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CHAP.

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pleasure for this likewise is really a pleasure, and one that may be as reasonably and pro- Of Hearing. perly cultivated as either of the others; as I shall show in treating of the pleasures of the understanding. It is one, indeed, which I am utterly incapable of enjoying: but that is no reason why I should treat it with contempt, according to a too common practice; which, however, always indicates a narrow, or an uncultivated mind; and generally both.

9. As music consists in the melody of inarti culate sounds, so does poetry, as far as it can be considered as a gratification of sense, in that of articulate sounds: but as articulation consists in the division and interruption of tones, and harmony in their undulating flow into each other, it must be owned that articulate and melodious sounds seem to be of very adverse dispositions; and accordingly we find that articulation is almost always partially suppressed in singing, even by those, who pronounce most distinctly; the pure or mute consonants, which alone mark distinct articulation, being softened down into liquids or aspirates.

10. Indeed, it appears to me, that the most melodious versification affords very little, if any at all, of mere sensual gratification; the regularity of metre or rhyme being rather calculated to assist memory and facilitate ut

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terance, than to please the ear; which, in music, is always most delighted with irregular combinations for, though the same closes to particular periods are sometimes repeated at stated intervals, it is generally in lighter compositions, where the music is not principal, but adapted to the verse.

11. Music, too, is still music, upon whatsoever instrument it be performed; nor does that, which was composed for the harp, cease to be melody when performed on the violin. But the metre of one language, when applied to the words of another, ceases to have any effect at all; as has been abundantly proved by the hexameters, Sapphics, Alcaics, &c. which have at different times, and from different authors, appeared in English:-verses less like poetry could scarcely have been produced by the machine of Logado. Nevertheless the metres are exactly the same, as those which are felt to be so musical in the Greek and Latin; and as the tones in both are limited by us to our own habitual pronunciation of the five vowels, there cannot be any great difference in them, as modified to our

utterance.

12. The relations of measure and quantity are fixed and determinate, and liable to no variation from the difference of the materials to which they are applied. They must, there

fore, be the same in Greek, as in English; as CHAP.

IV.

they are the same in marble, as in brick; and, of Hearing.

as far as the impressions made upon the organs of hearing depend upon measure and quantity, they must be the same likewise in both but still we know that our feelings are very differently affected by the same metrical quantities employed in different languages; wherefore, either the pleasures arising from poetry do not arise from metrical quantity, or metrical quantity makes itself felt by something beyond the mere organs of sense.

13. Indeed, from the manner, in which the verses of the Greek and Latin poets are pronounced in our public schools and universities, it might be reasonably inferred that metrical quantity was of no importance, and not to be considered as a requisite of poetry: for though great pains are taken to teach the mechanism of it; yet, when learnt, it is totally neglected in reading; every word of three syllables being pronounced either as a dactyle or amphibrachys, according to the accentual prosody of our own language. As the ancients, however, did not extend the syllable, upon which they raised the voice, in the manner that we do; and as this mode of pronunciation is peculiar to ourselves, and unintelligible to all the rest of Europe, we may safely conclude it to be wrong; and concur with the general opinion

CHAP.

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of mankind, that metrical quantity is an essential to poetry, as necessary to be preserved in reading, as in scanning a verse; and that much of the pleasure, which poetry affords, arises from a just observance of it.

14. It is, nevertheless, evident that this pleasure is not a pleasure of organic sense; though communicated through the organs of hearing: for not only the verse of one language ceases to be verse, and loses all the character of poetry in another, but the same metre, regulated by the same accentuation, and constituted in every respect upon the same principle, is in one language appropriated to serious and tragic, and in another to ludicrous and frivolous subjects; and the propriety of its use in each is equally felt by those who are equally familiar with both.

"Thus said to my lady the knight full of care," And

"Je chante le heros qui regna sur la France," flow exactly in the same time and tune, and are equally supported by corresponding rhymes in the lines, that respectively follow; and yet to the same ears, and independent of the sense, there is something in the flow of the one, light and ludicrous, and in that of the other, grave and solemn; though the English language is certainly much less prone to the light and ludi

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crous, and better adapted to the grave and

CHAP.

IV.

solemn than the French. There is something, Of Hearing. however, in the respective idioms of each, that, in this instance, causes the same modifications of sound to appear ludicrous in the former, and solemn in the latter; wherefore it is in the nature of idiom that we must seek for the principle of this difference, as well as for that, which gives its character and effect to all metrical language: but as idiom in language is not a subject of organic sensation, nor any thing immediately pertaining to it, the investigation of it does not belong to the present stage of my inquiry.

15. If the principles of poetical and musical melody were the same, as, I believe, all theoretical writers upon the subject have supposed them to be, similar differences must necessarily arise in the character and effect of the same tune, according as it was played upon instruments respectively differing in the style and character of their tone and modulation: but this is in no instance the case; every composition in music retaining its own original character upon whatever instrument it be performed, provided the instrument be really musical or in tune, and touched with competent skill and ability. A cracked fiddle may make any composition in music appear ridiculous; as a cracked voice may any composi

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