color. The general conclusion reached, which, if true, is of the utmost philosophic and artistic importance, is summed up on page 162 in language which certainly ought not to be difficult to understand, to wit : " The highest beauty, in all its different phases, results, as is the case in other departments of excellence, from harmony in effects. Analyzing the elements of these effects, carries with it the additional conclusion that, so far as beauty is physical, it results when sounds, shapes, or colors harmonize together and in such ways that their combinations harmonize with the natural requirements of the physical senses — the ears or eyes to which they appeal; that, so far as beauty is psychical, it results Vlii PREFACE. when the thoughts and feelings suggested or expressed through forms harmonize together, and also with the natural requirements of the minds that they address ; and that, so far as it is both physical and psychical, it results when all the elements entering into both physical and psychical effects harmonize together, and also with the combined requirements of both natures in the man subjected to their influence. In this latter sense, it will be observed that complete beauty necessitates something more than that which is either formal or expressional. It can be obtained in the degree only in which a form beautiful in itself fits a beautiful ideal conjured in the mind by the imagination as a result of a harmonious com- bination of thoughts and feelings." Immediately following these statements in the book, the ideas in them are ab- breviated in a definition expressed in terms concise, and, perhaps, for those who have not read the preceding pages, unnecessarily technical. At least, this impression of it seems to have been conveyed to no less than four reviewers, who, ignoring the ample explanations of the preceding paragraph, have flung the briefer statement toward the public as a sort of specimen boulder to show what a hard road would have to be travelled by one attempting to drive his thoughts through the volume. Even this definition alone, however, might seem clear and acceptable enough if quoted accurately. But it has been quoted inaccurately. Here, with the italicized phrases omitted, is what it has been represented to be: "Beauty is a characteristic of any complex form of varied elements producing apprehensible unity (*". e., harmony or likeness) of effects upon the motive organs of sensation in the ear or eye, or upon the emotive sources of imagination in the mind ; or upon both the one and the other." Moreover, from a text, thus prepared for his pur- PREFACE. IX pose by himself, through the omission of words necessary in order to render its meaning clear and exact, one critic goes on to argue against its vagueness and "inexact- ness." Besides this, too, he attempts to discredit the defi- nition, upon the hypothesis that by a complex form's producing " apprehensible unity of effects " " in the ear and eye, or upon the emotive sources of imagination in the mind," is meant the same as if it had been said that beauty is owing to a mere intellectual apprehen- sion of the fact that a form is not simple but complex in its structure. Such criticisms as these that have been quoted are, of course, not worthy of attention in themselves. Nor would it be in place here to draw the natural lesson which they suggest with reference to the duty of a reviewer to study a book sufficiently to let the public know the facts about it, — what distinguishes its views from those of other books upon the same subject, what is the purpose of the quotations made in it, and what is the exact nature of its conclusions. But there are other reasons directly connected with our subject, why com- ments of the kind noticed need mention. One reason is that the attitude of mind toward the philosophic aspects of art, indeed toward all truth in general, which they indicate, suggests a lack of the kind of intelligence and insight which are essential in order to appreciate the prac- tical results of art, whether in the past or present. The other reason is, that these particular reviews were pub- lished in periodicals supposed by many to represent high critical authority in our country. For both reasons, the question forces itself upon one — Where is art-thought, and art, and all that art is worth, likely to be led by such an attitude of mind ? This is not an idle question. It is one of grave import- X PREFACE. ance. In what sense it is so, may, perhaps, be best revealed to the reader by retracing for him the considera- tions which first revealed its import to the author. These were gradually brought to his attention while examining a series of criticisms concurrently made in different jour- nals in an effort to discredit a fundamental proposition in " Art in Theory," namely, that, in all successful art, the proper balance must be preserved between the require- ments of significance in the form and the requirements of form considered only in itself. The proposition, at first thought, seems almost too apparent to need even to be stated. But on second thought no one can fail to observe that, if accepted as true, it will necessarily put an end to the suppositions of those who consider art to be merely a matter of technique. And it is undoubtedly this threatened danger to their own conceptions that accounts for the way in which a certain class of critics have seen fit to deal with the views presented in " Art in Theory." For this reason it will be interesting, and pos- sibly instructive, to notice just how much intelligence and insight have armed the weapons with which these views have been attacked. The examination of the criticisms will be in place, too, in this preface, because it will ulti- mately lead to a statement of the exact relations to the general subject of art of those technical phases of it which are treated in the present volume. The relevancy of the first criticism to be quoted lies in the fact that it is a com- ment on a brief historical review in " Art in Theory," in- tended to show that the acknowledged errors of extreme romanticism and classicism are traceable, respectively, to the undue emphasizing, in the one, of significance, by which; as repeatedly stated, is meant an " expression of thought and feeling " ; and in the other, of form. In PREFA CE. XI approaching a refutation of this statement, a critic in " The Independent " first refers to the " astounding mis- apprehension " of this view, and then goes on to say : " We cannot at all admit that . . . ' the production of something that imitates a previously existing form or subject is now one of the recognized meanings of the term classic' " Why can he not admit this ? Can it be that he is unaware that, at the present day, which is what is meant by the word now, men, when they speak of a modern artist as producing a classic face, or temple, or drama, or allusion in a drama, invariably suggest a like- ness in it either to a Greek face, or temple, or drama, or allusion containing Greek mythological references ? or else, if not, at least a likeness to some form which, as a form, is sufficiently old to have a recognized character ? And does he not know that the reason for this suggestion is that " one of the recognized meanings " — not the only meaning mentioned in "Art in Theory," but one men- tioned in its historic connections — " of the term classic is the production of something that imitates a previously existing form or subject ? " One would think that every- body ought to know this. " Les classique," says a French criticism lying before me now, "le classique c'est-a-dire ceux qui perpetuent une mantire." But this reviewer does not know it. However, he probably fancies himself in good company —for America. An earlier critic in " The Nation," quoting from " Art in Theory " the statement that " the germ of clas- sicism is the conception that art should chiefly emphasize the form," and of romanticism that " the ideas expressed in the form should be chiefly emphasized," had exclaimed : " Sound not sense was certainly never a motto of classical literature." And who had said that it was ? Does the care- xii PREFACE. fully worded phrase " chiefly emphasize " mean " exclu- sively emphasize?" Or does the term "sound " include all that is meant by " form " ? When we speak of drama- tic " form " do we often even suggest the idea of " sound " ? What we mean then is the general method of unfolding the plot as a whole. This attempted refutation reveals, once more, that lack of philosophic discrimination to which reference has been made. But connected with it, there is a still greater lack of historic knowledge. Who has never heard of the famous theatrical contest between the classi- cists and romanticists in Paris, which once almost made a Bedlam of the whole city, because Victor Hugo, the idol of romanticism, did not model his dramas upon those of his predecessors, which, in turn, were modelled upon those of the Greeks ? What was Hugo contending for ? For the right to emphasize chiefly the ideas behind the form — to speak out naturally upon a modern subject, with a style to fit it, whether it assumed a conventional form, or one that nobody before had ever attempted. But no, says one of these critics : " Classicism and Romanticism are tempers of mind." " They owe their origin," says the other, " to a difference in mental constitutions." Of course, there is a truth in this. By nature men are inclined toward the one or the other. But one might say the same of almost any different phases of mental action. He might say it of the tendencies to intemperance or gambling. But would his saying this explain what either of these is? Certainly not ; for only when the tendencies come to the surface and reveal themselves in a form of action, do they exist in such a way that they can be differentiated. The same is true of classicism and romanticism. They cannot be differentiated till developed into a form of ex- pression. The questions before us are, what is this form, PREFACE. xiii and what is there in it, as a form, that makes it what it is ? To speak of differences in "tempers of mind " or of " men- tal constitution," is to mention something influential in causing a difference to be. But it is no more influential than is the spirit of the age, or the conditions of taste, or environment, or education ; and it fails to suggest, as even some of these latter do, why it is that, at one period, all authors and artists incline to classicism, and at another all of them incline to romanticism ; while, at some periods, the same man seems almost equally inclined to both. Goethe's " Leiden des jungen Werther's," for instance, and his " Goetz von Berlichingen " are specimens of distinctively romantic literature ; whereas his " Iphigenie auf Tauris " is, perhaps, the most successful modern example of classic literature. At what period between writing the first two and the latter of these was his " temper of mind," his " mental constitution " changed ? Is it not a little more rational to say that what was changed was his artistic method ? — possibly, his theory of this ? — that in the first two he " chiefly emphasized " the " significance," and in the last, " the form," causing it to be — what he did not take pains to cause the others to be — " something imita- ting a previously existing " Greek " form " not only, but in this case, a Greek " subject " also ? On the contrary, says one of these critics, elaborating his theory about " tempers of mind," " classicism is reason- able, logical, and constructive, while romanticism is emo- tional and sensuous " ; and the other echoes his sentiments with something about " the eternal distinction between the intellectual and the emotional." And so one is to believe that the distinguishing feature of classic Greek sculpture— like a " Venus," a " Faun," or a " Group of the Niobe,"— or of a classic Greek drama, like the " Antigone," XIV PREFACE. is, that it is not sensuous or emotional ; and that the distin- guishing feature of the plays of Shakespeare or Hugo, or of a Gothic cathedral, is that they are not reasonable or log- ical or constructive ! Of course, there is a cause underlying the distinctions that these critics are trying to make. It is suggested too in " Art in Theory." On page 25, the statement is made that one characteristic of romantic art is that in it the form is " determined solely by the exigen- cies of expression," and on page 17, at the beginning of the chapter in which this statement occurs, as well as in scores of other places in the book, it is explained that by the term expression is meant a communication of thought and feeling combined. Without any explanation indeed, this meaning would be a necessary inference from the fundamental conception of the book, which is that all art is emotional in its sources, and that art-ideas are the manifestations of emotion in consciousness (Chapters V., XVIII., and XIX.). It follows from all these facts to- gether that emotion — but not without its accompanying thought, which, sometimes, as with Browning, throws the emotion entirely into the shade — has a more unrestricted expression in romantic art than in classic art. In the latter the form is " chiefly emphasized," and therefore there is a more conscious, as well as apparent exercise of rational intelligence engaged in constructing a form for it, and in confining the expression to the limits of this form. But we must not confound the effects of this difference with that which causes them. This is the method of the artist when producing his art-work, a method influenced by the relative attention which he gives, either consciously or unconsciously, to the requirements of significance or of form. It is important to recognize this fact, too, because, otherwise, we should not recognize that he is the master of PREFACE. xv his methods, and, if he choose, can produce in both styles, though, of course, not with equal pleasure, because he must have his preferences ; nor with equal facility, because it is a matter of a lifetime to produce successfully in either. To suppose that his methods master him, is to show a lack of insight, with reference to the practice of art, still greater than that just indicated with reference to the theory of it. Goethe could write " Iphigenie auf Tauris " or the " Lei- den des jungen Werther's." So, too, the same painter can " chiefly emphasize " form in his figures by using the distinct " classic " line, as it is termed ; or, if he have been educated in another school, often merely if he choose, he can suggest the form with the vague outlines of the roman- tic impressionist ; and the same architect also can plan a classic Girard college, or a romantic seaside cottage. To imagine otherwise, is to parallel the notion of a schoolboy that the poet tears his hair, rolls his eyes, raves in the lines of a lyric rather than of a drama, and makes a general fool of himself by a complete lack of self-control whenever he is composing at all, simply because he is " born and not made." That this inference with reference to the error as to artistic methods is justified, is proved by the inability of critics of this class to recognize the necessity of making any distinction whatever between significance in form — not outside of form — and form as developed for its own sake, concerning which the reader may notice what is said in the Introduction to " Music as a Representative Art," on page 235. It might be supposed that the definition of art there quoted, to the effect that it is " the application to any- thing, in the spirit of pleasure and for play only, of the principle of proportion," would be welcomed as a desira- XVI PREFACE. ble reinforcement of the truth presented in two hundred pages of an essay devoted entirely to the subject of " Rhythm and Harmony." But, as shown in that Intro- duction, there are reasons connected with the require- ments of significance, that may be urged against this definition. Let us notice here certain other reasons of the same tenor which are connected with the require- ments of form. Go to critics of literature who believe that art is "the application to anything " of the laws of art-form — which, for reasons given on page 235, is a strictly just way of shortening what is meant by the exceedingly loose use of the term proportion in the above definition — and ask them who is the first English poet of the age. They will probably answer — and few would differ from them — Swinburne. Now ask them what is the finfluence upon life of the thought presented in his poetry, what is the particular phase of inspiration to be derived from it ; and they will probably answer that to them as critics this is immaterial ; that not the thoughts of the poet, not his subjects give him his rank, but his manner of presenting them, his style, the rhythm of his verse, and its harmony as produced by alliteration, assonance, or rhyme. Again, ask a critic of painting of the same school to show you the best picture in a gallery. He is as likely as not to point you to the figure of a woman, too lightly clothed, posing not too unconsciously near some water ; or, too heavily clothed, sitting in front of a mirror. You ask him what is the peculiar phase of thought expressed in this picture, the particular inspiration for life to be derived from it ; and he will look at you and laugh. Nothing to-day, in our country, is supposed to show more ignorance about art, than the conception that interest in a picture has any- PREFACE. XVli thing to do with a subject, or with its suggesting a story, whether inspiring or otherwise. We must judge of the picture, we are told, entirely by the form, the style, the use in it of light and shade and color. But, you say, there certainly was a time when theories of art were different. Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, yes, and Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller too, — all these had style or form, yet what one thinks of chiefly, when he reads them, is not this, but the thought that is behind it. Then there is Raphael. On a Sunday, one could sit for an hour before the Sistine Madonna, and feel more bene- fited than in most of the churches. But Raphael's is not a name, you find, with which to charm the modern critic. You are told that you are behind the age. This state- ment gives you a new suggestion, and you proceed to apply it. You ask yourself if the same may be true with reference to your views of literary art. You take up the nearest periodical and read the poetry in it, and its criti- cisms upon poetry. What are the new poets doing? What is it in their work that excites praise? The thought ? — its breadth of conception ? its completeness of development ? its power of expressing truth fitted to uplift spiritually ? How often do we see, in an American criticism, anything like an analysis of a new American poem ? How often do we see an effort to bring to light the subtle character of the philosophy of which it is the ex- pression ? And there is the kindliest of reasons why these are not seen. A suggestion of logical arrangement, as in Dante or Milton, a hint of ethical maxims, though set as brilliantly as in Shakespeare or Schiller, would give a poet of our own day, were he commended for these particularly, a hard tramp up the road to recog- nition. What our people want is style, form. " Yes," xviii PREFACE. say the critics, " but imaginative form. You can't object to that." Certainly one can — to imagination used for mere form's sake. Imaginative form has value only when it images a truth ; and this is that which our modern critics have forgotten. Any comparison, however odious, will do for them, if it be only a comparison, and almost _any style if it only ring, even if as hollow as some of the French forms of verse that our magazines admire so much. Not, of course, that the style must always be as dainty as in these. Some of us prefer to take it — as the English do their cheese — strong, with plenty of light and shade, and if the former be leprous and the latter smutty, so long as the effects are anything but weak/our critics, especially of our religious journals, are apt to like it all the better. The truth is that the moment that, through an overbalancing regard for form, people come to think that it alone has value, and that the subject in art is im- material, they are in a fair way to become realists in that very worst sense in which it means believers in the por- trayal in art of any amount of ugliness or nastiness so long as it be only that which they term " true to nature." This is the belief which, at present, is uppermost in France, brought about in that country by the predomi- nating influence, through more than one century, of a materialistic art-philosophy. It is the reason why, in def- erence to the supposed interests of art, the thousands there who dislike the practical results no less than we, do not protest against unsavory plays or novels, like some of those of Sardou or Zola, and can actually swallow their dinners without turning to the wall some of the pictures that confront them. It is the reason too — and this is usually overlooked — why people foreign to France, while willing to acknowledge that its artists in every department PREFACE. xix outnumber many times those of any other nation, have never generally admitted a single French poet, musician, painter, or sculptor, into that highest rank where, estimat- ing worth according to a standard of significance as well as of style, they have all agreed to place Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Rubens, Raphael, and Angelo. And this French attitude of mind toward art, — art which some believe to be the handmaid of civilization and reli- gion, and the most powerfully elevating of any purely human influence ; — this attitude of mind and this direction toward high achievement in art, is that to which almost all those potent in criticism in our country, to-day, are doing their utmost to point our own people. In this preface, however, that which concerns us chiefly, is the influence of theories of this kind upon artistic form. Do those who hold that the subject of art can be " any- thing," continue to hold on to their belief in the necessity of a strictly artistic treatment of this ? — or do their fol- lowers ? It may be a new suggestion, but the plain truth is that usually they do not, and this because they cannot. If it be a law, as is maintained in " Art in Theory," that an artist, to be successful in his work, must always keep his thought upon two things, — form in itself, and signifi- cance in the form, — then he cannot think of only one of these without doing injury to both. He is like a man in a circus, riding two horses. The moment that he neglects one of them, it shies off from him ; and, when he leans to recover his control of this, he finds himself balanced away from the other. Very soon, unless he wish to keep up a jumping exhibition, for which his audience have not paid, he will either ride no horse at all, or only one, and this is as likely as otherwise to be the very one that he at first neglected. So in art : unless a man preserve the XX PREFACE. equilibrium between the requirements of form and of significance, no one can tell which of the two will finally appeal to him more strongly. Significance of some sort, for instance, to apply this to the case before us, is eternally present in art, no matter what one's theory may be con- cerning it. For this reason, when men have begun to think that the subject of art may be " anything," so long as the form is artistic, some of them, as just noticed, will soon begin to think that it may be " anything but what it should be." Before long, too, they will come to suppose — just as people come to admire most the disagreeable eccentricities of those whom they accept as leaders — that the art is all the better for having as a subject " anything but what it should be." Does this result appear improba- ble? Recall the almost universal comment of the art- editors in our country upon the rejection of the nude male figure prepared for the medal of the Columbian exhibition. The comment — probably true enough in itself — was that the authorities at Washington did not " understand " or " appreciate art." But think of any one's imagining that this fact was proved by this particular action ? — as if the statues of our statesmen in the old Hall of Representatives in the Capitol could not be specimens of art unless all their pantaloons were chiselled off! — as if appropriateness of subject and of treatment had nothing to do with art in them or in this medal! — as if by reproducing, however successfully, a form representative of Greek life, we could atone, in a distinctively American medal, for misrepre- senting American life ! — as if, in short, there were not a large number of other considerations far more important as proving the possession of aesthetic appreciation than the acceptance of a subject which, when exhibited in an advertisement, would inevitably be deemed by hundreds PREFACE. XXI of thousands of our countrymen " anything but what it should be ! " How long would it take a condition of art- appreciation, of which such a criterion were the test, to fill our public parks with imitated Venuses and Apollos, meaningless to our people except as reminders of the reigning beauties of else forgotten " living pictures " ? What would be the effect upon our growing youth, were the thoughts excited by such productions to be substi- tuted for the nobler and purer inspiration of works like St. Gaudens' " Farragut," or McMonnies' recently erected "Nathan Hale"? The influence upon sculpture of this supposition that a subject of art may be " anything," has not yet, fortunately, in our country, been fully revealed. But the same can- not be said with reference to poetry. There are plenty of people among us, neither vicious nor morbid in their tastes, who, nevertheless, are inclined to fancy that, con- sidered aesthetically, a shady theme is not only excusa- ble but desirable, when furnishing a background from which to project into relief a brilliancy of treatment. Therefore, for his brilliancy, they accepted Swinburne when he first appeared ; and to-day, though far less brilliant, they have taken up with Ibsen. How would it be, ac- customed as they are now to these morbid themes, were another Ibsen to appear, an Ibsen so far as concerned his subjects, but without the present Ibsen's dramatizing skill? Would he, too, though destitute of the elements of form which once their school considered the essential test of art, — would he, too, be accepted as a foremost poet or dramatist ? Strange as it may seem, he certainly would. Most of the service of praise to Whitman in the Madison Square Theatre in New York, some ten years ago, was piped by our little metropolitan singers, whose highest xxii PREFACE. ideal of a poet had been Swinburne, and whose most vehement artistic energy had hitherto expended itself almost entirely upon dainty turns of melody in rondeaus and villanelles. The result merely verified an old well- known principle. Extremes meet. The apotheosis of form, when the smoke of the incense clears away, reveals, enthroned on high, a Whitman ; and not in any of Whit- man's works is there even a suggestion of that kind of excellence in form, which once his worshippers supposed to be the only standard of poetic merit. Precisely the same principle is exemplified in painting, too. When an artist starts out with an idea that the sub- ject of art may be "anything," of course he begins to develop the form for its own sake. He has nothing else to do. But form may mean many different things. With some, it means the imitation of natural outlines or colors. With some, it hardly means imitation at all. It means the development of color according to the laws of har- mony. Even where the subject of art is a person, even in portraiture, there are critics who tell us that the result should not be judged by its likeness to the person depicted. It is not a photograph, forsooth. It is a painting, to be judged by the paint, they say, and mean, apparently, by the color, irrespective of its appearance in the face por- trayed. Of course, this supposition will be deemed by some unwarranted. Few would second it, made thus baldly. But we must judge of beliefs by practices ; and scarcely an art-exhibition in New York fails to show some portraits on the walls — nor the- ones least praised — in which those slight variations of hue which every careful observer recognizes to be essential to the effects of life in the human countenance, are so exaggerated for the sake of mere effects of color, that faces in robust health are PREFACE. xxiii made to look exactly as if breaking out with the measles ; or, not infrequently, as if the victim had had the disease, and died of it. Thus in painting as in poetry, and the same fact might be exemplified in all the arts, exclusive atten- tion to form,— -the conception that art is the application of its laws to " anything " — may lead in the end, and very swiftly too, to the destruction not only of all in art that is inspiring to the soul, but even of that which is pleasing to the senses. A law of art-form is worth nothing except as it is applied to forms that have worth ; and that which gives them worth is not by any means synonymous with that which makes them " anything." Contrast the conception that it is, with that underlying proposition of Lessing in his great criticism upon the Laocoon, namely that " the Greek artist represented noth- ing that was not beautiful. . . . The perfection of the subject must charm in his work." In this contrast is represented a difference between the American and the Greek ideal of art which may well cause serious reflection. And when we recall not only the literary works of Goethe and Schiller, but the marvellous advances in all the arts that are universally traced to the acceptance in Germany of the principles developed by Lessing, we can surmise just how much the acceptance of like principles might do for our own country, as well as how far we yet are from a position in which we may even begin to entertain a hope that they may ultimately obtain supremacy. The author is under obligations to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Charles Scribner's Sons, the Macmillan Company, and to others, publishers and authors, for their kind permission to insert in this work poems of which they hold the copyrights. Princeton, N. ].\ September, 1894. RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. CONTENTS. I. Correspondences between Elements of Form in the Arts of Sound and of Sight . 1-7 Introduction— Object of the Present Volume— The Arts as Sepa- rated by the Differences between Sound and Sight — Forms as Separated by Silences or Pauses among Sounds, and by Lines or Outlines among Sights— Chart of the Methods of Art-Composition — Separate Effects of Sound Differ in Duration, Force, Quality, and Pitch ; and of Sights in Extension, in Light and Shade, and in Quality and Pitch of Color — Respective Correspondences between Effects in Sound and in Sight — Combined Influences of these Effects as Manifested in Rhythm and in Proportion, and also in Harmony of Sound and of Color. II. Rhythm in Nature, Mind, and Speech : How De- veloped by Methods of Art-Composition . 8-24 Rhythm as a Form of Human Expression — As Manifested in Exter- nal Nature — In the Action of the Nervous System, and in that of the Mind — Results of Experiments Proving Mental Rhythmical Action ; Groups Formed from Series of Uniform Sounds — Of Sounds Regularly Differing in Accent or in Duration — Inferences from these Experiments — Speech as Necessitating Accent and Groups of Syllables — Larger Groups also — Inhalation as Necessi- tating Pauses, and Causing Composite Groups — Adaptation of these Conditions to Secure Rhythmic Effects of Unity and Variety, through Order — Complexity, Confusion, Counteraction, Compari- son, Contrast, and Complement — Principality and Subordination— XXVI CONTENTS. PAGB Congruity, Incongruity, and Comprehensiveness — The Number of Syllables not the Basis of the Measure-Units — Nor Quantity — But Accent — Influence of Central-Point, Setting, Parallelism, Organic Form, Symmetry — Measures Constructed According to Accent — Others — Primitive Method of Verse-Rhythm — Greek and Latin Verse-Rhythm — English and its Advantages. III. Art-Methods as Developing Measure and Verse 25-37 The Art-Methods, especially Repetition, as Causing Groups of Syllables in Measures — Double and Triple Measures — Initial, Ter- minal, Median, Compound, and Double Initial and Terminal — Significance of Each Measure — Art-Methods as Causing Groups of Measures in Lines — Hebrew Parallelism, and Greek — The Couplet — The Caesura — Lines of One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and More Measures — Examples of them — The Iambic Tetrameter — The Iambic Pentameter, Heroic Measure, Blank Verse — The Classic Hexameter — English Hexameter — Children of the Lord's Supper — Another Example — A Translation from the Iliad — The Alexandrine. IV. Art-Methods as Developing Variety in Measure and Line 38-52 Natural Conditions Necessitating Variety — Two Ways of Intro- ducing this into Measures — By Changing the Number of Syllables in the Measures and Lines — Examples — By Omitting Syllables Necessary to a Complete Foot — Necessity of Reading Poetry in a Way Analogous to Rendering Words in Music — Unused Possi- bility in English Blank Verse— Suggestions of it— An Example of it and a Criticism — Omitting Syllables at the Ends of Lines — Add- ing them in Rhymed Lines — In Blank Verse — Feminine and Double Endings of Lines — Examples of Regularly Metrical Lines with Syllables Omitted and Added — Changing the Numbers or the Places of Accents in the Lines — In Rhyming Verses — In Blank Verse — Example of Greater Regularity — Accent and its Absence in the Final Foot : End-stopped Lines — Run-on Lines : Weak and CONTENTS. xxvii PAGE Light Endings — Forms of Broken Blank Verse — Shakespeare's Use of Run-on Lines. Art-Methods as Developing Stanzas and Typi- cal Verse-Forms 53-89 Rhythm as so far Explained — Necessity in Each Poem of a Stand- ard Measure or Line — Illustrating the Art-Methods of Principality, Massing, Interspersion, Complication — Examples — Tendency to Make Long Lines just Double the Length of Short lines — The Couplet, through Complication and Continuity, Passes into the Stanza — Rhythm as Related to the Tunes of Verse, and Causing Correspondences between Lines of Verse and Lines of Vision — Rhythm as Involving Consonance, Dissonance, Interchange, and Gradation — Abruptness, Transition, and Progress — Slow and Fast Progress as Represented in Poetic Rhythm — Rhythmic Possibilities of Stanzas of Different Forms — Stanzas of Three Lines — Four — Five — Six — Seven — Shorter Chaucerian — Eight — Nine, the Spen- serian — Longer Chaucerian — The Sonnet — First Type of — Second — Third — French Forms of Verse — Triolet — Rondel — Rondeau — Kyrielle — Rondeau Redouble — Ballade — Pantoum — Villanelle — Chain Verse — Sestina — Sicilian Octave — Virelai — Chant Royal — Ode — Comic Effects — Incongruity between Thought and Form — In the Form only — In Endings of Lines — In Rhymes — In Pauses. VI. Art-Methods as Developing Rhythm in Music . 90-106 Rhythm an End aside from its Connection with Words — Music as Developed from Song — Point of Separation between Speech and Song: Poetry and Music — Musical Measures more Compli- cated than Poetic — Ways of Indicating Musical Notes and Rests — Measures — Longer Divisions Corresponding to Poetic Lines — De- veloped as in Poetry from the Art-Methods, Parallelism, etc. — The Motive — Its Expressional Importance — The Phrase, Section, and Period — Changes in the Period— Unity of Effect as Developed from these Rhythmic Arrangements— Why Higher Works Find Few to Appreciate them — Musical Measures, Like Poetic, Double and Triple — Accent in Musical Measures — Why Poetic Measures Need XXV1I1 CONTENTS. PAGE to he Distinguished in Other Ways than as Double and Triple — Three or Six Notes as Used in the Time usually Allotted to Two or Four — Changes of the Places of Accent in the Measures — Possi- bility of Representing Different Effects of Movement — Typical Forms of Rhythm — General Effect of Musical Rhythm Depends on that of Whole Phrases, Sections, and Periods — Effects of Rhythm very Different from those of Harmony — But the Develop- ment of the One has Accompanied that of the Other. VII. Art-Methods of Unity, Order, Comparison, Prin- cipality, etc., as Developing Poetic Har- mony ........ 107-120 The Terms Tone and Color are Used in both the Arts of Sound and of Sight — Harmony a Complex Effect but a Unity — The Mind Con- scious of the Divisions of Time Represented in Rhythm ; Not Conscious of those of Vibrations Represented in Harmony — In the Recognition of which, the Ear and Eye Act Similarly — The Scien- tific Knowledge of the Origin of Tone and Color did not Precede the Artistic Use of them — Analogies between Poetry and Paint- ing or Sculpture — Also between Architecture and Music — Poetic Effects Dependent on Laws of Sound — Examples of Verse Con- taining too Much Variety of Tone — Necessity for Unity of Tone- Effects — Dependent upon the Order of the Syllables — Euphony — Vowel- and Consonant-Sounds Easy to Pronounce — Examples of Euphonious Words and Poems — If Difficult to Pronounce, Illus- trate Artistic Confusion — Euphony Leading to Use of Like Sounds According to Art-Method of Comparison — Accent as Necessitating Art-Methods of Counteraction, Contrast, Complement — Further Exemplification — Consecutive Tones should not be as Different as Possible — But should not be Alike on both Accented and Un- accented Syllables — Accented Tones can be Repeated According to Art-Methods of Principality, but, in such cases, Subordination and Balance Require Accented Tones to Differ from Unaccented. VIII. Alliteration, Assonance, and Rhyme . . 121-135 Like Effects in the Sounds of Syllables — Alliteration — In Hebrew Poetry— In Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German—In CONTENTS. XXIX PAGE Anglo-Saxon — As Used by Milton, Shakespeare, and Modem Eng- lish Poets — Assonance — Examples, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Anglo-Saxon, English — Two Examples from Tennyson — Assonance Used for Rhyme — Rhyme, Place of — Its History — Greek, Latin, Early English — Reason for it — Rules of, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth— A Correlated Chinese Style of Composition. IX. Comparison by Way of Congruity, Central-Point, Parallelism, etc., as Determining the Use of Like Poetic Sounds .... 136-146 Inartistic Effects of an Excessive Use of Alliteration, Assonance, and Rhyme — Objections urged against Rhyme — These Forms should not be Discarded, but Used in Accordance with the Art- Methods : Unity, Variety, Comparison, Contrast — Congruity in Thought as Represented in Sound-Effects — Applied to Alliteration and Assonance — Influence of these upon Association and Memory — Illustration — Influence of Incongruity — Of the Art-Method of Comprehensiveness — Methods of Principality, Central-Point, Sub- ordination, Setting, as Exemplified in Sound-Arrangements — Cor- respondence in this Regard between Effects of Poetic and Musical Harmony — Similar Actions of the Mind in both Arts — Parallelism as Emphasized by Rhyme. Repetition, Alternation, Consonance, Inter- change, etc., as Determining the Use of Like Poetic Sounds .... 147-16 1 Repetition and Alternation as Influencing the Use of Alliteration, Assonance, and Rhyme — Of Alternation as Developed from Paral- lelism and Balance — Balancing Series of Sounds — In Whole Words that are Alike— How these Exemplify Alternation— Balancing Series of Sounds Alike by Alliteration or Assonance — From the Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, English— Excess in this to be Avoided — Massing as a Corrective of Excessive Balance or XXX CONTENTS. PAGE Alternation — And Interspersion is Corrective of Excessive Massing — Also Complication and Continuity — Poetic Examples of these Methods — Consonance as Applied to Sounds ; Phonetic-Syzygy — Examples of the Use of Allied Consonant-Sounds — Of Allied Vowel-Sounds — Dissonance and Interchange in Music — In Poetic Sounds — Illustrations. XI. Gradation, Abruptness, Continuity, and Progress as Determining the Use of Like Poetic Sounds ". 162-167 Importance, in All the Arts as an Element of Harmony, of Grada- tion — Logical Connection between it and the Use of Allied Sounds : All Possible Syllable-Sounds can be Graded and Arranged in a Series — So can Words, though Containing both Consonants and Vowels — Degrees of Phonetic Gradation Determined by the Manner of Utterance and Kinds of their Gradation by the Direction of the Changes in Utterance : Analogies between Gradation in Words and in the Musical Scale — Illustrations of Gradation in Verse — Espe- cially in the Accented Syllables — Analogy between One Effect of it and the Discord of the Seventh in Music — Variety in Verse Har- mony as Produced by the Combination of all the Methods here Considered — Abruptness in Verse Harmony — Transition and Pro- gress — Examples. XII. Analogies between the Use of Quality and Pitch in Poetry and Music .... 168-177 Each of these Arts Developed Independently, yet Sounds as Used in Both are Connected — Every Vowel Has a Quality of its Own — Also a Pitch — Not Essential for our Purpose to Know what this Pitch is — Only the Fact — In Passing from One Word to Another we Pass to a Different Pitch, and in Using Different Vowel- and Consonant-Sounds together in One Word we Produce Effects Allied to Chords — These Effects Augmented by Upward and Downward Inflections Used in Reading, Causing Analogies to Musical Melody and Harmony — Different Kinds of Verse-Melody Produced by Different Arrangements of Sounds and Accents — Tunes of Verse as Determined by the Rhythm — Illustrations — Melody and Harmony, CONTENTS. xxxi PACE though Existing in both Poetry and Music, are Different in Each Art — Every Possible Pitch of the Voice can be Used in Poetry ; Only Notes of Some Selected Pitch in Music— The Cause of this Difference to be Found in the Difference between the Expressional Possibilities of Articulated and Inarticulated Sounds — Early Musi- cians did not Know All their Reasons for Constructing Musical Scales — But, Judging by Effects, were Led, as is now Known, in All Cases to Put together Like Partial Effects of Unlike Complex Wholes. XIII. Musical Melody and Harmony, as Developed His- torically According to the Methods of Art-Composition 1 78-191 The Best Results of Quality, as Exemplified in the Human Voice and Instruments, Produced by a Blending of Like Effects — In Pitch, the Same is True — But to Understand the Subject Thor- oughly, we should Know the Causes of Quality and Pitch — The Note and Half-Note— Written Music : the Staff— Treble Clef- Bass Clef — C Clef — Sharps and Flats — Music among the Greeks — How Developed by Effects of Comparison, First by Way of Congruity — The Gregorian Chant an Endeavor to Imitate the Speaking Voice — Intonation is Based on Comparison by Way of Repetition — Melody, Developed from this, is Based on Compari- son by Way of Consonance : Pythagoras and the Origin of Musical Scales — Variety, Introducing Contrast, Incongruity, Alteration, and Dissonance, Necessitates, for Unity of Effect, Complement, Balance, Alternation, and Interchange — Octaves, as Sung together by the Greeks, a Form of Parallelism — Polyphonic Music, as De- veloped from this, and from Methods of Alternation, Complication, and Interchange — Harmonic Music Developed by a Renewed Application of the Methods of Order, Principality, etc. — Causes of the Rise of Harmonic Music. XIV. Musical Scales as Developed by the Art-Method of Grouping Like Partial Effects of Un- like Complex Wholes .... 192-206 As Harmony is Developed from Melody, to Understand Music, we must First Learn why Certain Notes are Fitted to Follow One XXXli CONTENTS. PAGB Another — Scales Constructed from the Sense of Hearing, and All Scales Similar, therefore the Same Law Underlies them — Sounds Differ in Quality — Musical Sounds Result from Regularly Periodic Vibrations — Differences in Loudness from the Different Amplitude of Vibrations, and in Pitch from the Different Time of Vibrations — Differences in Quality from the Different Combinations of Vibra- tions — Vibrations Compounded, and Each of the Compounds Intro- duces into the Tone a Pitch or Partial Tone of its Own — Law of Sequence of the Upper Partial Tones of Musical Notes — Exam- ple in Music — Correspondence of the Earliest Greek Scale with the Chief Partial Tones of its Keynote — And of our Own Major Scale — A Possible Scale of Ten Notes — Our Minor Scale — These Scales All Constructed on the Principle of Grouping Like Partial Effects of Unlike Complex Wholes — The Method in which the Greeks, Ignorant of Partial Tones, were Guided to these Results by their Sense of Hearing — How they Constructed, by Measuring the Length of Strings, the Lyre of Orpheus — Similar Results Reached by the Moderns through Counting Vibrations, and the Resulting Ratios — The Ratios of the Chinese Scale of Six Notes as Developed by the Ancients — The Ratios of the Greek Scale of Seven Notes — Other Greek Scales — Deficiencies of the Greek Scale and the Development of the Modern Scales — Comparison between the Ratios of these and of the Pythagorean Scale — The Keys of the Piano and the Scales Played from the Different Key- notes — The Temperate Scale of the Present, and its Ratios as Compared with the Pythagorean, the Major, and the Minor. XV. Musical Harmony as Developed by the Art- Method or Grouping Like Partial Effects of Unlike Complex Wholes . . 207-220 Historical Developments from Counteraction, etc., as Involved in Polyphonic Music — Connection between the Concords and the Lowest or Chief Partial Tones of a Compound Note — Harmony Emphasizes the Fact that Like Partial Effects are Put with Like — Visible Proof of this — All the Notes of a Scale Harmonized by Using Chords Based on the Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant — Different Possible Arrangements of the Same Chord — The Ca- dence and the Dissonance of the Seventh — The Principal Key — CONTENTS. xxxiii PAGE Application of Subordination, Balance, Central-Point, Parallelism, Symmetry, Alternation, Massing, Complication, Continuity, etc. — And Other of the Methods of Art-Composition — Interchange as an Element of Modulation — And Gradation, Abruptness, Transi- tion, and Progress — Interchange and Gradation in Sounding the Same Note in Successive Chords — In Passing from One Key to Another, by Making the Tonic or Subdominant of One Key the Dominant of Another — By Passing from Major to Minor, or Vice Versa — Further Exemplified and Explained — Relations of Differ- ent Chords to One Another — Abruptness in Transitions — The Chords Considered Separately — The Major Triad — The Chord of the Seventh— The Minor Triad— The Ratios of the Notes of these Chords when in the Same Octaves — Summary of the Ratios of Notes Causing Musical Concords. XVI. Psychical and Physical Reasons for the Effects of Musical Form 221-228 Relations of the Ratios Underlying Effects in Music to those in the Other Arts — Why is it Necessary that Notes should Chord ? — Psy- chological Reason — Correspondence of it to the Reason Given for Effects of Rhythm — Physiological Confirmation of this Reason — Beats Resulting from Discordant Notes — New Resulting Notes Formed by these Beats— In the Major Triad, the Resulting Note is itself the Tonic — Beats Disagreeable, because Interruptions of the Regularity of Periodic Vibrations — Cause Noise, not Music — Blending of Psychological and Physiological Reasons for Effects of Musical Form : Mind and Ear must Recognize that Like is Put with Like. MUSIC AS A REPRESENTATIVE ART. Introduction 231-238 Representation in Song as Contrasted with that in Speech 239~ 2 49 The Sustained Sounds of Singing and the Unsustained of Talk- ing — The Former as Developed in Music and the Latter in Poetry xxxiv CONTENTS. — Differences between these Two Methods of Vocal Representation — Music as Necessitating Sustained Sounds — The Germs of its Rep- resentations are mainly in Inarticulate Utterance, Instinctive and Associative, rather than Imitative and Comparative — The Repre- sentation of Speech, also Dependent partly upon Inarticulate Intonations — How these are Related to the Various Developments of Music — Representation in Music not Distinct and Definite, as in Words — Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Music — Gurney's Comment on this — Further Comments — Why Music is not Made Definitely Intelligible or Imitative — How it Represents both Mental Processes and Natural Surroundings — The Mind of the Composer not Necessarily in the Mood Naturally Represented by his Music — His Relation to this Mood that of a Painter to the Mood Represented in his Model's Pose. II. Representation through Musical Duration and Force : Rhythm 250-263 Similarity of Poetic and Musical Representation — Representative Intonations of Elocution — Through Duration, Force, Pitch, and Quality — Discoursive or Associative and Dramatic or Comparative Elocution — Each Representative According to the Principle of Cor- respondence — Musical Duration as Representative — Musical Dura- tion as Representative of both Mental Moods and Natural Effects — Illustrations — Musical Force as Representative of both Mental Moods and Natural Effects — Rhythm as a Combination of Effects of Duration and Force — Significance of Rhythm — As Representing Moods of Buoyancy and Exhilaration — Confidence, Triumph — Self- Poise, Dignity — The Gliding, Yielding, Graceful — Hesitation, Doubt — Disturbance, Turmoil, Confusion — Imitative Effects — Forging — Flight Downward — Upward — Snakes — Water — Flowing Ease — Giants' Tread. III. Representation through Musical Pitch, High and Low, Upward and Downward . 264-273 Correspondences in the External World to High and Low Pitch — And to Upward and Downward Directions of it — Further Explana- tions — As Illustrated in Elocutionary Intonations — Gregorian CONTENTS. xx F Chants as Developed from Elocutionary Laws — Upward Movements in Musical Questions — In Anticipative Expectancy — Downward Movements in Effects that are Conclusive — Affirmative and Positive — Combined Upward and Downward Movements in Effects both Anticipative and Conclusive — The Same Rendered Emphatic — Imitative Effects : Upward as in Rising — Downward as in Sink- ing — In Both Directions. IV. Representation through Musical Pitch : Com- bined Wave-Movements .... 274-279 The Meaning of the Elocutionary Circumflex or Wave-Movements — Further Explanations — How these Conditions are Paralleled in Music — Illustrations of Inconclusive Uncertainty Ending with Positive and Decisive Effects — Of Anticipation Ending with Finality — Of the Indecisive Ending with the Decisive — Of Hope, Ending with Doubt — Of Irony, Mockery — Other Illustrations. V. Representation through Blending of Pitch as in Musical Harmony 280-290 Elocutionary Use of Pitch, when Indicative of Suspense — Blending of Harmonic and Inharmonic Intervals of Pitch, as Analogous to Effects of Quality — Meanings in Speech of the Major and the Minor Interval — Their Meanings in Music — Further Explanations — The Subdominant, Dominant, and Tonic — Complete and In- complete Cadence — Explanations of their Effects — Meanings of Upward and Downward Elocutionary Harmonic Cadences — Illus- trations of the Satisfying Effects of Upward Musical Major Ca- dences—Unsatisfying Effects of Upward Minor Musical Cadences — Satisfying Effects of Downward Major Cadences — Unsatisfying Effects of Downward Minor Cadences— Wagner's Use of Upward Anticipative Movement Followed by Downward Minor Cadences. XXXVI CONTENTS. VI. PAGE Representation through Musical Quality . 291-300 How Musical Quality is Determined — How Determined in the Human Voice — What Different Qualities of the Voice Represent — Their Correspondences in Nature — Analogies between Quality as Used in Elocution and in Music — Representation by Way of As- sociation through the Use of Different Musical Instruments — The Same Continued — Representation through these by Way of Imita- tion — Other Examples. VII. Musical Representation in Series of Passages when not Imitative 3° 1- 3i3 Series of Passages as Representative — By Way of Association as in Discoursive Elocution — As Illustrated by Haweis — By J. D. Rogers — Schumann's "In der Nacht" — Brahme's German Requiem — B. I. Gilman's Experiment — Explanation — Recorded Result — Deduc- tion to be Drawn from these Quotations : In what Sense they In- dicate that Music is Representative — Quotation from J. S. Dwight Interpreting the most Important of the Forms of Musical Composi- tion — Program Music — Its Appropriate Use. VIII. Musical Representation in Series of Passages when Imitative, with Remarks about Wagner . 314-323 Influence upon Representation of Slight Imitative Effects— Exam- ples : Barking of a Dog — Braying of an Ass — Nightingale's Song — Cackling of a Hen — Cluck of Same — Human Sounds — Laugh- ter — Yawning — Sneezing — Coughing— Quarrelling — Sobbing — Scolding — Moaning— Fondling — Playing — Frightening Others — Paganini's Testimony — The General Character of Wagner's Mo- tives — His Peculiar Method of Using them — Result of this, Es- pecially upon those not Previously Appreciating Music — His Ten- dency toward a Language of Music — Will Others Develop this Two Methods in which it may be Done with Safety — Conclusion. Index 325 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. CHAPTER I. CORRESPONDENCES BETWEEN ELEMENTS OF FORM IN THE ARTS OF SOUND AND OF SIGHT. Introduction — Object of the Present Volume — The Arts as Separated by the Differences between Sound and Sight — Forms as Separated by Silences or Pauses among Sounds, and by Lines or Outlines among Sights — Chart of the Methods of Art-Composition — Separate Effects of Sound Differ in Duration, Force, Quality, and Pitch ; and of Sights in Extension, in Light and Shade and in Quality and Pitch of Color — Respective Correspondences between Effects in Sound and in Sight — Combined Influences of these Effects as Manifested in Rhythm and in Proportion, and also in Harmony of Sound and of Color. T N the volume entitled " The Genesis of Art-Form," the prominent methods of composition in art were traced from their origin in elementary conditions of mind or of matter up to the period in which they were said to result in rhythm, as applied to duration in time ; in proportion, as applied to extension in space ; and in harmony, as ap- plied to quality and pitch, whether of note or color. A chart representing these methods, as treated in that vol- ume, as well as their order of development and their inter- dependence, is inserted on page 3. It should be known, 2 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POE TR Y AND MUSIC. too, that in the first volume of this series of essays, en- titled " Art in Theory," Chapter XIV., the results attained by these methods were shown to be necessary to the effects not merely of art-composition, but also — and this explains their use in art — to those of all beauty, whether perceived in art or in nature. The present volume is intended to take up the discus- sion of our general subject at the point where it was dropped in " The Genesis of Art-Form," and to study the developments in poetry and music of rhythm and harmony. In order to perceive exactly the nature of the task which this intention involves, as well as the corres- pondences between the phases of sound that are to be treated and analogous phases in the arts of sight, let us begin by recalling a few of the more prominent facts with reference to the effects of the arts in general. As we do this, a first fact suggested is that poetry and music are composed of elements of sound appealing to the ear in the order of time, and that painting, sculpture, and architecture are composed of elements of sight appeal- ing to the eye in the order of space. A second fact suggested is that, as a condition for con- structing a form whether appealing to the ear or eye, one must be able to apprehend and use more than one sound or one object of sight. A sound single in the sense of manifesting neither alteration nor cessation, would soon come to convey no more intelligence to the ear than ab- sence of sound ; and a single hue of the same shade from nadir to zenith would soon convey no more intelligence to the eye than absence of hue. In order to be under- stood and used by a man who cannot conceive of time or space except as it is divided into parts, that which is heard must be interrupted by periods of silence and a s (-1 ix a es z o H OS O n. o OS :» z o S oS ->s Z; o O Pn s o u eS -: o z D a o s* oS o * H X W a O O I* H W OS > z o ■a .R Z O H < OS Z . O 3 S3 I fc H w S H X w z . OoS oso Ofc, Z w £ w 0. a o V H 2 en «S OS H Z O U m to % i £ 2 a z O E U ft I •fe. c ■a. H Z w o < oS H W S 3 >< w z w > 55 Z w 3! w OS a. S o o >»' H B OS O z o o z H P OS <5 z o H a >- H z K o H Oh H Z O o z o < Z OS w H «S z o H a w H ►J =Wr ^ — ' L t^i 1 -tS 2d Phrase. -J ^ J— a iJ j^; j ^ Op. 10, No. 1, Beethoven. Sonata in C. Op. 2, Beethoven. This grouping of consecutive musical sounds into measures, motives, phrases, sections, and periods, evi- IOO RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POE TR Y AND MUSIC. dently corresponds exactly to the grouping of consecu- tive poetic syllables into feet, lines, couplets, and stanzas ; and it is evident too that, in the degree in which the groups or associated groups are of like length, movement, or general character of any sort, the mind will perceive that they compare and together form a unity. Very lit- tle attention to the movements of any of our popular melodies will confirm this statement. Notice the music on page 172. It may be said, too, that with most people melodies, or harmonies, for that matter, are popular to almost the exact extent in which likeness thus produced is apparent. All the world is probably pleased to hear well sung a melody like " The Last Rose of Summer." Many, but not so many, like to hear series of instrumental variations upon the same melody, provided this is clearly recognizable through them. But a much smaller number care to listen to an entire symphony developed from this melody as a theme, in the same way in which so much of Beethoven's Symphony in C minor is developed from these four notes : The reason why the higher work of music finds fewer to appreciate it, is because (see " The Genesis of Art Form," Chapters I., II.,) no art can satisfy one to whom it appeals, except so far as his mind can compare its parts together and perceive in them how unlike complex wholes are grouped on the principle of putting together their like partial effects. It takes a man of education and ex- perience in logical methods to recognize the unity of a philosophic system. In the same way it takes a man of education and experience in musical methods to recognize ART-METHODS AS DEVELOPING RHYTHM IN MUSIC. IOI in what manner the subtile conditions of musical unity- are fulfilled in the symphony. But, to return to a more practical analysis of rhythmic effects, we have to notice, first, the influence of the smaller divisions of time in the musical measures. And here, as in poetry, we find that there are only two elementary forms, namely, double and triple, but each of these may be made up of many different kinds of notes. For the sake of those unacquainted with musical notation, it may be as well to explain also that, in order to indicate the kinds of notes or of corresponding rests of which a measure is composed, and the number of them, figures are placed at the beginnings of a composition, signifying as follows : Double measures. Triple measures. In each measure In each measure two half notes three half notes 2 two quarter notes 1 , p =3 = three quarter notes g two eighth notes I m m i| three eighth notes | p <• | 5== Besides these we may have measures indicated also by the fractions, £ f £ f \ ^- etc. The measure f is some- times represented thus % or thus 2 ; and f- thus B, meaning common. We have found that in poetry, an accent, when used with one of the syllables in each foot, gives character to it, and through it to the rhythm produced when the feet are sounded in succession. The same is true in music. As a rule, the first note of a measure is percept- ably accented. In order to secure this result, the first 102 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. full measure beginning a musical composition is made to begin with the first accented note ; and the notes preced- ing this are placed at the end of an incomplete measure with which the composition opens. For instance, the fol- lowing lines, if used at the beginning of a song, would be arranged in music thus : It might simplify the subject of poetical rhythm if the foot in it were treated in the same way as the musical measure, i, e., always supposed to be begun with the ac- cented syllable. In this case we should have only two kinds of feet, double and triple, of which all other kinds would be clearly recognized to be modifications. But there are objections to this method of treatment. The significance of the metres, as shown in the eighth and ninth chapters of " Poetry as a Representative Art," is determined mainly by the way in which — whether with an accented or an unaccented syllable — a line ends. Hence, irrespec- tive of the way in which the line begins, an initial meas- ure at its end means something entirely different from a terminal measure. It seems better, therefore, to preserve the distinction between the two, and not to say, as other- wise we should be forced to do, that, with exception of the syllables with which lines start or end, both measures AST-METHODS AS DE VELOPING RHYTHM IN MUSIC. 103 are the same. Analysis is always wise when it distin- guishes between factors which for the sake of clearness of thought need to be distinguished. As shown in Chapter VI. of " Poetry as a Representative Art," the eight metres described in Chapter III. of this essay all have different effects upon the mind. For this reason it is well not to confound them. In arranging notes in measures, it is sometimes con- venient, and always allowable, to use three in the time allotted, as a rule, to two. For instance, in f time we may fill the measure with three instead of two fourth notes or with six instead of four eighth notes. In such cases, the departure from the rule is indicated by the use of a brace, with which is placed a figure 3, if these notes be used for two, or a 6 if they be used for four. It must be remem- bered, however, that in these cases the general time does not change. The three notes are sounded in precisely the same time usually given to two, e. g. ; 3 s 3 3 6 For the sake of variety, as fulfilled in the methods of alteration and inter spersion, musical like poetical accent is sometimes omitted or shifted from the first note of the measure. Sometimes, too, when the measures are long and the movement is rapid, there is more than one accent in them, as in the following where a less emphatic accent is given to the first of each of the three short notes under the braces : It is evident from what has been said that the oppor- tunities for changing the general effect of the movement 104 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. through changing the rhythm, are in music as in poetry practically unlimited. Certain kinds of rhythm, like the following taken from Mr. Mathew's " Primer of Musical Forms," have been used so often that they have become typical of large classes, but there is nothing in the nature of rhythm itself to prevent these classes from being almost infinitely multiplied. Polonaise rotta i j~m i j j n J i Marc, I J J^ J J I J J1J J Waltz: (Slow) 1 J J J I J. J J J I J. (Quick) 1 J J J I J J J I (Moderate) 1 Jj Jj JJ I J J J I «• i J J I J J I J J I J J I BoleVo I J J J I J. J"~Tj I o r i n rim I J. JTj I Also sometimes the same as the Polonaise given above. Presto. Tarantelle j;j;iniJT] " Pieces bearing these names are usually either in the applied song-form somewhat modified, or in a rondo form. The march, galop, and polka are almost always song-forms with trio. Waltzes sometimes come in this form, ART-METHODS AS DEVELOPING RHYTHM IN MUSIC. 105 especially what are called ' Salon Valses' or drawing-room waltzes. Dancing waltzes are commonly in suites. They are potpourris, consisting of from five to seven waltzes of two periods each. The work is commonly preceded by an introduction, and concluded with a final in which the prom- inent motives already used are somewhat elaborated, or at least recapitu- lated. Polonaises and Tarantelles are generally song-forms with trio. Sometimes, however, the form is much less regular." Beside the shorter divisions of time, as in measures, motives, and phrases, we have noticed that the rhythm of music, as of poetry, depends upon longer divisions as in phrases, sections, and periods. In accordance with this, observe the close resemblance between the typical rhythm produced by the four lines of a poetic stanza and by the following, which is taken from Weber's " Theory of Musi- cal Education." 1 r ur crfr r r *ir err crir r *ir err crirrr^ircrrrir- It hardly needs to be added now that these effects as thus produced are very different from those of musical melody or harmony. Savages and young children with no musical training, and their elders who have no ability to appreciate changes in quality or pitch, all show appre- ciation of rhythm. Nothing could be more perfect than that in the poetry of Pope, Scott, or Byron. Yet it is said that neither of these was able to distinguish one tune from another. So with many dancers. One need not be able to follow a tune as a tune, in order to keep time to its rhythm. It is not strange, therefore, to find rhythm, as shown both by historical records and by existing conditions of savage nations, antedating all other musical developments. But a decided advance in its possibilities and in the methods 106 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETR Y AND MUSIC. of maintaining them amid complicated movements has been necessitated by every advance in the use of har- mony. Especially was this true at the time of the rise of the polyphonic music of the middle ages (see pages 189-191), in which two or three separate melodies were sung at one and the same time. In many places in this music a long note of one melody had to be given the same time as many short notes of another melody. To provide for effects of this kind required more elabor- ate measurements of notes and determinations of the relations between them than had previously existed ; and still another advance was necessitated when the poly- phonic music gave way to the elaborate systems of harmony of more recent times. The requirements of these, however, have long been met, and probably there will never be any practical demands which our present methods cannot satisfy. CHAPTER VII. ART-METHODS OF UNITY, ORDER, COMPARISON, PRINCI- PALITY, ETC., AS DEVELOPING POETIC HARMONY. The Terms Tone and Color are Used in both the Arts of Sound and of Sight — Harmony a Complex Effect but a Unity — The Mind Conscious of the Divi- sions of Time Represented in Rhythm ; Not Conscious of those of Vibra- tions Represented in Harmony — In the Recognition of which, the Ear and Eye Act Similarly — The Scientific Knowledge of the Origin of Tone and Color did not Precede the Artistic Use of Them — Analogies Be- tween Poetry and Painting or Sculpture — Also Between Architecture and Music — Poetic Effects Dependent on Laws of Sound — Examples of Verse Containing too Much Variety of Tone — Necessity for Unity of Tone-Effects — Dependent Upon the Order of the Syllables — Eu- phony — Vowel and Consonant-Sounds Easy to Pronounce — Examples of Euphonious Words and Poems — If Difficult to Pronounce, Illustrate Artistic Confusion — Euphony Leading to Use of Like Sounds Accord- ing to Art-Method of Comparison — Accent as Necessitating Art- Methods of Counteraction, Contrast, Complement — Further Exemplifi- cation — Consecutive Tones should not be as Different as Possible — But should not be Alike on Both Accented and Unaccented Syllables — Accented Tones can be Repeated According to Art-Methods of Principality, but Subordination and Balance Require the Accented Tones to Differ from the Unaccented. A S primarily used, the term tone is applied to only cer- ^^ tain effects of sound, and the term color to only certain effects of sight. But in a secondary, and, at the beginning, a metaphorical sense, the term tone is applied also, though in a restricted way, to certain effects of color, and the term color to certain effects of tone. This inter- change of terms shows that men in general recognize, 107 108 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. though often in only a vague way, the existence of those analogies between effects appealing to the ear and to the eye, which have been brought out in other volumes of this series, especially in " The Genesis of Art-Form." The same fact is also shown by the use in both classes of art of terms like pitch, key, and harmony. What these terms mean, will be unfolded as we go on. In explaining rhythm, it was found necessary to con- sider under this one head the combined results of duration and force. In a future volume, also, in explaining pro- portion, it will be found necessary to consider similarly the combined results of extension and light and shade. In an analogous way, under the one head of tone or color, one must consider the combined results of force, quality, and pitch, in the arts of sound, and of light and shade, and the different degrees and kinds of hue in the arts of sight. Harmony, as produced either by tone or color, is a complex effect which, however, is in itself a unity, and, therefore, can be best interpreted by treating it as a unity, without analyzing it into its elements, except so far as may be necessary in order to render the combined whole more intelligible. That which separates the phenomena of rhythm and, as will be shown in another place, of proportion from those of harmony is the fact that, of the divisions of time or of space respectively causing effects of rhythm and proportion, the mind is directly conscious; whereas of the divisions causing the effects of harmony, the mind is not conscious, and has come to know of them only indirectly, as a result of the investigations of science. These investigations have discovered that, back of the outer ear which is shaped so as to collect the sound, and back of the drum too, is an inner ear filled with a pellucid fluid in which ART-ME THODS AS BE VELOPWG FOE TIC HARMON Y. 1 09 float the extremities of the acoustic nerve. Under the influence of impulses of sound from without, the drum is made to vibrate. Its vibrations are communicated to the fluid behind it, and, through this, they set into motion one or more of the delicate organs of sensation — minute pendu- lous rods and also ossicles that rub together — with which the acoustic nerve terminates, each of these organs being supposed to be differently affected by a vibration of a different rate. It is only when the vibrations are very fre- quent — some say sixteen in a second of time — that the ear derives from them the impression of any sound whatever. As they increase in frequency, and, at the same time, lessen in size, the sound becomes higher in pitch, its mere loudness depending not on the relative rate of vibrations, but upon the violence of the stroke produc- ing them. When at last, the vibrations become too fre- quent for the ear to be aware of them — as when there are forty thousand of them, as some say, in a second of time — the effect upon the ear is the same as if there were no vibrations at all, and the sensation of sound is conveyed no longer. Very similar to the operations that take place in the ear, when recognizing pitch, are those that take place in the eye when recognizing color. Passing through the pupil of the outer eye and the transparent crystalline lens behind it, rays from objects of sight reach the vitreous humor which extends to the retina, an expansion of the optic nerve. The effect of color in this is considered to be a result — but exactly how produced scientists are not as yet agreed — of certain vibrations of the organism. As in the case of sound, too, less frequent vibrations cause one hue and more frequent vibrations cause another. The discovery of these facts, however, with the unfold- I IO RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETR Y AND MUSIC. ing from them of important inferences, which will be considered hereafter, did not precede the artistic develop- ments of the possibilities of sound or of sight. Judging only by effects, in spite of ignorance of the causes under- lying them, the artists had already worked for centuries in both departments, before any physiological scientist was able even to suggest why their methods were in the main correct. Let us follow the same order here. Let us start, as our ancestors did, with the effects them- selves, and notice how, in spite of many limitations, these ancient artists, with only their sensations to guide them, constructed those harmonic systems of tone and of color, of which modern science alone has discovered the causes. These causes, as will be shown presently, are the same as those that underlie all the developments of form in art, being all traceable to the satisfaction which, for reasons unfolded in " The Genesis of Art-Form," the mind derives from being able, amid the variety and complexity of nature, to form a conception of unity, and, through the general method of comparison, to embody this conception in a product (see the chart on page 3). Poetry bears the same relation to the arts of sound that painting and sculpture bear to those of sight. All three are largely imitative. Poetry reproduces in an artistic guise what might be heard in nature, if a man were telling a story, or if several men were conversing. Painting and sculpture reproduce in an artistic guise what might be seen in nature. For this reason it is possible to be interested, though not artistically interested, in the products of each of these arts, on account merely of that which they portray, irrespective of the style or form in which they portray it. But the converse is true with reference to music and archi- tecture. These arts are only slightly imitative, and if ART-METHODS AS DEVELOPING POETIC HARMONY. I [ I we be interested in them at all, it is owing almost entirely to their style or form. But we must not make the mis- take of inferring from this fact that style or form is unim- portant in the former arts ; in other words, that the laws of tone as tone must not be fulfilled in poetry, or of color as color in painting. It is chiefly with reference to poetry that this mistake is likely to be made. Admirers of Whitman might possi- bly — were they logical, which, fortunately, they are not — be ready to deny that the laws of sound apply to poetry in the same sense as to music. And yet they are as im- perative in the one art as in the other, though, of course, in a different degree and way. In order to recognize this, let us read over a few pas- sages in which apparently no attempt has been made to arrange the successions of sounds. There is no necessity of arguing that in the verses following there is a lack of effects which in certain other compositions cause one sound to flow into another in such a way that whole series of sounds seem to be united, or to form a unity. In other words, these verses manifest too great phonetic variety of a kind which, while not objectionable in prose, we feel to be inconsistent with those results of taste and care and skill, which are demanded by the artistic character of poetry : And they thought of Alexander He, who o'er the world once triumphed, And then wept because another Was not found for him to conquer, Came and summoned its surrender, And how it without a struggle Opened quick its gates unto him. O how true 't is that transgressors Find the ways of sin oppressive 1 1 2 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POE TR Y AND MUSIC. To themselves and to their children ! Where was once proud Sidon's city, Full of wealth and full of beauty, With its teeming population And its harbors full of shipping, Now, alas, are wretched hovels Built of mud and ancient ruins. — Sketches of Palestine : E. P. Hammond, A strange belief that leaned its idiot back On folly's topmost twig — belief that God Most wise, had made a world, had creatures made Beneath His care to govern and protect, Devoured its thousands. Reason, not the true Learned, deep, sober, comprehensive, sound, But bigoted, one-eyed, short-sighted Reason, Most zealous, and, sometimes no doubt sincere, Devoured its thousands. Vanity to be Renowned for creed excentrical, devoured Its thousands : but a lazy, corpulent And over-credulous faith, that leaned on all It met, nor asked if 't was a reed or oak, Stepped on : but never earnestly inquired Whether to Heaven or Hell the journey led. — The Course of Time, ii. : Pollock. Tho' I have lost Much lustre of my native brightness, lost To be beloved of God, I have not lost To love, at least contemplate and admire What I see excellent in good, or fair, Or virtuous : I should so have lost all sense. — Paradise Regained : Milton. This outward-sainted deputy Whose settled visage and deliberate word Nips youth i' the head and follies doth enmew As falcon doth the fowl, — is yet a devil. — Measure for Measure, iii., I : Shakespeare. ART-METHODS AS DEVELOPING POETIC HARMONY. 113 Not all, but some of these quotations show us that poetic effect is not dependent wholly upon the presence or absence of poetic thought. On the contrary, that which in verse charms the ear, fixes attention, remains in memory, and passes into a precept or proverb, is some- times dependent for its popularity almost entirely upon consecutive effects of sound, so arranged as to flow into one another and together form a unity. Certainly, in many cases, the same thought, expressed in sounds less satisfactorily arranged, would not be remembered or repeated. Would not this be true of the following? Breathes there a man with soul so dead "Who never to himself hath said This is my own, my native land. — Lay of the Last Minstrel, vi. : Scott. Safe bind, safe find. — Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry : Tusser. The streak of silver sea (». c , the English Channel). — Edinburgh Review : Gladstone. As true as steel. — Romeo and Juliet, ii. , 4 : Shakespeare. The forest primeval. — Evangeline : Longfellow. From grave to gay, from lively to severe. — Essay on Man, iv. : Pope. And storied windows, richly dight, Casting a dim, religious light. — II Penseroso . Milton. I have thee on the hip. — Merchant of Venice, iv. , 1 : Shakespeare. Othello's occupation 's gone. — Othello, iii., 3 : Idem. 1 14 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETR Y AND MUSIC. Who would quote any of the four latter had they been worded thus ? : From serious to joyful, from animated to stern. Casting a dim, sacred light. I have you on the shoulder. Othello's work 's gone. It is not true, therefore, that, in arranging words, all that is necessary is to put them together grammat- ically, and in such a way as to indicate their sense. To produce satisfactory poetic effects either upon the mind or ear, they must be arranged so that their sounds shall occur in a certain order (see page 3). To say no more, some successions of vowels and consonants are difficult to pronounce, e. g., " Thou shouldst stand still," " Heaven's thought-forged forms," " Condensed to match children's comprehension." As a rule, men like to avoid difficulties. For this reason, when nothing in the sense calls for a different treatment, one prefers to have words so arranged that they can be uttered easily and rapidly. That is to say, he prefers the effect which is technically termed euphony.* In fact, without being clearly aware why he prefers this, his utterances often tend toward it * The rhetorical fault Euphuism is named after the hero of Lyly's " Euphues," which was written in an alliterative and assonant style. Here is an extract from it : " There is no privilege that needeth a /ardon, neither is there any remis- sion to be asked, where a commission is granted. I speake this, gentlemen, not to excuse the o/fence which was taken, but to offer a rfrfence where I w^is OTiVtaken. A fleare conscience is a sure card ; truth hath the prerogative to speake with /lainnesse, and the modesty to heare with patience. — The Writer : G. L. Raymond and G. P. Wheeler. ART-ME THODSAS DE VELOPING POE TIC HARMONY. 1 1 5 instinctively and unconsciously. How many of the news- boys in our streets know why, almost invariably, all of them call out the names of the newspapers in the same order? Yet they do this, and the order is the one in which the names can be the most easily and rapidly pronounced. With reference to this subject it may be said that, as a rule, the vowels a, e, i, o, u, and the semi-vowels, y, w, I, and the nasals (m, n,) and most of the sonant consonants (v, z,j, d, V), when combined with other consonants, are easy to pronounce ; whereas the consonants, h, s, f, k, t, p, ch, sh, th, especially when combined with one another or with other consonants, are difficult to pronounce. No- tice the euphony of the words Albion, Erin, Caledonia, Columbia, demeanor, bridal, wonderful, ^Eolian, merrily, lovely, silvery, Clarabel, jollity. Also of those — with exception of the very unmusical suc- cessive 5-sounds in " uplands seen " — in this " Nonsense Rhyme " : How evanescent and marine Are thy chaotic uplands seen, Oh, ever sublapsarian moon ; A thousand viaducts of light Were not so spherically bright, Or ventilated half so soon. And in the following, in which the words are selected, almost as evidently as in the last, on account of their sounds : From Archosia, from Candaor east, From Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales ; From Atropatia, and the neighboring plains Of Adiabene, Media, and the south Of Susiana, to Belsara's haven. — Paradise Regained, 3 : Milton. 1 16 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. Notice also the lack of euphony in these : barefaced- ness, inextricable, soothedst, stretched, pledged, adjudged, struggled, strengthened, disrespect. It is important, however, in this connection, to bear in mind that behind these effects of sound there may be reasons in the sense. As Alexander Bain says in his "Rhetoric": "What is hard to pronounce is not only disagreeable in the act of pronunciation, but also disa- greeable to hear; for in listening to speech we cannot help having present to our mind the way that the words would affect our organs, if we had to utter them our- selves. Even in reading without utterance aloud, we have a sense of the articulate flow of the voice and to the ear." This truth applies, of course, not only to that which is euphonious, but to that which is not so. Ac- cordingly, when for appropriate representation, the thought demands a suggestion of difficulty, nothing can be more expressive than phrases like the following, in which, therefore, we have illustrations of an artistic use of phonetic variety in the sense of confusion as distin- guished from order (see page 3). And strains from hard bound brains eight lines a year. — Epistle to Arbuthnot : Pope. Staring full ghastly like a strangled man ; His hair upreared, his nostrils stretched with struggling ; His hands abroad displayed, as one that grasp'd And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. Look ! on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking ; His well-proportioned beard made rough and rugged. —2 Henry VI., iii., 2 : Shakespeare. With staring countenance stern, as one astown'd. And staggering steps, to weet what sudden stour Had wrought that horror strange. — Faerie Queene, i., 8, 5 : Spenser. AR T-ME THODS ASDE VELOPING POE TIC HA RMON Y. WJ With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and amphisbaena dire, Cerastes horn'd, hydrus, and ellops drear, And dipsas ; not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropped with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa. — Paradise Lost, 10 : Milton. Now let us start with this fact that all acknowledge with reference to ease and difficulty in the utterance of words, and trace its development. It is a principle readily recognized that if we have placed the organs of speech into position for the purpose of uttering one sound, it requires less expenditure of effort to repeat this sound than to put them into another position for the purpose of uttering another sound. To go no further, this princi- ple applied to practice would seem to lead, in accordance with the method of comparison, to the use in succession of like sounds. But is it true that this use of sounds is invariably euphonious ? Are series of words like the fol- lowing easy to pronounce ? — " Best station," " high-arched church." Even in the case of syllables that, considered separately, are easy to pronounce, — are they so when we have a series of them, as in " We met in an enormous car"? These illustrations of themselves are enough to show us that we cannot, without some important modification, frame any rule to the effect that the uttering in succes- sion of like sounds is invariably euphonious. But should we, therefore, draw the inference, as some do, that the opposite is true ; in other words, that in poetry the repe- tition of similar sounds is not euphonious, and that here is a case in which the principle of putting like effects with like does not apply ? Before drawing this conclusion, let us, at least, look farther into the subject. What is the 1 1 8 RHYTHM AND HARMON Y IN ROE TR Y AND MUSIC. real explanation of the difficulty of pronouncing in suc- cession the syllables in the phrases just quoted ? — It is the fact that they are used in an accented and also in an unaccented syllable immediately following it. This causes difficulty, because the vocal organs are so formed that their positions and actions in an accented and in an unaccented utterance are different. In other words, these two forms of utterance naturally counteract each other (see page 3). Moreover, the nature of the organs is such that ease of utterance requires that both forms should be present, and used in alternation. One cannot apply to consecutive syllables without restriction, therefore, this principle of comparison. Unaccented syllables must con- trast with the accented ones, and in such a way too as to complement them (see page 3). But if this requirement be regarded, like sounds repeated only on accented or only on unaccented syllables, except in the sense in which all forms of repetition may become monotonous and tire- some, are not open to the objection urged. They do not render utterance more difficult, as suggested above, but, on the contrary, decidedly more easy ; e. g., " When in any den of many men of many minds." "All they thought of all the order or the thought of all the hall was all appalling." "Jumping, jarring, running, gunning, falling, crawling, lying, flying." Intentional, and, as all admit, artistic, repetitions of the sounds of accented syllables in succeeding unaccented ones, are best explained in accordance with this principle. Take the following : The league-long roller thundering on the reef. — Enoch Arden : Tennyson. When this is properly read (see page 41), as much AR T-ME THODS AS DE V ELOPING POE TIC HA RMON Y. 1 1 9 time is given to league and also to long as to a whole foot of two syllables. In other words, the voice after both league and long pauses a sufficient time for the pronuncia- tion of an unaccented syllable. This is the artistic justi- fication for the two consecutive syllables, each beginning with an /. The poet wishes to represent something that moves slowly, and to do this he uses words that cannot well be read in succession except by uttering them slowly, the general effect being that of accented syllables followed by pauses representative of unaccented syllables, thus : The league (followed by an unaccented syllable) long (followed by an unaccented syllable) roller thundering on the reef. What has been said will reveal the reason of the mis- take sometimes made, when, owing to the recognized difficulty of pronouncing the same sound in both an accented and in a following unaccented syllable, the in- ference is drawn that the remedy for the difficulty lies in making all consecutive sounds, whatever their nature, as different as possible. This latter inference, applied to practice, would lead to the effects noticed in the first quotation on page 112, and, as will presently be shown, would violate the fundamental principle of comparison which underlies all poetic harmony. The mistake can be obviated by recalling that, when we speak of the repetition of sounds in poetry, we mean the repetition of poetic sounds ; and that the least factor of a sound distinctively poetic — indeed of any absolutely com- pleted form of sound distinctively conversational even — includes the complexity involved in the counteraction of the complementary methods that we have in accented and unaccented syllables. These together are needed, though the latter may sometimes be represented by a pause 120 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. rather than by an audible syllable, in order to make one poetic foot or measure. With this understanding of what is meant, we can go back now to the statement on page 117, and say that if we have placed the organs of speech into position for the purpose of uttering an accented sound or an unaccented sound, it requires less expenditure of effort to repeat this accented or this unaccented sound than to put them into another position for the purpose of uttering a different sound. This principle, when applied, leads, of course, to the use in succession of merely like accented or else like unaccented sounds. As a fact, it is only of the like- ness in the former, i. e., in accented sounds, of which in this art there is any extensive use. This is as we should expect. It is the accented sounds that seem to have principality, and to make these alike, naturally conveys the impression as, according to the chart on page 3, should be the case, that comparison has principality, and that the contrast afforded in the unaccented syllables is given sub- ordination. Notice, too, that, as heard consecutively, the accented and unaccented syllables not only complement but, in a way, balance each other, and, through the agency of tone, augment the effects of organic form, which we have already found to be primarily produced through the agency of rhythm. CHAPTER VIII. ALLITERATION, ASSONANCE, AND RHYME. Like Effects in the Sounds of Syllables — Alliteration — In Hebrew Poetry — In Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German — In Anglo-Saxon — As Used by Milton, Shakespeare, and Modern English Poets — Asso- nance — Examples, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Anglo-Saxon, English — Two Examples from Tennyson — Assonance Used for Rhyme — Rhyme, Place of — Its History — Greek, Latin, Early English — Reason for It — Rules of, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth — A Correlated Chinese Style of Composition. "DEFORE considering the relations of our subject to any more of the methods mentioned in the chart on page 3, let us notice, in order to perceive clearly ex- actly that with which we have to deal, the different ways in which like partial effects can be produced in connection with unlike complex syllables. As the factors of sylla- bles are consonants and vowels, of course this must be done either by the use of consonant-sounds or of vowel- sounds, or of a combination of both. The first of these ways, and as formerly used in Anglo-Saxon poetry, the last of them also, gives rise to alliteration, the second to assonance, and the third, under conditions to be explained hereafter, to rhyme. Alliteration, as now interpreted, is an effect produced when series of syllables, otherwise different, contain, usu- ally at their beginning rather than end, consonants repre- senting the same sounds. Thus, in " keep calling " the k 1 22 RHYTHM A ND HARMON Y IN POE TR Y AND MUSIC. alliterates with c . But in " him we honor " the sounded h cannot alliterate with the silent h. To prove that the mind naturally takes satisfaction in alliteration, and is attracted by it, we have only to read the ordinary head- ings of our newspapers, like " The Stalwart Struggle," " Boston Buds with Big Blossoms," " The Meaning of the Message," or to recall how many of our popular proverbs, like " Fair fowls have fine feathers " exemplify it. Alliteration seems to have been used very early in the construction of poetry. To instance no other examples, in the original Hebrew of the 119th Psalm and in the third chapter of the book of Lamentations, we find poems divided into twenty-two stanzas, each of which is named after one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alpha- bet. More than this, each verse in each of the stanzas begins with the letter after which the stanza is named. Here is a similarity of sound at the beginnings of lines as great as we find in our day in the rhymes at the ends of them. In Greek and Latin poetry alliteration was used very much as it is with us. In the very first line of the " Iliad," lambda followed by eta is repeated twice, and eta three times, and all of these repetitions, as we should expect from what was said on page 120, are on accented syllables. Mrjviv aside, Sreci IlTfXrfidSeoo 'AxiMjoS. — Iliad, i., 1 : Homer. Notice, too, the following : HatSav, bit666ov iitsiSxs itvpoS fxivoi- avrdp Eiteira. — Idem, xxiv., 792. Kai ipevyeiv 6vv vr/v&l TtokvxXrji6i xeXevtioo. 'Vpeit 6' aXXoSev aXXoi tp?jrveiv titiedfov. —Idem, ij., 74, 75. ALLITERATION, ASSONANCE AND RHYME. 1 23 Also these from the Latin of Virgil : Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim. — Buc. Eel., viii., 68. Si qua fata sinant, jam turn tenditque fovetque. — jEneid, i., 18. Bis rejecti armis respectant terga tegentes. — Idem, xi., 630. Ergi concilium magnum, primosque suorum. — Idem, 234. Here are similar arrangements from the early French : Quant cil le surent en Ely, Si se sunt mis en sa merci. — L'Estorie des Engles : Geoffrei Gaimar. Hoc voleient sujurner E leisser 1'iver trespasser, Mais quant Willame 90 entent, Si's aturnat tut altrement. — Idem. Brabant, Bourgongne et Boullenois, Haynau, Holande, et Namurois. — Song on the downfall and death of the Earl of Warwick : Anon. And here from modern French : Ah ! laissez-les couler, elles me sont bien cheres Ces larmes que souleve un cceur encor blesse ! — Souvenir : Alfred de Mussel. J'en parle par hasard pour l'avoir entrevu ; Quelqu'un peut en pleurer pour l'avoir mieux connu. — Le 13 JuilUt. Idem. Vous verrez pres de vous, dans ces chceurs d'innocence, Charlotte autre Judith, qui vous vengea d'avance. ■ — Les Vierges de Verdun : Victor Hugo. 124 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. Here from the Spanish : Mas noble, a mis manos muere, Antes que a morir a manos De infames verdugos llegues. El Mdgico Prodigioso, i. . Calderon. Mas no pude ; porque al punto Las voces se desvanecen. — Idem. Arias. Ocasion debio de dalle. Pedro. Dice que no se la dio. — La Estrella de Sevilla, iii. : Lope de Vega. Here from the Italian : Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi. Non vide me' di me chi vide il vero, Quant' io calcai fin che chinato givi. / — Purg. xii., 67 : Dante. And here from the German : Frankreich erfiillt die Freundespflicht ; mir wird Verstattet sein, als KSnigin zu handeln. — Marie Stuart, ii., 2 : Schiller. And here is a combination in the same syllable of allitera- tion and assonance such as the next quotation will show us in Anglo-Saxon poetry : Die Bergeshbhn warum so schwarz ? Woher die Wolkenwoge ? -Charon : Goethe. Alliteration, often accompanied, as has just been said, by assonance, was carried to excess by the Anglo-Saxons. The ears of their descendants became so accustomed to hear it in poetry that, in the twelfth century, as Barry ALLITERATION, ASSONANCE, AND RHYME. 125 tells us in his " Description of Wales," they considered no composition elegant, but rude and barbarous, if it were not full of it. Notice the following: Quhat wikkitness, quhat wanthryft now in warld walkis Bale has banist blythnes boist grete brag blawis Prattis are repute policy and perellus paukis Dygnite is laide doun, derth to the dur drawis, etc. — Douglas' Translation of Virgil's JEneid, In a somer seson ■ whan soft was the sohne, I shope me in shroudes • as I a shepe were, In habite as an hermemite ' vnholy of workes, Went wyde in this world • wondres to here. — Vision of Piers Plowman : Langland. It needs to be observed, in accordance with what was said on page 120, that few among the Anglo-Saxon poets applied this method to unaccented syllables. Their alliterations were usually confined to consecutive ac- cented syllables. Some of their poets, also, recognizing the lack of art in excessive uniformity, were satisfied in case they began with the same sounds, two syllables in one line and one syllable in the next. When they con- fined themselves to the latter course, they did no more, as Dr. Longmuir has shown in his Preface to " Walker's Rhyming Dictionary," than Milton often did, notwith- standing his expressed contempt for those who put the jingling of like sounds at the beginning instead of at the end of words. For instance, " Paradise Lost " begins thus: Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree ; And it ends with : They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow Through Eden took their solitary way. 126 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. Notice, also, these lines, in which both w and r are repeated : War wearied hath performed what war can do, And to disordered rage let loose the reins. — Paradise Lost, vi. Considering that f is merely the aspirated form of v, here is a very marked instance of this effect : Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew, And flying, vaulted either host with fire. — Idem. Spenser, too, is full of alliteration : Who him disarmed, dissolute, dismayed, Unwares surprised and with mighty mall The monster merciless him made to fall, Whose fall did never foe before behold, And now in darksome dungeon, wretched thrall, Remediless, for aie he doth him hold. — Faerie Queene, i., 7, 51 : Spenser. We find it in Shakespeare also : The loyalty well held to fools, does make Our faith mere folly. — Antony and Cleopatra, iii., 11 : Shakespeare. Wise men ne'er wail their present woes, But presently prevent the ways to wail. — Richard II., iii., 2 : Idem. They say, best men are moulded out of faults, And for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad. — Measure for Measure, v., I : Idem. ALLITERATION, ASSONANCE, AND RHYME. t2j And in all our modern poets, e. g. : Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last, Full in the centre stands the bull at bay. Childe Harold, i. ; Byron. Nor doubt that were mankind inert and numb, Its core had never crimsoned all the same, Nor, missing ours, its music fallen dumb ? O dread succession to a dizzy post, Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals ! — Epilogue to Dramatis Persona : R. Browning. Current among men, Like coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. — The Princess : Tennyson. Ah, Maud, you milk-white fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife ; Your mother is mute in her grave, as her image in marble above. — Maud : Idem. Ye floods And windy waves of woods ; Ye valleys and wild vineyards, ye lit lakes And happier hill-side brakes Untrampled by the cursed foot that trod Fields golden from their god, Fields of their god forsaken. — A Song of Italy : Swinburne. Assonance is due to the use of like vowel-sounds, — like vowel-sounds, notice, as in her and burr, not like vowels, as in her and error. As vowels are generally more pro- longed in pronunciation than are consonants, they are more effective in producing similarity of sound, while at the same time they obtrude themselves less upon the observation either of the ear or eye. We do not always notice assonances, unless we search for them. We notice 128 RHYTHM AND HARMONY IN POETRY AND MUSIC. alliteration at once. For these reasons, poets who wish to avoid an appearance of too great a regard for form, are much more ready, of the two, to employ assonance. Its use is common in all poetry. Notice the following : Ei Se ks fifi SaoGDdir £y<® $ e Hev avros k'Xoojuai ""Hteoy rj Ai'avzoi ioov yepai, rj 'OSvdrjoS — Iliad, i., 137-8 : Homer. Uop