CHAPTER VIII

Chapter 1731,885 wordsPublic domain

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ARTIST

From this brief raid upon the territory of poetic style, we return to the fortunes of improvisation and its defeat at the hands of a more deliberate art.[1142] Among the countless passages in which the poet has talked of his profession, not the least notable is that _impromptu_ of De Musset in which he says:—

Faire un travail exquis, plein de crainte et de charme, Faire une perle d’une larme, Du poëte ici-bas voila la passion,—

that is, of the poet whom one takes seriously, the artist, the solitary maker of things beautiful. Quite different is the idea of the poet implied in a pleasant little jest that passed between De Musset and Sainte-Beuve. The critic had declared that in the majority of men there is a poet who dies young while the man himself survives; whereupon De Musset pointed out that Sainte-Beuve had unwittingly put his thought into a good Alexandrine, and thus had helped to prove that the poet in the case was not dead but asleep. Between this poet who dies young or slumbers in each of us, and the artist in verse who makes pearls out of tears, there is now only a fantastic and fugitive connection; in mediæval times, in rude agricultural communities, and under primitive conditions, this slumbering poet was awake and active, and the step from his ranks to that of artistry was of the easiest and shortest kind. The story of the poet is simple. Detaching himself from the throng in short improvisations, he comes at last to independence, and turns his active fellows into a mute audience; dignity and mystery hedge him about, his art is touched with the divine, and like his brother, the priest, he mediates between men and an imaginative, spiritual world, living, too, like the priest, at the charges of the community. This was the upward path; another path led the minstrel into ways of disrepute, where dignity and mystery were unknown, where the songsmith was made a sturdy beggar and an outlaw by act of parliament, and where there was little comfort even in being the singing-man at Windsor. With the upward path there is no space here to deal; the poet by divine right, moreover, has had chroniclers enough and to spare, and it only remains to note the later stages through which his communal brother passed on the way to what seems an everlasting silence.

As the chosen singer stands out single from the throng and the throng lapses passive into the background, so the poem which this singer makes becomes a traditional and remembered affair, with epic movement and an interest which causes art and substance of the song to outweigh any mere expression of contemporary emotion. This, indeed, lingers in the chorus or refrain of a ballad; but even the choral impulse passes away as the story and the style of the poem increase in importance, and it disappears behind the rhapsode,[1143] who chants or recites his verses to a listening crowd. With permanent record, with the making of manuscript,[1144] poetic art at its best ceases to be a matter of voice and ear; two silent men, the poet and his reader, communicate by means of the written or the printed page, itself the result of solitary thought, and subject, at the other end of the process, to the same deliberation and inference in the appreciation of it as the poet employed in the making.[1145] But the obvious advantages of immediate contact, of living voice, gesture, personal emotion, in the poet, and palpable interest, whether active or passive, on the part of the audience, made the disintegration and decay of this primitive group a very slow affair. It survives even yet in the popular “reading,” and, with higher pretensions, on the stage; but a far more interesting survival, and more complete, is found among that people of strong poetic impulses who gave the _improvvisatore_ his place of honour down to quite recent times. The art was so common that it got the compliment of parody; Pulci imitates the _improvvisatori_ in his _Morgante_,[1146] and worse yet, the luckless bards who made extemporaneous verses at the table of Leo X were whipped if these verses were not of the smoothest. But this is only the shady side of the art. Quadrio[1147] thinks that if the human mind anywhere puts forth its noblest powers, it is in that craft called _canto all’ improvviso_;[1148] this, he says, was the beginning of poetry, and is still one of its best achievements; and he goes on to give some hints for the ambitious. Every one knows the romantic figure of Corinne; but a better example for the present purpose is Perfetti, an actual _improvvisatore_ whose feats drew attention abroad as well as at home. He is mentioned in Spence’s _Anecdotes_; and a few facts about him[1149] may be given here in order to show how the fatal breach between poetry of mere entertainment, now in full process of degeneration at the hands of the minstrel and balladmonger, and poetry of creative and imaginative art, now veiled in mystery and seen of none but consecrated eyes, was thought to be healed by the rapt strains of these improvising poets of Italy. What grace, they argued, could be lacking to one that was crowned at the Capitol, and stood in the stead of Petrarch? Son of a cavalier and a noble lady, Perfetti began very early his office as a bard; his Latin biographer, with vast gravity, says the child made “what in our tongue is called rime” at eleven months; small wonder that he became famous when still a youth, and was welcomed at parties of every sort, weddings, social discussions, what not, where he exercised his gift of extemporaneous song. Of a summer night[1150] he would improvise songs in praise of some family, singing under their windows, an amiable fancy. Cianfogni heard him on these occasions, and says that the poems were often taken down in writing by persons concealed from the poet’s view; but he rarely wrote verses of his own, finding that sort of composition by no means to his taste. He refused to undertake an epic, though the pope urged him thus to rival Tasso and Ariosto. _Ottava rima_ was his favourite verse, and he was fond of a musical accompaniment. His memory, too, was prodigious; in brief, Cianfogni hopes that this Moses will lead poetry back from its exile in a land of paper and print to its old glories of the living voice and the hearing of the ear. The Latin pamphlet, which has some interesting remarks on related matters in poetry, says that Perfetti learned his art at Sienna from one Bindius “poeta extemporalis,” who excelled in that sort of verse which Berni composed, and which was called from its founder Bernesque. Come to his full powers, Perfetti shunned no kind of poem, and excelled in every branch of the art. His songs were repeated on all sides and passed current among the people; while, for the rest, he could sing _majora_ too, winning applause from the pope himself, and getting crowned at the Capitol in a function of unusual splendour. Physically, his poetic ardour was formidable and “almost passed belief,” eyes aflame, brow contracted, panting bosom, and a flow of words so vehement and swift that his harp-player was often left far in the rear; the song done, Perfetti could hardly stand for exhaustion, and slept but little on the ensuing night.[1151] So strenuous a life told on his health, one must think; at any rate, he died of paralysis in July, 1747.

This account of Perfetti is amusing, but much may be learned from it. Significant is the fact that he always sang his verses as he composed them, kept to one fixed rhythm, and had a harp to accompany him,—music once more in her original function as muse. Significant, too, is his aversion from pen and paper, his sensible refusal to try epic and poems of great length. That physical excitement and that reaction, too, are in line with the old communal elation, and are at no great remove from similar states of the body in medicine men, magicians, priests of the oracle, and even the rapt poet of a traditional prime. Significant, finally, is the feeling on the part of his friends that with him poetry was going back to first principles, and could thus bathe in the fountain of youth. But it was not to be. The communal fashion of poetry was already a lost cause. _Soli cantare periti Arcades_; the “poet in every man” is passive and not active; and the gift of improvisation comes now in vain, for the conditions which once gave it sole validity are vanished beyond recall. Shakspere’s kindred three, the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, once frankly accepted as public and privileged characters, sacred even, must now play the fool nowhere but in their own houses.

* * * * *

Whatever it gained by the process, poetry has been forced to give up its immediate power over men, and to console itself with what Herder called a “paper eternity.” This triumphant artist, who now holds its destinies in trust, stands at such a remove from its beginnings, his very art seems so opposed to rude songs of the prime, and the public making of verse[1152] has become so deject and wretched, that one must face again, and this time in conclusion of the whole matter, a question of identity. Is it all one and the same art? Has all this pother about refrain and rhythm concerned the beginnings of actual poetry, or only hints and forewarnings as alien to poetry itself as the brute beast is alien to civilized man? Three answers may be made to this question. With Aristotle, or rather with what one takes to be the meaning of Aristotle, one may sunder as into two distinct arts the improvisation of primitive throngs and the deliberate poetry of maker and seer. Here, of course, is a denial of identity. Again, with Scherer,[1153] one may ignore improvisation by throngs, recognize only the difference between oral and written record, and assume for earliest poetry conditions analogous to those of modern times,—the need for entertainment on the part of a “public,” and the answering performance of an “entertainer” who languishes or thrives according to the state of the literary market. Here is identity outright, but far too much of it. Whatever the merits of his _Poetik_, and it has great merits, Scherer was doomed to failure from the first, because, as Bücher[1154] rightly objected, no one can arrive at the spirit of primitive art by setting out from the categories of modern art. Moreover, Scherer flies in the face of facts, while the facts which go with that Aristotelian theory are surprisingly accurate. Not a syllable in Aristotle’s brief account of poetic origins has been assailed by all the evidence gathered for modern ethnology, and by all the historical and comparative work undertaken on the basis of this new material. Nevertheless, one hesitates before the Aristotelian theory of absolute difference, just as one hesitates before the notion of absolute identity. True, one must sunder the epoch of instinct, of throngs, and of improvisation, from the epoch of deliberate and solitary art; but this does not warrant one in granting to the second epoch alone the name and fact of poetry. There is a third answer to the question, reasonable in every way, which would neither transfer modern conditions to the remote past, nor yet blot out one of the two periods of poetry, but would see in all manifestations of the art, early and late, the presence and play of two forces, one overwhelmingly conspicuous at the beginning, the other overwhelmingly conspicuous now; forces which, in their different adjustments, have conditioned the progress of song and verse at every stage.

For it is clear that two forces[1155] have been always active not only in letters but in human life, and that these forces answer to the communal influence dominant in early poetry and the centrifugal, individual tendency in modern verse. One phase of this dualism in poetry has been discussed above;[1156] it is now in order to look at it not with separation and analysis in view, but rather with an eye to the higher synthesis. No one questions the antithesis between man solitary and man social; and few will question the relative dominance of this or that type for any given age of the world. There are times so stamped by the individual impulse that all kinds of covenant, system, institution, are attacked, and nowhere more fiercely than in affairs of religion and of state. Seventeenth-century England is a case of this kind; individuals rush off to the wilderness to think and dream, and then rush back again to found a new sect. On the large stage the state is Cromwell, and on the small stage Quakerism is George Fox. Again, and for the other view, seventeenth-century France[1157] is a place of order, tradition, and collective peace. True, names are also current along with creed and rule, Bossuet, Boileau, and the great Louis himself; but it is dogma and order, not disintegration, that they proclaim. Consent is supreme here, as dissent is supreme across the Channel. In any line of human effort, and at any given time, one of these forces is dominant. But after all, it is only of a relative dominance that one can speak, and these labels that the historian puts upon his entire epoch are good until another historian, with another phase of it in mind, takes up the brush. There is constant play of those opposing forces, and if the collective spirit brought order, tradition, cohesion, to the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, the individual spirit even then fostered, as never before, the idea of a great man as mainspring in social progress. So, too, if disintegration ruled in seventeenth-century England, there was no lack of the collective and communal force; witness the social organization and religious democracy of the Quakers themselves. It was a time of sects and schisms; it was also a time of commonwealths spiritual, political, and social.

With this constant play and change of the two forces in mind, one may return to poetry itself and attempt a summary of the whole case, noting the alternation of communal and individual impulses, and seeking, by a study of their manifestations, to bring the beginning of the art into line with its present condition. It has been shown how easily confusion besets a discussion of that savage culture which is now declared communal in every way, and now painted as individual to the extreme of brute selfishness. So, too, when one says that early poetry was overwhelmingly choral and communal, that modern poetry is overwhelmingly individual, one has full warrant of facts; but it is well to remember just what these facts are, and so avoid ill-considered criticism. Poetry was a social creation and essentially communal at the start; although some of the most careful investigations in the early history of man[1158] are now putting stress upon the fact that for perhaps thousands of years humanity was hovering on the far border of communal organization, and led a mainly selfish and unsocial life. Man of this period did not have to unite with his fellows for purposes of mutual help and for defence against a common foe; like many wild animals, he could have roved about in smallest groups, each member of which got its own food for itself, often, as in favoured climates, with a minimum of exertion. Hence, too, for long stretches of time, no need of organized labour, of any economic system. But these needs all came at last;[1159] and when primitive man confronted them, he began his social history, and communal life was a fact. Here, too, in these rude communal beginnings, consent and rhythm played their parts. Now it is no argument whatever against the assumption that earliest poetry was strongly communal to say that earliest social man himself was only feebly and tentatively communal; the point is that where he was communal it was to a degree rendered utterly impossible for the present, and almost incredible for the past, by reason of the very social progress in which that communism, that consent, formed the first step. So, too, when it is said that the individual element in primitive poetic art was at a minimum, there is nothing counter to this assertion in the fact that early man was close to the absolutely individual and centrifugal state; whenever the individual made himself felt in poetry, it was as an individual bound by the new social tie, and his individual expression was a part of the communal expression. But, as was just said, the new communal element, so far as it went, was communal to an almost exclusive degree; not until after long ages of alternating collective and individual forces, working within the social union, was the individual socially free to make himself master in a wholly social art. It is a fact full of significance that the nearer social groups, like the Veddahs and the Botocudos, stand to the brutish, unstable, isolated, and wandering life of earliest man, so much the closer and more emphatic is their tentative expression of social consent in the dance, which is almost a continuous ring of humanity, with just two prominent characteristics: the tightest possible clasp of individual to individual, and the most exact consent of rhythm in the limbs that are free to move. Yet when the dance is past, and the ring is broken, its individual members go back to a life marked by hardly any social traits. As to labour, Bücher[1160] puts stress on the priority of women in gregarious songs of toil; while men were stalking game, the women combined in movements and chorals of work,[1161] and a certain antithesis is not far to seek which would give women the primacy in early stages of poetry, while men lord it almost exclusively in these latter days. No woman, with the doubtful exception of Sappho, has crossed the bounds of what is known as minor poetry; no woman, though women sing and have most need of song from the cradle to the death-bed, has been a great composer; no woman, not even George Eliot or any of her clever cousins in New England, has yet laid hold of that quality which goes with triumphs of the individual poet, the quality of humour. Why women were so prominent in the communal poetry of the beginnings, is easily answered and is a question to be asked; why women fail as individuals to reach the higher peaks of Parnassus, is a question perhaps not to be asked, although the answer might well seem a distinct recognition of woman’s great services to the art. At certain stages of poetry women have been nursing mothers without whose love and zeal for song poetry would have fallen into evil ways indeed. In any case, woman looms larger than man in that shadowy world of beginnings; her life was more consistently social, and her quicker emotional nature, whatever it may seem to modern eyes, gave her an advantage over the more stolid and more solitary male.

How is one to bind these beginnings to the present condition of poetry? With that alternation of social, choral impulses and impulses of the individual, poetry is not simply swinging back and forth between two positions, but makes a steady advance. As in social progress, at each fresh occasion on which the individual isolates himself from society, he takes with him the accumulated force that society, by its main function, has stored up from traditions of the past, and as whenever he returns to society, he brings back as his own contribution a fresh strength derived from more or less unfettered thinking over vital problems, so it is with communal and artistic forces in poetry. For the mere case of poetry as a body of literature, on one hand, and the poet as an individual on the other hand, this relation is plain enough, and speaks for itself. Poetry does even more for the poet than the poet does for poetry. But when one passes from materials to conditions and elements, asking for what is social or communal in the modern poetry of art at its best, few answers, if any, are to be heard. Some answer, however, is demanded, and it must try to rise to the height of so great an argument. Where, then, is the trace of direct communal elements in great poetry?

The modern artist in poetry triumphs mainly by the music of his verse and by the imaginative power which is realized in his language, often merely by the suggestion in his language; for poetry, as Sainte-Beuve prettily remarked, lies not in telling the story but in making one dream it. For present purposes, then, it will be enough to look at the formal quality of rhythm and the more creative quality of imagination. Assuming that the second chapter of this book proved what it set out to prove, one must see in rhythm, or regularity of recurrence due to the consenting cadence of a throng, the main representative of communal forces; although repetition in its other forms goes back to the very condition of choral poetry itself. Because the critics take rhythm and verbal repetition largely for granted in the work of any great poet, and look rather to his excellent differences in thought and in variation of style, one must not ignore the immense significance of those communal forces in the poetry of art. It is not the mere rhythm, grateful, exquisite, and powerful as that may be, but it is what lies behind the rhythm, that gives it such a place in poetry; it appeals through the measures to the cadent feet, and so through the cadent feet to that consent of sympathy which is perhaps the noblest thing in all human life. The triumphs of modern prose are great, but they fail one and all to take the place of rhythmic utterance; they fail even to do at their best what poetry often does in its mediocrity. The short story commands pathos to an almost intolerable degree; Balzac’s heartless daughters bring old Père Goriot close to the plight of Lear, so far as this pathos is concerned; and when Ibsen wishes to touch the quick of things in a play, he does well, from his point of view, to discard jingling verses and to use the prose of common conversation, thus bringing one face to face with the pathos of bare and actual life,—very actual and very bare. Pathos, indeed, all these prose triumphs show, and pathological is the word for them. They belong to surgery. Poetry, recoiling from bare and actual life, has a very different function. Significant is the popular use of this word, poetry; when one says that the poetry has gone out of one’s life, one means that something very like Ibsen has come in, that one can no longer idealize life and can see in it only its flatness and bareness. The cadence of those feet has ceased, and with it the hint of consent and sympathy. For when the Veddahs leave their solitary and often desperate search for food, come together, cling each to each as close as may be in that arrow-dance of theirs, and sing for hours their monotonous chorus, it is certainly not done in order that they may see bare and actual life, but rather that they may escape it and forget it. It is not surgery they seek, but medicine, and this either tonic or opiate; indeed, the twofold function of poetry could be ranged under such a head. Tonic were the cheery chorals of actual labour, old as social man, songs of battle and the march, festal recapitulation of hunt and work and fight. They idealized life; they appealed to sympathy, and heartened the solitary by a sense of brotherhood. So, in these latter days, tonic are the passages which stir the heart of a young man who reads wisely his Goethe, and tonic too—why not?—all those jingling platitudes beloved and quoted of the youth who make valedictory speeches in the village school; tonic, in fine, whatever _gedenke zu leben_ rings out from poets of the virile and the sane. And from the beginning to the end, this tonic poetry falls naturally into the rhythm of a march. On the other hand, poetry is an opiate; the solitary man ran to a choral throng not only that he might find brotherhood and sympathy, but also that he might forget himself,—a task which the wild chorus of Dionysos could accomplish no less surely and thoroughly than the very grapes and vintage of the god. Like these, poetry helped man to forget his troubles; like these, the whirl and motion of cadenced dancing brought about a kind of intoxication; and the graceful words with which Sir William Temple concludes his essay on poetry have gained a deeper and yet a more literal meaning through the researches of ethnology and the proof which now lies before us of the extent to which primitive man has found in dance and song a refuge from the bare hideousness of life. For this early art, for this soothing and flattering function of it, the main force lay in rhythm; and if one wishes to call rhythm the conventional part of poetry, one degrades it not a whit by the name. Early poetry was exactly that,—a conventional affair, an idealized view of life, now tonic and now opiate in its aim. But whether to hearten or to soothe, stimulant or sedative, poetry found its initial source of energy in rhythm; most intimate of all the arts, and nearest to the heart of man, poetry will part with this pulse of rhythm only when the sea shall part with its tides.

Rhythm, then, binds in a single bond both the beginning and the end. But its formula is one which any rimer can use with more or less skill, and modern verse makes far wider and deeper claims, claims which no one has thought to carry back to the beginnings of poetry. Where, in those early days, was that rare quality of imagination to which the critic now appeals when he sets off a masterpiece of poetry from its rivals? To answer this question, one cannot cite mere history; chorus and refrain and shards of rustic rime must be left aside; and one must even beg a little help from æsthetics itself: _so muss denn doch die Hexe dran_.

Described in its simplest form, the quality of modern poetic imagination seems to be a power, by suggestive use of musical and figurative human speech, to put the solitary reader into the mood which would arise naturally in him under the pressure of certain actual events or of a certain actual scene. To repeat the phrase of Sainte-Beuve, “la poésie ne consiste pas à tout dire, mais à tout faire rêver.” Even primitive poetry was an idealization, an abstraction, a narcotic, a kind of waking dream; modern poetry is also a dream, but with deeper and wider issues, and with a purpose far more clearly defined. Now the great passages of poetry, such as those which Matthew Arnold used as tests for excellence, easily fall into one of the two categories; they revive, even create, the mood felt either in the pressure of actual events or in the presence of an actual scene. That beautiful line which Arnold quotes from Dante is simply the imaginative and conventionalized sense of beatific worship such as all men have felt in varying degree; while for the thousand cases where nature is treated, there can be no doubt whatever of the tie which binds even the most imaginative and solitary poet to the old singing throng. Nature is nothing without man to interpret it; and neither man nor nature could stand in this mutual relation had not social consent and social processes created these abstract ideas, this very “man,” this very “nature,” by the reciprocal working of communal and individual forces. It was thus a social process which brought man to read his condition and fates in terms of nature, or else to read nature in terms of his own condition and fates. His own condition and fates were ideas that came to him through a kind of social reflection; and nature grew “poetic” only by reason of man’s social organization, which sprang from consciousness of kind, took shape in consent, and has begotten first the communal idea and then the idea of humanity. Only the eye “which hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality” can see the “poetic” side of nature; and even man’s mortality is a fact which came home to him in this poetic sense only when social organization had put the notion of humanity before his mind. So much is said of being “alone with nature” as a necessary condition for the enjoyment of its poetic side, and for sympathy with it, that one forgets what sympathy means. The social foundation is now forgotten; without it, however, there would be no poet’s solitary rapture at all. Sympathy of the poet at its highest is only rising to a new pitch in the sense of kind; and although the prayer of St. Francis[1162] has been quoted nigh unto death, one may be allowed to revive it, not merely because of its wide sympathy, embracing “my brother, the sun,” and all created things, but also because this sympathy is the poetic expression of an idea which St. Francis put into actual working on earth, in that community of brothers in the bonds of divine and human love.

Nature, however, and the fates of man are not always so stupendous or so abstract in their relations. There is a close, familiar tie, now cheery in its kind, and now sad, in the coming and going of the seasons. How much of modern poetry is bound up with this simple and obvious motive; and how easily one finds here the connection between new song and old! In a preceding chapter it was the difference we sought; here it is the identity, not merely of rhythm, but of imaginative force. Much has been said of that lyric appeal to the season and to the scene with which rude songs of the dance, and, later, actual ballads, were wont to begin: _Sumer ys ycumen in_, and _Lenten is comen with Love to toune_, are fossil bits of English verse in this kind. So, too, as the coming season was welcomed, the parting season had its lyric regret. What more is done by the most imaginative poem of our day, than to revive in the solitary reader that immediate delight or sorrow of the singing and dancing throng? When one says that the poet ennobles this actual scene, and adds something which was not present in sunshine and woods and waters and green earth, not even in the song of the birds, what else does one mean but that the poet has brought these things under the spell of human emotion, precisely as the human emotion of the dancers mingled with the scene of their festivity? Nothing is more common in folksong than lament for wintry desolation, for the silence and absence of the birds. Walther von der Vogelweide touches the old motive and the old cadence with slight but graceful art; and it is “I” instead of “we,” although the communal emotion is not far away. Then comes the full power of imagination in a certain sonnet, and in a certain line of it:—

Bare, ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Take away the “ruin’d choirs,” and of course one takes away Shakspere; but there is another alternative. Take away the older festal throngs of summer, the sorrowing throngs at its close; take away that cadence of consenting feet which echoes in the verse; take away the human sympathy which was so fostered by this consent,—and those “ruin’d choirs” are left as purposeless and idle as the void of space.

So, too, with other forms of imagination in poetry. Nature apart, and on themes as abstract as one will, great artistic poetry is still powerless to sever its connection with this communal imagination of sympathy and consent. Some of the strong passages in later poetry derive their energy from despair. “Man’s one crime,” says the Spaniard, “is to have been born;” while between Fitzgerald and the tentmaker lies the credit for that verse which bids God take as well as give pardon for the wickedness of mankind. This is called sublime. When the savage beats and breaks his gods, or reviles them in reiterated verse, he is called silly; but perhaps his disillusions, put into choral statement, may bring him something of that grim comfort which civilized man finds in a rhythmic defiance not absolutely different in kind. Nor, again, was the passing of a god, or of a system of gods, the same thing for communal chorus with those mounting races in the prime, as with these belated and stunted hordes. Defiance, however, apart, on the positive religious side choral praise is still a fact; and choral comment on the ways of God with man, that enthusiasm for which imagination is only a substitute, that _sursum corda_ of congregational singing, that lapse of the individual and that triumph of the community, are enough to check one’s impulse to think of early communal singing in terms of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. It is hard, indeed, to pass back from conditions of solitary and artistic imagination to conditions of communal imagination; but the process is not impossible. If one will simply open a Shakspere and read aloud the passage where Ophelia tells her father how Hamlet came to her closet and bade her that silent farewell; the praise of friendship chanted so finely by Hamlet to Horatio; the parting at dawn of Romeo and Juliet; the declaration of Portia;[1163] the last speech of Othello; Macbeth arming for the final fight; Prospero at the end of the mask: familiar as these all are, the mere series of impressions will give one a new sense of the varied creative power to be found in a single field of poetry. Then, with all this ringing in one’s ears, let one read aloud the shorter version of _Sir Patrick Spens_, and compare its imaginative range with the imaginative range of Shakspere. Neither simplicity alone, nor the change from drama to ballad, will cover this difference.[1164] The strongest differencing element is the antithesis of individual artistic imagination in widest range, and of sympathy concentrated upon a small, but compact group. It is a step from the great world to a little canton, from humanity to a clan; spaces have shrunk, and sympathy almost lies in that actual touch of hand and hand, which once did for primitive poetry what imagination now does for the poet. At the heart of them both, however, drama and ballad, is this sympathy and consent of kind. True, the ballad is late and has its share of art; but the line drawn to it from the drama is a curve to be projected into prehistoric conditions, and able to connect the crude sympathy of kind expressed in choral repetition with noblest imaginative achievements of the perfected art.

To create the communal elements, poetry had to pass through ages of preparation. Dreary ages they seem now, and rudest preparation, in contrast with present verse; but it may be said that the poetry was not insipid for its makers and hearers, and the art was not crude for the primitive artists. One must ignore with equal mind the romantic notion of a paradise of poetry at the prime, as well as a too fondly cherished idea of ethnology that belated if not degraded wanderers on the bypaths of human culture are to stand as models for the earliest makers of song. Let one think of that poetry of the beginnings as rude to a degree, but nobly rude, seeing that it was big with promise of future achievement, and not a thing born of mere stagnation. Circling in the common dance, moving and singing in the consent of common labour, the makers of earliest poetry put into it those elements without which it cannot thrive now. They put into it, for the formal side, the consent of rhythm, outward sign of the social sense; and, for the nobler mood, they gave it that power by which it will always make the last appeal to man, the power of human sympathy, whether in love or in hate, in joy or in sorrow, the power that links this group of sensations, passions, hopes, fears, which one calls self, to all the host of kindred selves dead, living, or to be born. No poetry worthy of the name has failed to owe its most diverse triumphs to that abiding power. It is in such a sense that prehistoric art must have been one and the same with modern art. Conditions of production as well as of record have changed; the solitary poet has taken the place of a choral throng, and solitary readers represent the listening group; but the fact of poetry itself reaches below all these mutations, and is founded on human sympathy as on a rock. More than this. It is clear from the study of poetic beginnings that poetry in its larger sense is not a natural impulse of man simply as man. His rhythmic and kindred instincts, latent in the solitary state, found free play only under communal conditions, and as powerful factors in the making of society.

INDEX

Accent, 39.

Addison, 136.

Adonis, 236.

Æschylus, 369.

Æsthetics, 119, 468.

Afghans, songs of the, 395.

Africa, songs of, 200, 204, 249 f., 252, 270 f., 289, 329, 394, 397 f.

Albania, poetry of, 217, 228.

Algeria, songs of, 203.

Allegory, 145, 307.

Allen, F. D., 85, 260.

Alliteration, 68 f., 75, 86 ff., 256, 267.

Amœbean, 123, 144, 200, 400 f., 408 ff., 458 f.

Animals, songs of, 8, 100.

Anthology, 32.

Arabic verse, 79.

Arabs, 395.

Arcadia, the, 61.

Aretino, 144.

Aristotle, 1, 42 ff, 113, 132, 136, 369 f., 433, 453, 459 f.

Armenia, songs of, 203.

Arnold, M., 410, 421, 468.

Arval hymn, 69, 260 f., 297 f., 334.

Aryan verse, 85 ff.

Ass, feast of the, 301.

Assyria, poetry of, 261.

Attila, 264; funeral of, 223 f.

Aubrey, 225, 289, 302, 304.

Augustine, St., 222.

Ausonius, 287 f.

Australia, songs of, 171, 330; _vocero_ in, 248.

Babylon (ballad), 195 f.

Bacon, 33 f., 45, 435, 460.

Bagehot, 36, 169.

Bain, 57, 365.

Baldwin, J. M., 9, 16, 364, 384.

Ballad, 27 f., 64, 70, 72 f., 116, 130, 134, 156, 164 ff., 168 f., 172, 175, 314, 316 ff., 321, 327, 342, 415, 422, 454, 472; epithets in the, 193 ff; making of the, 184; material of the, 179; passing of the, 164 ff., 177, 211, 271 f., 292 f., 303.

Ballade, 257.

Ballads, not indecent, 169 ff.; omissions in, 197 f.; rank in, 177; recited, 189, 326; style of, 189 ff.

_Ballati_, 231.

Ballet, 433.

Ball-playing, 97, 337.

Balzac, 466.

Barbour, 265.

Baring-Gould, 168, 342.

Barnes, Dr. Thomas, 50.

Barth, 360.

Bartsch, 242.

Basques, the, 234, 395.

Bastian, 330, 361, 385, 428.

Batteux, 108.

Baudelaire, 32, 59.

Baumgarten, 38.

Beattie, 35.

Beaurepaire, 293.

Bechtel, 449.

Bell, 307.

_Béowulf_, 193, 222 ff., 331.

Béranger, 140.

Berger, A. E., 136, 164.

Bergk, 85.

Bernheim, 362.

Berni, 457.

Bertrand, 32, 59.

Bible, 48, 56 ff., 124 f., 186 f., 226 f., 261 ff., 271, 361, 423.

Biedermann, 75 f., 256.

Biology, 13, 363 f.

Bion, elegy of, 237.

Bistrom, 188, 198, 211.

Blacksmith, songs of the, 276 f.

Blackwell, 131, 454.

Bladé, 203, 218, 233, 234 ff., 279, 341.

Blank verse, preaching in, 80.

Blankenburg, 433.

Blémont, 170, 382.

Boas, 96.

Boat-songs, 98, 265, 272 ff., 289 f.

Böckel, 70, 72, 110, 168, 185, 270 ff., 307.

Böhme, 182, 281, 283, 308, 328, 343, 415.

Bolte, 426.

Borrow, George, 234.

Borrowing in literature, 351 ff.

Bosanquet, 56.

Botocudos, 94 f., 189, 209, 312, 330, 374, 390 f., 421, 439, 463.

Bourdeau, 362.

Boynton, J. H., 317 f.

Brandl, 413.

Brand’s _Antiquities_, 218, 276, 294, 296 f., 303 f., 306 f., 343.

_Branle_, The, 341.

Brazilians, songs of the, 246 ff.

Breath-lengths, 94, 100 f.

Brenner, 406.

Breton ballads, 183.

Bright, J. W., 148.

Brinkmann, 452.

Brinton, D. G., 190, 253, 313 f.

Broadwood and Maitland, 294 f., 302.

Brown, Baldwin, 251, 367 f.

Brown, Dr. John, 96.

Brown, T. E., 410.

Browning, R., 30, 347.

Bruchmann, 64, 70, 171, 428 f.

Brücke, 81.

Brugmann, 445.

Brugsch, 236.

Brunetière, 6, 26 f., 377, 389.

Bücher, 10, 63, 107 ff., 270 ff., 345, 369, 373, 386, 459 f., 462, 464.

Buck, Dr. Gertrude, 446, 448.

Buckle, 127, 175.

Budde, 62, 186, 218, 226 f., 262.

Bugge, 180.

Bujeaud, 166, 258.

Burckhardt, 141, 144, 158, 160, 425, 455.

Burdach, 432.

Burden, 275, 316 ff.

Burette, 346.

Burns, 170, 209, 308, 410.

Bushmen, 90.

Cædmon, 403.

Calmet, 124 f.

Campbell, J. F., 72, 179, 192, 400.

Cante-fable, 71 f., 97.

_Caracolu_, 231.

Carlyle, 51, 59.

Carmen, 68.

_Carmina Burana_, 207 f., 323.

_Carole_, the, 341.

Carstanjen, 359.

Carver, 249, 333.

Casaubon, I., 44 f.

Castrén, 200.

Catullus, 207, 217, 220, 258, 382.

Cell, the, 357 f.

Celts, _vocero_ of the, 239 ff.

Chambers, 323.

Chant, 80, 82 ff.

Chappell, 294, 305 f., 316, 319, 411.

Charles of Orleans, 150.

Charms, 205, 245, 283 f., 300.

Châteaubriand, 60.

Chaucer, 64, 146, 222, 229, 239, 447.

Child, Professor, 70, 164, 181, 307, 317, 319. 413 f.

Children, 9 ff., 102 ff.; games of, 209, 297, 322 ff., 335 f., 344, 429; songs of, 284.

China, drama in, 72; songs in, 282.

Chorus, 27, 67, 70, 83, 86, 91 ff., 100, 105, 186, 219, 221, 236 f., 238, 249, 257, 260, 262 f., 270 f., 295, 308 f., 315, 332, 420 f., 422, 425, 440, 442 ff., 450, 454, 467, 471; cereal, 255, 310; Greek, 72, 186, 257, 261, 369, 372.

Church, the mediæval, 153.

Cnut, song of, 275.

Coleridge, 35, 51, 421.

Colour in ballads, 213 f.

_Commedia dell’ Arte_, 425.

Communal poetry, 116 ff., 122, 125, 129 ff., 158, 163 ff.; elements of, 172.

Comparative literature, 352 ff.; method, 31, 40.

Comparetti, 64, 177, 352, 355, 402, 443.

Comte, 152, 360, 378.

Condorcet, 10.

Consent, communal, 91, 101, 105, 107, 220 f., 255, 332, 348, 364, 376, 383, 386, 440, 461 f., 466.

Cook, voyages of, 331 f.

_Coplas_, 401, 405, 425.

Corsica, _vocero_ in, 231 ff.

Counting-out rimes, 201, 203 f.

Courthope, Professor, 181.

Coussemaker, 226, 280, 302 f., 324.

Crane, 325.

Crescimbeni, 229, 341 f., 456.

Criticism, 6, 31, 216.

Cumulative songs, 98, 200 ff., 278.

Dance, 84 f., 105, 106, 147, 174, 184, 188, 202, 209, 217, 222 f., 231, 246, 248, 250, 260 f., 275, 291, 299, 301, 305, 311 ff., 318 ff., 322 ff., 327 ff., 354 f., 367, 370, 409, 412 f., 415, 428 ff., 431, 441, 443, 463 f., 466 f.; in churches, 335; by pairs, 321, 340 f.; and rhythm, 69, 78.

Dances, panic, 338; of the savage, 18 f., 90 ff., 95 f., 328 ff.

D’Annunzio, 60 f., 206, 230 f.

Dante, 45, 122 f., 142 f., 145, 341 f., 361, 468.

Darmesteter, 259, 395.

Darwin, 8, 24, 88, 357 f., 428, 431.

Daudet, 433.

Declamation, 82, 86 f., 99.

Degeneration, 16, 18.

Dekker, 47.

Déor, song of, 147, 266.

De Quincey, Thomas, 58.

Dialect, 190.

Dickens, 276 f.

Dilthey, 141.

Dithyramb, 66, 370.

Dixon, J. H., 294 f.

Donovan, 104 ff., 186, 345, 365, 368 f., 386, 392.

_Don Quixote_, 425.

Döring, 370, 420.

Douglas, Sir George, 167 f., 173.

Drack, M., 424.

Drama, 39, 66, 83, 106, 117, 189, 338, 424 ff., 434.

Drayton, 303.

Dryden, 59, 295.

Dualism, 116 ff., 136 ff.

Dubos, 35, 446.

Dunbar, 146, 151, 161.

Dunger, 406.

Düntzer, 68.

Earle, Professor, 197.

Ebert, 258, 306.

Egger, 215.

Egypt, poetry of, 271, 285; _vocero_ in, 237 f.

Ehrenreich, 94 f.

_Elements, The Four_, 322 f.

Elliott, Ebenezer, 52.

Eloquence, 53.

Elyot, Sir T., 345 f.

Emerson, 35.

Emotion, 13, 83, 100, 105, 151 f., 155, 266, 364 f., 374 f., 386.

England, ballads of, 168, 183, 187, 326 f.

Enthusiasm, 126 f.

Epic, 39, 66, 117, 174, 179, 189, 324, 420, 422 ff., 434.

Erotic dances, 336, 367; songs, 8, 20, 88 f., 239, 401 f., 407, 420, 460.

Eskimo, 96 f.; songs of the, 243, 311, 313, 391, 400.

Esthonians, 272.

Ethnology, 14 ff., 92 ff., 375; evidences of, 19 ff., 22.

Ethology, 6.

Euphuism, 61.

Evolution, curves of, 26 ff., 84, 163, 172, 178, 422, 472.

Fabyan’s Chronicle, 265.

Fame, 141 f.

Faroe Islands, songs of, 318 f., 337. 399 f., 428 f.

Fauriel, 217, 227, 415.

Fell, Dr., 80.

Festal origin of speech, 104 ff.

Finns, poetry of the, 166, 198, 213, 252, 270, 355, 402, 452.

Firmenich, 204, 219, 287 f., 292, 302, 308, 324, 408 ff.

Flanders, ballads in, 226, 294, 303, 324.

Fletcher, Alice C., 254; Rev. Mr., 308.

Flyting, 144, 200, 212, 227, 279, 287 f., 306 ff., 321, 391, 399 ff., 429, 458 f.

Folksong (see Ballad), 106.

Fontenelle, 117.

Foresinger, 315, 318 f., 327.

France, songs of, 139, 320, 325.

France, Anatole, 9, 139.

Francke, K., 152, 182.

Freericks, 259.

Freytag, 360.

Fuegians, 253.

Funeral, songs of the, see _Vocero_.

Gab, 331.

Gaelic ballads, 192.

Garnett, 425.

Gascoigne, 45.

Gascony, ballads and songs of, 203, 233, 235 f., 247, 279 f.

Gautier, 33, 359.

Gayley and Scott, 6, 54.

Geijer, 327.

Gender, 445 f.

Genius, 126.

Gerber, 370, 449, 452 f.

Germanic epic, 191, 198, 209, 447 f.; poetry, 64; verse, 86 ff.

Germany, ballads of, 168, 182 f., 190, 216.

Gesture, 330, 428, 431.

Giddings, F. H., 360, 372, 385.

Gnomic poetry, 95, 421.

Goethe, 2, 49, 73, 116 f., 118, 315, 410, 433.

Goldsmith, 36.

_Goncourt, Journal des_, 359, 433.

Gorgias, 66.

Gottsched, 10, 13, 64, 124.

Grasserie, R. de la, 76 ff.

Gray, T., 162, 197, 451.

Greek communal poetry, 266, 271, 284 f.; poetry, modern, 192, 217, 227, 273, 415.

_Greenes Funeralls_, 206.

Grimm, J., 65, 133 f., 136 f., 182, 256, 283, 300, 341, 350, 436, 439, 445, 449.

Groos, 102, 337, 365.

Grosse, 14, 18, 22, 90, 178, 239, 336, 345, 378 f., 381, 383, 385.

Grube, 299, 315.

Grundtvig, 167, 176, 275, 317.

Gruppe, 14, 443.

Guest, 316, 318.

Guilds, 142, 149, 153, 160, 165 f.

Gumplowicz, 15, 359, 378.

Gurney, Edmund, 55, 89, 256.

Guyau, 3, 40, 121, 348, 387.

Haeckel, 9.

Hahn, J. G., 217, 228.

Halliwell, 284.

Hamann, 125.

Hampson, 276, 301.

Hardy, Thomas, 25, 114, 292, 344.

Harmony, 92, 109.

Harrison, Frederic, 56.

Hartmann, von, 361.

Harvest, Highland, 289 f.

Harvest-home, 178, 280 f., 286, 291, 294 f., 309.

Harvey, Gabriel, 207.

Haym, 152, 382.

Hazlitt, 36.

Hebrew prophets, 262 f.

Hebrews, dance of, 336, 346.

Heckewelder, 309 f.

Hegel, 33, 53 f., 423.

Heine, 161, 410.

Heinzel, 159, 177, 209, 448.

Henderson, 181.

Hennequin, 6, 359, 378, 388.

Herder, 119, 122, 125 f., 131 f., 171, 346, 458.

Hero and Leander, 179, 196.

Herodotus, 238, 374.

Herrick, 305.

Hesiod, 216, 437.

Higginson, Colonel, 97 f.

_Hildebrand Lay_, 212.

Hirn, Y., 260, 328, 336, 460.

Historical school, 122 ff.

History, 53.

Hoffmann, 94; von Fallersleben, 269.

Hogg, James, 173.

Homer, 44, 49, 175, 221, 285, 333 f., 337, 361, 370, 382, 423, 437, 447.

Homogeneous community, 167 f., 176 ff., 244 f., 357, 374 ff., 443.

Hook, Theodore, 396.

Horace, 107, 142, 186, 404, 411.

Hudson, 366.

Hugo, Victor, 49, 121, 142 ff., 362.

Humboldt, W. von, 41, 133, 357, 382.

Humour, 159 ff., 464.

Hungary, poetry of, 64.

Hyde, Douglas, 404 f.

Hylas, 238.

Hymn, 153 f., 442 f.

“I,” in children, 9.

“I,” the, in ballads, 182 ff., 187 f.

“I,” the, in the Psalms, 186 f.

Ibsen, 466.

Iceland, songs of, 318 f., 337, 400 f.

Imagination, 35, 37, 136, 391, 468 ff.

Imitation, 352, 362, 369, 375, 386 f.

Improvisation, 92, 95, 97, 113, 180, 199, 212 f., 222, 227, 234, 240, 273, 275, 287 ff., 292, 311, 355, 369 f., 394 ff., 396 ff., 401 ff., 404, 415 ff., 418 f., 421, 424 ff., 428 f., 432, 441, 455 ff.; two kinds of, 396.

Inarticulate sounds, 30, 253, 260.

Indians, American, 93, 189, 245 ff., 253 ff., 273, 309 ff., 313 f., 333 f., 394.

Individual, 139, 141 ff., 151, 153, 155, 183, 212, 371 ff., 377 ff., 381, 382 ff., 389, 391 ff., 393 f., 407, 421, 429, 432, 452, 464; and society, 110 f., 116, 126, 147.

Infant, 12 ff., 100.

Instinct, 355 f., 363 ff., 383.

Invention, 349 ff., 361, 386 f.

Iranian verse, 85.

Isis, _vocero_ of, 237 f.

Italy, improvisation in, 424 ff., 455 ff.

Jacobowski, 11 ff., 254, 345.

Jacobs, Joseph, 71, 164.

Jacobsthal, 69, 93.

Japan, poetry of, 64; songs of, 282.

Jeanroy, 174, 179, 207, 258, 308, 320 f., 341 f., 401, 405.

Jeremiah, 230.

Jessopp, 286, 291.

Jews, poem of the, 205.

Jigs, 342, 426.

Job, 58, 261.

Johnson, Dr., 37, 289 f., 347.

Jonson, Ben, 34, 169, 316.

Junod, 105.

_Kalevala_ (see Comparetti), 64.

Kawczynski, 349 ff.

Keane, A. H., 378.

Keasbey, L. M., 463.

Keats, 157.

Keening, 240 f.

Kenning, 191, 209, 452.

Khorovod, 327.

_Kîna_, the, 226 f.

Kind, sense of, 115, 348, 385 f., 472.

Kingsley, Miss, 254.

Kipling, 388, 452.

Kirn (see Harvest-home), 290 f.

Kleinpaul, 176.

Koester, 221.

Kögel, 74, 189, 218, 220, 261, 298 f., 340, 417.

_Kollo_, the, 339.

Krejči, 373 f.

Krohn, 166.

Labour, songs of, 70, 78, 91, 107 ff., 202 f., 269 ff., 317, 369, 402, 419, 450.

_Lâc_, 340.

Lafitau, 248, 252, 311.

La Motte, 433.

Lamprecht, 360.

Landstad, 166, 414, 418.

Lang, Andrew, 436.

Lang, H. R., 459.

Language, origin of, 392, 450.

Lapps, the, 92, 129.

Largess-shilling, the, 297.

Latin communal poetry, 271, 273, 283, 285, 404 f., 424.

Layamon, 265.

Le Bon, 6, 360, 377 f., 382.

Lefebvre, 2.

Legend, 189.

Lery, 246 ff., 252, 312 f.

Lescarbot, 247, 252, 333.

Lessing, 84.

Letourneau, 7, 11, 42, 308, 430, 447.

Leyser, 46.

_Like Wil to Like_, 342.

_Limburg Chronicle_, 182.

Linos, 236 f., 285.

Lippert, 437.

Literary evolution, 23.

Lithuania, songs of, 116, 242, 269, 292.

Lityerses, 238, 285.

Livy, 424.

Longinus, 53, 58, 79.

Loquin, 167.

Lost arts, 17.

Lotze, 365.

Lounsbury, T. R., 447.

Lowth, 47 f., 262, 346.

Lucian, 219, 222, 324, 336.

Lucretius, 299, 436.

Lundell, 418.

Lyke-wake, 239 f.

Lyngbye, 194, 232, 399.

Lyric, 39, 117, 147, 173, 420 ff., 431, 434; origin of, 8, 12.

McLennan, J. F., 22.

Maeterlinck, 60 f., 206.

Magic, 67, 283.

Mahomet, 1.

Maine, Sir H., 379.

Mallery, 428, 430.

Malmesbury, William of, 301.

Malory, 56.

Maneros, 238, 285.

Manley, J. M., 337.

Mannhardt, 238, 283, 294, 310, 343, 437.

_Mansöngvar_, 401.

Marcaggi, 229, 231 ff.

Marching-songs, 204, 269.

Masing, 119 f., 256.

Masson, 57.

Matriarchate, 10.

May songs, 281, 305 f.

Meier, John, 164.

Mendelssohn, Moses, 119.

Meredith, 114.

Mérimée, 231.

Metaphor, 161 f., 190 ff., 444 f.

Metre, 180.

Metres, origin of, 110.

Meumann, 81 ff., 88, 99.

Mexico, songs of, 334.

Meyer, E. H., 166 f., 216, 272, 279, 283, 300, 306, 417.

Meyer, Gustav, 172, 181, 405, 407 ff.

Meyer, R. M., 176, 188, 209, 256 f., 259 f., 267, 447, 452.

Michel, F., 183, 234, 395.

_Milieu_, the, 358.

Mill, J. S., 51 f.

Milton, 49, 207.

Minstrel, the, 181, 215 f., 272, 315, 322, 403, 454.

Mitchill, Senator, 19 ff.

Möller, 86 ff., 267.

Mommsen, 464.

Monboddo, 50, 354, 357.

Montaigne, 6, 129 f.

Montanus, 296.

More, Sir T., 427.

Morgan, Lloyd, 121, 363, 365, 387.

Morhof, 124.

Mucke, 378.

Müllenhoff, 154, 218, 222, 267 f., 284, 336 f., 388, 437.

Müller, D. H., 262.

Müller, K. O., 265.

Müller, Max, 136, 436, 440, 455.

Müller, W., 301.

Muse, 106.

Music, as muse, 106; in poetry (see Rhythm), 55.

Musset, A. de, 453.

Myth, 284, 293, 434 ff.

Nash, Tom, 61, 280, 427.

Nature, 25, 126, 468 ff.; and art, 118 ff., 133, 135, 137, 165; in ballads, 188, 192 f., 321, 413.

Nauze, M. de la, 124.

Negro slaves, 97 f.

Neidhart, 323.

_Neniae_, 221, 244.

Neocorus, 218, 318 f., 321, 340 f.

Nerthus, 299 f., 339.

Newell, W. W., 179, 284.

Newman, Cardinal, 446.

Newton, 2.

Nietzsche, 24, 59, 371 ff.

Nigra, Count, 180, 185, 405.

Nisard, 169.

Noiré, 365, 392.

Norden, 65 ff., 74, 87, 145, 403.

Northall, 160, 276, 278, 284.

Northbrooke, 305.

Objective, 139 f., 158.

Ontogenesis, 9 ff.

Opera, 424, 431.

Oratory, 79 f.

Ortoli, 231 f., 279.

Overbury, 277, 291.

Pellissier, 461.

Pantomime, 336, 429 ff.

Parallelism, 62, 214.

Paris, Gaston, 150, 174, 185, 334, 341, 352.

Park, Mungo, 397 f., 422.

_Pastourelle_, 326.

Pater, Walter, 55, 61, 258.

Patten, 147.

Paul, 81, 360.

Peacock, T. L., 1, 10.

Pearson, 8, 10, 216.

Peele, George, 281.

Pennant, 239, 270.

_Pennillion_, 403.

People, mind of the, 360 f.

Percy, Bishop, 181.

Perfetti, 456 ff.

Persia, Comedy in, 428.

_Pervigilium Veneris_, 258.

Petrarch, 2, 45, 145.

Pfannenschmid, 238, 283, 286, 292 f., 343.

Phillips, 118.

Phœnician _vocero_, 236 f.

Phylogenesis, 9 ff.

_Planch_, 229.

Plato, 1, 33 f., 460.

Play, 365 ff., 369.

Play-excitement, 368.

Plutarch, 66, 270, 395.

Poe, 51.

Poet, the, 347, 388, 390 ff., 406, 433, 453 f., 465, 470.

Poetic sentence, 33, 53.

Poetics, 7.

Poetry, art of, 3; attacks on, 1 ff.; beginnings of, 4, 123, 464 ff.; biological basis of, 8; communal elements of, 433; defence of, 1 ff.; definition of, 4, 30, 51, 118, 158; earliest form of, 210 f., 314; elements of, 29, 163, 172; historical treatment of, 5; Latin, 141; laws in, 74 f.; meaning of, 4; reading of, 63; and science, 2; singing of, 64, 72, 75 f., 139, 173, 180, 272.

Poland, songs of, 270.

Pope, 47.

Porthan, 198 ff., 269 f.

Portugal, songs of, 208, 320 f.

Posnett, 7, 142, 257, 260, 265, 336, 381 f., 440.

_Praefica_, 225, 229, 248.

Praetorius, 242.

Prickard, A. O., 43.

Processions, communal, 224, 298 ff., 304.

Prose, artistic, 65 ff; periodic, 69; poems in, 32, 38, 41, 59 ff.; priority of, 63 ff., 75 ff.; rhythmical, 67 ff.; and verse, line between, 62.

Psalms, the, 36, 153, 186 f., 209, 261 f., 420, 438.

Psychology, 364 ff., 374 f., 8 ff., 81.

Pulci, 455.

Pulszky, 26, 383.

Quadrio, 43, 455.

Quatrains (see _Schnaderhüpfl_), 213, 418.

Radloff, 71, 211 ff.

Rain-song, the, 300.

Ralston, 166.

Ranke, 360.

Recitative, 91 f., 104, 310.

Réclus, 378.

Refrain, 92, 97, 129, 174, 183, 190, 209, 225, 230, 232, 253 f., 256 ff., 287, 291, 308 f., 313 ff., 354, 415 f., 430, 443, 450; in Germanic poetry, 267; in Greek, 266; nature of, 314 ff.

Refrains, agricultural, 279 ff.

Reifferscheid, 288.

Relativity, 14, 16.

Religious rites, 204, 220, 238, 260 f., 282 ff., 292, 300 f., 305, 313, 333 ff., 338 f., 392, 436, 444.

Renan, 2.

Repetition, 76, 193 ff., 205 ff., 231 f., 236, 245, 251, 255 f., 313, 416, 451; classes of, 206; incremental, 194 ff., 198 f., 208 f., 213 f., 252, 254 f., 319, 325 f., 423.

Rhythm, 246, 332, 345, 348 ff., 356, 383, 386, 390, 421, 432, 463, 465 ff.; and music, 79; nature of, 99 ff., 109; derived from prose, 63 ff.; as a social factor, 93.

Ribot, 100, 104, 140, 151, 364 f., 369, 384.

Riddles, 212, 452.

Rime, 56, 68 f., 75.

Rimed prose, 61.

Ritson, 307.

Robin Hood, ballads of, 327.

Romance, 179 f.

Romanes, 364, 398.

Romans, dance of the (see Arval hymn), 334, 345.

Ronsard, 45, 63, 122, 146, 150.

_Rose, Romance of the_, 362.

Rosières, 258 f., 266.

Rosenberg, 275, 317, 353 f.

Roumania, ballads of, 72.

Round, the, 341 f.

Rousseau, 127, 151, 157, 389.

Rückert, 315.

Rudimentary growths in literature, 17.

_Rundâs_, 406.

_Ruodlieb_, 341.

Ruscelli, 456.

Russia, ballads of, 166, 188, 198, 327.

Sachs, Hans, 281.

Sainte-Beuve, 6, 148 f., 388, 453, 465, 468.

St. Evremond, 447.

St Francis, prayer of, 155, 469.

St. Victor, 231, 233 f.

Saintsbury, Professor, 55.

Sandys, 303.

Sappho, 464.

Sarcasm, songs of, 288 f.

Satire, 404 f.

_Satura Menippea_, 73.

Saturnian verse, 68.

Savages, 9, 11, 13 ff., 19 ff., 65, 82, 90 ff., 95 f., 127, 374 ff.; character of, 111; poetry of, 252 ff., 308 ff., 370.

Scaliger, J. C., 3, 34, 43 f., 122 f.

Scandinavia, songs of, 188, 191, 270, 353 f.

Scéaf, 284 f.

Scherer, 8, 88 f., 133 f., 178, 336, 349, 381, 441, 446 f., 452, 454, 459 f.

Schiller, 49, 113, 119, 375.

Schipper, 315.

Schlegel, A. W., 9, 40 ff., 48, 101, 108, 119, 122, 132 ff., 254, 327, 346, 369 f., 396, 415, 423, 432, 435, 437.

Schlegel, F., 5, 38.

Schleicher, 398.

Schleiermacher, 39, 117, 420.

Schmeller, J. A., 405 f.

_Schnaderhüpfl_, 144, 200, 297, 299, 403, 405 ff.

Schoolcraft, 245, 248 f., 308 ff.

Schopenhauer, 371.

Schröder, 68.

Schuchardt, 403.

Schultze, 9, 374 f., 383.

Schwab, 427.

Schwartz, W., 438.

Science, 126.

Scotland, ballads of, 173, 183, 327; songs of, 265, 273.

Scott, Sir W., 156, 168 f., 173, 181, 414.

Seasons, poetry of the, 470.

Selden, 2, 80.

Sentiment, 25 f., 147 f., 156, 159, 421, 432.

Sermons in verse, 80.

_Serranas_, 459.

Servia, songs of, 299 f.

Seville, dance in cathedral of, 335.

Shaftesbury, 46, 126.

Shakspere, 113 f., 316, 426 f., 470 ff.

Shaman, 221, 244, 338, 379, 392 f., 429, 442 f.

Shelley, Mary, 253.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 10, 336.

Siberia, songs of, 211 ff., 243.

Sidney, 34 f., 122, 130.

Siebs, 74.

Sievers, 62, 86 ff., 267.

Silius Italicus, 336.

Simile, 446 f.

Simonides, 220.

Simplicity, 190.

Simrock, 435.

Sittl, 221, 431.

Skeat, 291.

Skolion, 395, 403.

Smend, 186.

Smith, Adam, 14, 23, 50, 96, 256, 336, 354.

Smythe, H. W., 217, 258, 266, 285.

Society, 220, 368, 449 f., 462 f., 473; and poetry, 1, 7, 52, 89 f., 101, 120.

Sonnet, 145.

Souriau, 55, 350.

Southey’s _Doctor_, 278.

_Spanish Tragedy_, the, 427.

Spencer, H., 18, 89 f., 243, 328, 350, 365, 372, 377 ff., 383, 385, 391, 398, 437, 442.

Spencer, Dr. John, 346.

_Spens, Sir Patrick_, 172, 472.

Spenser, E., 118, 122, 206, 241.

Spinning-songs, 277 ff.

“Spirituals,” 98.

Spontaneity, 65, 350 f., 355 ff., 369, 373.

Stedman, E. C., 120.

Steenstrup, 187, 190, 327, 343.

Stein, von, 427.

Steinthal, 352, 361.

_Stev_, 401, 418 f.

Stevenson, R. L., 314.

Storm, G., 355.

_Stornelli_, 401, 405.

Strabo, 64, 66.

_Strambotti_, 401, 404 f., 418.

Street-songs, 166, 169.

Style of poetry, 35, 54, 161 f., 189 ff., 434, 444 ff.

Sublime, the, 53.

Sully, 365.

Summer and winter, songs of, 306 f.

Swift, 61, 375.

Sword-dance, 268, 336 f.

Symonds, J. A., 426.

Sympathy, 115, 471 ff.

Syria, poetry of, 218, 227, 236.

Tacitus, 86, 205, 299, 336 f., 392.

Taine, 6, 359, 388.

Talvj, 167, 182, 395.

Tammuz, 237.

Tarde, 137, 348, 351, 356 ff., 362 f., 374, 376 f., 380, 423, 460.

Tartars, songs of the, 71.

_Télémaque_, 38, 46, 60.

Temple, Sir William, 46, 467.

Ten Brink, 176, 213, 306, 326, 361, 403, 424.

Tennyson, 82, 156, 190, 220, 388.

Texte, 359, 389.

Theocritus, 405, 418.

Thought, 83, 113, 139, 152, 374 f., 383, 420 f.

Thucydides, 17.

Tibullus, 277, 299.

Ticknor, 425.

Tille, 276.

_Tirade_, 211.

Tobler, 188, 194.

Tragedy, Greek, 257, 338, 369 f., 371 ff., 424, 444.

Translations in prose, 49, 55, 57 ff.

Trapp, 46.

Turgot, 15, 59, 126.

Tusser, 297.

Twining, 1, 43.

Tylor, E. B., 18, 24, 204, 238, 283, 379, 428, 436 ff.

_Ubi Sunt_, 148 ff.

Uhland, 220, 281, 298, 306, 338, 343, 415, 436.

Usener, 69, 84, 213, 350, 421, 423.

Valentin, 319.

Variation, 194, 209 ff., 213 f., 236, 256, 408 f., 423, 451.

Varro, 66.

Veddahs, the, 330, 390 f., 463, 466.

_Veisa_, 355.

Verbs, 450 ff.

Vergil, 58, 73, 207, 298, 306, 334, 404 f., 418.

Verse, oldest European, 85.

Verse (see Rhythm), 54.

Vico, 10, 128, 460.

Vigfusson and Powell, 257.

Vignoli, 440.

Vigny, De, 154, 373.

Villemarqué, 183 f.

Villon, 148 ff., 161.

Vinesauf, 229.

_Vocero_, 100, 168, 219 ff., 321, 419; literary form of, 228 f.; of savages, 243 ff.

Vogüé, E. M., de, 115, 144.

Vossius, G. J., 44, 123.

Vossius, I., 46.

Wackernagel, W., 320.

Wagner, R., 103, 120 f., 171, 327 f., 430.

Waitz, 327, 329, 379 f.

Wakes, 303.

Wales, songs of, 288 f.

Wallace, A. R., 365, 403.

Wallaschek, 13, 91 ff., 99 ff., 260, 328 f., 366, 381.

Walther von der Vogelweide, 430, 470.

War, songs of, 86, 268 f., 311, 388.

War-dance, 311, 331 f.

_Wasf_, the, 219.

Warton, Joseph, 47.

Watts, Theodore, 57.

Webster, John, 59.

Wedding, songs of, 202 f., 216 f., 324.

Weismann, 4, 363.

Werner, R. M., 420.

Westphal, 84.

Whately, 42, 48, 51 f.

Wheeler, B. I., 445.

Williams, Talcott, 16.

Wilmanns, 85, 87.

Witchell, 364.

Wold, 293.

Wolf, F., 71, 167, 176, 257 f., 280, 315, 327, 340.

Wolff, Eugen, 164, 432.

Women, songs of, 199 f., 222, 226, 228, 240 f., 250, 263 f., 269 f., 329, 339, 341, 397 f., 419, 464.

Woodberry, G. E., 162.

Wordsworth, 150, 155, 162, 451.

Wright, Thomas, 303, 307.

Writing, invention of, 252.

Wundt, 360, 363, 366, 428.

Xenophon, 34, 337.

Zell, 198, 260, 271, 283, 404.

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1:

Twining, _Aristotle_, 2d ed., I. 183, thinks the original treatise was written as a defence against the “cavils of prosaic philosophers” and the objections of Plato.

Footnote 2:

In his curious book, _La Philosophie du Bon-Sens_, 1737, p. 15, D’Argens speaks of Aristotle “dont les Ouvrages sur la Poëtique sont aussi bons, que ceux dans lesquels il traite de la Philosophie sont peu utiles.”

Footnote 3:

_De Futilitate Poetices auctore Tanaquillo Fabro Tanaquilli filio Verbi Divini Ministro_..., Amstel., 1697. It was answered by the Abbé Massieu in a _Defense de la Poésie_ (in _Hist. d. l. Poés. Françoise_, Paris, 1739), a pious but heavy performance.

Footnote 4:

_Table Talk_, ed. Arber, pp. 85 f.

Footnote 5:

Lord Radnor in Spence’s _Anecdotes_, ed. Singer, p. 368.

Footnote 6:

_Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, pp. 89 ff., 255.

Footnote 7:

Ribot, _Psychology of the Emotions_, pp. 329 ff., rejects Guyau’s emendation of Grant Allen, and backs Groos in his view of the play theory.

Footnote 8:

“Gedanken über Musik bei Thieren und beim Menschen,” 1889, in _Deutsche Rundschau_, LXI. 50 ff.

Footnote 9:

_Athenæum_, III. 67.

Footnote 10:

Criticism has been treated of late with scientific precision. See the bibliographical array in Gayley and Scott’s admirable _Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism_, Boston, 1899. From the imperial critic, the “gentle reader” and patron represented by Montaigne, who gives no reasons but his own likes and dislikes, as witness that delightful essay on books, in its opening sentence, through the official critics, down to M. Brunetière, the scientific critic, faithful to the doctrine of evolution in general, and attentive to the law in the particular case, it is to be noted how criticism has been approaching the sociological domain, the study of poetry as an element of human life. Sainte-Beuve was still a critic of poets and poems, for all his “natural method”; Taine crossed the border and studied poetry, the product, under sociological and ethnological conditions. See Sainte-Beuve, _Nouveaux Lundis_, VIII. 87 f., 69 f.; IX. 70; and Taine, _Derniers Essais_, Paris, 1894, pp. 58 f. M. Brunetière, in carrying on the plan of Taine, and Hennequin, in opposing it, work on sociological and historical ground, rather than in the old æsthetics. Hennequin’s _Critique_ is “scientifique”; while a title like M. Brunetière’s _Evolution of Species in Literature_ can be conceded to criticism only by taking such liberties with the word as to leave it practically undefined. Still, these men work for criticism if not in it, and they give no reason for disputing what is said in the text about the paucity of books on poetry as an element in human society. They have the modern poet, the modern poem, in view; they wish to lay down metes and bounds and adjust the law. Hennequin will found a new science, “an immense anthropology,” made up of all the vital sciences (_Crit. Sci._, pp. 185 f.); but his place is with the critics, and not with scholars in historical and comparative literature. His _æsthopsychology_ indicates devotion to the poetic impulse rather than to the product. Mr. Granger (_Worship of the Romans_, p. vii) has lately called up the word _ethology_, suggested by Stuart Mill (_Logic of the Moral Sciences_, pp. 213 ff., 218), in line with a hint that the foundations of comparative psychology must be laid in the study of the people and of their habits of thought. Something of this sort has been done by M. Le Bon in his _Psychologie des Foules_, quoted below.

Footnote 11:

Such are the _Comparative Literature_ of Posnett, and the less didactic work of Letourneau, _L’Évolution Littéraire dans les diverses Races Humaines_, Paris, 1894. The former was mainly pioneer work, meant to open and define its subject; and in this it attained its end. This sociological method has been applied, of course, in a critical way, to many individual works, and to many periods of literature; not so, however, with the poetic product at large.

Footnote 12:

There is more to be said for the partial origin of poetry in choral songs of a sexual character sung after the communal feast of the horde or clan. This “sex-freedom,” so revolting to modern ideas, left late traces in history; and Professor Karl Pearson quotes Tsakni’s _La Russie Sectaire_ to the effect that such license still prevails at fairs and periodic festivals in Russia, combined with choral dance.—Pearson, _The Chances of Death_, II. 243. There are Australian festivals of this sort; and license of May-Day, of Shrove-Tuesday, and the rest, is familiar in European survival. On the other hand, it will be found that erotic poetry of the individual and lyric sort is almost unknown among savages.

Footnote 13:

_History of Creation_, 2 vols., trans., New York, 1893, I. 355, quoting from his _General Morphology_. He adds that by “tribe” he means “the ancestors which form the chain of progenitors of the individual concerned.”

Footnote 14:

_Der Fetischismus_, Leipzig, 1871, pp. 61, 74 f. A pretty little parallel of savages and children in the worship of images and dolls was drawn by M. Anatole France in a review of Lemonnier’s _Comédie des Jouets_. See France, _La Vie Littéraire_, II. 10 ff.

Footnote 15:

_Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, New York, 1895, pp. 15, 335 ff.; _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, New York, 1897, pp. 9, 189, etc.

Footnote 16:

_Vorlesungen_, Stuttgart, 1884, I. 275.

Footnote 17:

_Critische Dichtkunst_, 1737, p. 87.

Footnote 18:

_Esquisse des Progrès de l’Esprit-Humain._

Footnote 19:

Essay on “Ashiepattle” in _The Chances of Death_, II. 53.

Footnote 20:

_Arbeit und Rhythmus_, p. 15.

Footnote 21:

_L’Évolution Littéraire_, p. 81.

Footnote 22:

_Ibid._, pp. 15 f., “répétition, approximative, abrégée surtout; mais néanmoins elle est une répétition.” But at once he quotes some striking facts, in order to prove his thesis (that song preceded speech), and goes back for a child analogy to the book of B. Perez, _L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, a book which the present writer has been unable to consult.

Footnote 23:

_Die Anfänge der Poesie_, Dresden and Leipzig, 1891.

Footnote 24:

Work quoted, p. 96. Even old Gottsched, _Crit. Dichtkt._, p. 68, called a child’s weeping “a song of lament,” and its laughter “a song of joy.” “Every passion,” he says, “_has its own tone with which it makes itself manifest_,” really a better hint of origins than this scientific masquerading of Jacobowski.

Footnote 25:

_Primitive Music_, pp. 76, 78.

Footnote 26:

The best objection against this analogy in any definite use is made by O. Gruppe, _Griechische Culte und Mythen_, p. 199. The child and the savage, he points out, have each a small range of perceptions; the ways in which they enlarge this range are diametrically opposed. One does it productively; the other, receptively. See, too, a bit of sarcasm over the complacent scorn for the “childish” savages felt by civilized man, Grosse, _Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 51 f.

Footnote 27:

Dr. Brown, Adam Smith, Lord Monboddo, and others were leading Englishmen in the movement to use the savage to explain early man. Smith and Monboddo enjoyed this literary vivisection, the former once watching “a negro dance to his own song the war-dance of his own country, with such vehemence of action and expression, that the whole company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got up upon chairs and tables.” See the _Essays_, Edinburgh, 1795, “Of the Imitative Arts,” Parts II., III., and the fragment “Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry.” The main credit, however, belongs to Turgot. In his “Plan du Prém. Disc. sur l’Hist. Universelle,” _Œuvres_, II. 216, he uses the savages of America to illustrate the state of primitive man. He is also strong for the _milieu_. “Si Racine fût né au Canada chez les Hurons...!” he says, II. 264; and his other illustrations are suggestive (in the “Plan du 2. Disc.”). II. 265, he notes the homogeneity of barbaric races.

Footnote 28:

_Outlines of Sociology_, trans. Moore, p. 85.

Footnote 29:

The outright degeneration assumed by Le Maistre need not come into the account. Human progress is now conceded to be a resultant of opposing forces of growth and decay. Mr. Talcott Williams has an interesting paper, “Was Primitive Man a Modern Savage?” in the _Report of the Smithsonian Inst._, 1896, pp. 541 ff. His main point is, that the modern savage has deteriorated under pressure. Primitive man was in a more or less “empty earth,” and was not crowded by his fellows. The god of war is always a junior member of Olympus. So, too, Professor Baldwin (_Social and Ethical Interpretations_, p. 214) argues for a reign of peace, a “sort of organic resting-place,” in the child’s second period, which answers to social coöperation, “the rest which man took after his release from the animal.... The social tide then sets in. The quest of domestic union and reciprocal service comes to comfort him, and his nomadic and agricultural habits are formed.” One is reminded of Scherer’s argument for an epoch of peace in early Germanic culture attested by names which bear that stamp as compared with the later and warlike Gerhards, Gertrudes, and the rest.

Footnote 30:

It is hardly necessary to warn against fallacies of illustration. Even Bruchmann goes astray when he says the poem of Goethe is to the primitive song as a cherry tree in bloom is to a cherry stone just planted. To primitive man the primitive song was already a tree in bloom, and his appreciation of it was in line with modern appreciation of Goethe’s poem.

Footnote 31:

Or, indeed, any one tribe of human beings. Even in the very beginning of human activity, that activity was, as now, conditioned by the environment, and there were doubtless several types of primitive existence. Evidently, then, there could have been different types of social union even at the outset of social progress.

Footnote 32:

_Principles of Sociology_, 3d (American) ed., I. 93, 96. Dr. Eugen Wolff is equally severe on the abuse, “Vorstudien zur Poetik,” in the _Zst. f. Litteraturgesch._, VI. 426.

Footnote 33:

_Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 33 ff. For falling off in civilization among Africans and others, see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 46, 48.

Footnote 34:

_Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society_, Worcester, Mass., 1820, I. 313 ff.

Footnote 35:

In 1805.

Footnote 36:

See below, on the Darwinian theory of lyric.

Footnote 37:

_Polynesian Researches_, American ed., III., Chap. XII.

Footnote 38:

Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 85.

Footnote 39:

_Ibid._, VI. 606 ff.

Footnote 40:

See R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, p. 434.

Footnote 41:

_Studies in Ancient History_, First Series, new ed., 1886; see pp. 2, 35.

Footnote 42:

_Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 21 ff., 32 ff.

Footnote 43:

London, 1795, pp. xlii ff.

Footnote 44:

Nearer to the present subject are Smith’s excellent essay “Of the Imitative Arts” and the fragment “Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry.”

Footnote 45:

_Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, pp. 44 f. See also p. 180.

Footnote 46:

Compare Ribot’s idea of what he calls the æsthetic conquest of nature, _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 345, with Professor Patten’s remorselessly economic theory that appreciation of these things depends on cheap and warm woollen underclothing.

Footnote 47:

Pulszky, _The Theory of Law and Civil Society_, London, 1888, p. 107. “Selfishness,” by the way, is not a good name for the quality he has in mind; but the method is relevant.

Footnote 48:

“La doctrine évolutive et l’histoire de la littérature,” _Revue des deux Mondes_, 15 Fev. 1898. See especially pp. 889, 892 ff. See also his _Évolution des Genres_, particularly the chapter on Taine.

Footnote 49:

“Louis Bertrand, qui signait en bon romantique Aloïsius Bertrand,” 1807-1841, born at Céra in Piedmont.

Footnote 50:

Now very rare. It appeared, edited by M. Pavie, in 1842. See Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits Littéraires_, II. 343 ff.

Footnote 51:

C. Asselineau in _Les Poètes Français_, Tom. IV., 1862, p. 697.

Footnote 52:

Sainte-Beuve gives four specimens of Bertrand’s “poems” in prose. Brunetière, _Questions de Critique_, p. 202, quotes with approval Gautier’s words: “Vouloir séparer le vers de la poésie, c’est une folie moderne qui ne tend à rien moins que l’anéantissement de l’art lui-même.”

Footnote 53:

Italics not in Shelley’s essay.—For these very sentences, so poetical in their prose, see Hegel (on the poetic sentence), _Aesthetik_, III. 248 f.

Footnote 54:

_Reflexions_, ed. ¹ 1770, I. 508 ff. A poem in prose is like an engraving; all is here save colour, all is there save verse. The _Princesse de Cleves_ and _Télémaque_ are poems. Does not colour make the painting, though? Verse the poem? In the next section he prudently asserts, “qu’il est inutile de disputer si la partie du dessein et de l’expression est préferable à celle du coloris.” It is a matter of taste; _trahit sua quemque voluptas_. Both in poetry and painting “genius” is the main thing,—so he had decided in earlier sections.

Footnote 55:

“En lisant un poëme, nous regardons les instructions que nous y pouvons prendre comme l’accessoire. L’importante c’est le style, parceque c’est du style d’un poëme que dépend le plaisir de son lecteur.”—I. 303.

Footnote 56:

In the fourteenth chapter of _Biographia Literaria_. He has conceded the convenience of calling all compositions that have “this charm superadded”—rhythm and rime—by the name of poem.

Footnote 57:

_Essays_, Edinburgh, 1776, p. 296. “I am of opinion,” he says, pp. 294 f., _On Poetry and Music_, “that to poetry, verse is not essential. In a prose work we may have the fable, the arrangement, and a great deal of the pathos and language of poetry; and such a work is certainly a poem, though”—note the concession—“perhaps not a perfect one.” Verse “is necessary to the perfection of all poetry that admits of it,”—and how, pray, is that limitation to be adjusted? “Verse is to poetry what colours are to painting;” and, quoting Aristotle, “versification is to poetry what bloom is to the human countenance.” Here are pribbles and prabbles enough.

Footnote 58:

_Poetry and Imagination._

Footnote 59:

_Works_, ed. 1854, III. 309.

Footnote 60:

As preface to his _Lectures on the English Poets_.

Footnote 61:

M. E. M. de Vogüé has other views. To him _Robinson Crusoe_ is “un bon traité de psychologie historique sur un peuple,”—an historic psychology of the English race.—_Histoire et Poésie_, p. 194.

Footnote 62:

_Works_, Hartford, 1889, I. 213 f. Essay on Wordsworth, etc. Bruchmann, in his excellent _Poetik_, Berlin, 1898, gives up the attempt to mark off poetry from prose, speaks of a “neutral ground,” and then defines poetry as “Steigerung durch Form und Inhalt; _die Form ist Gesang, Rhythmus, Reim_” (p. 53). What more could the defender of rhythm ask as working test?

Footnote 63:

When only one-and-twenty. _Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus_, 1735.

Footnote 64:

_Jugendschriften F. Schl._, ed. Minor, I. 99; a study of Greek poetry.

Footnote 65:

_Athenæum_, III. 87 f., in Talks about Poetry.

Footnote 66:

_Aesthetik_, Berlin, 1842.

Footnote 67:

See p. 663.

Footnote 68:

_Problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, p. 172.

Footnote 69:

_Ibid._, p. 150,—“ce poëte sans le rhythme.”

Footnote 70:

Gautier, too, thought that Flaubert had “invented a new rhythm” in prose, and described it; see the report of this, _Journal des Goncourt_, 1862, January 1. But later, in the same journal (1876, February 24), Goncourt refers all this sort of thing to Chateaubriand: “sa belle prose poétique, _mère et nourrice de toutes les proses colorées de l’heure actuelle_....”

Footnote 71:

_L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique_, p. 312.

Footnote 72:

See Humboldt, _Werke_, VI. 230 ff.

Footnote 73:

“Briefe über Poesie, Sylbenmaas und Sprache,” first in Schiller’s _Horen_, reprinted in the _Charakteristiken und Critiken_, I. 318 ff.; _Werke_, ed. Böcking, VII. 98 ff.

Footnote 74:

_Wettstreit der Sprachen_, Böcking, VII. 199.

Footnote 75:

_Etwas über William Shakspere_, Böcking, VII. 55.

Footnote 76:

See below, p. 134, for a still more noteworthy and yet quite unnoticed change of front made by Schlegel in the article of folksong.

Footnote 77:

It must be said for Schlegel that he is here—so, at least, it seems—merely clearing the way for his historical and “genetic” study of the art, and so is bound to have no hampering dogma, no _parti pris_ in the case.

Footnote 78:

Notably that division of _epopœia_, “which imitates by words alone or by verse.” The question is whether Aristotle meant in the first case “words without metre” or “words without music.” See Twining’s fourth note.—It has been pointed out that nowhere in the fragment does Aristotle essay a formal definition of poetry.

Footnote 79:

_Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3.

Footnote 80:

_Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry_, 2d ed., I. 289. This view of Twining is upheld in some highly sensible remarks by Mr. A. O. Prickard in a lecture, _Aristotle and the Art of Poetry_, London, 1891. What Aristotle clearly meant to say is that “metre is not the most essential characteristic of poetry, _yet it would be a misuse of language to call anything a poem which is not metrical in form_.” (Italics not in original, p. 60.) Mr. Prickard agrees with Whately, Twining, and many others, that the words of the passage in question, and the instances given, do not make against this view; and “elsewhere, Plato and Aristotle invariably assume that only what is metrical is to be called poetry; nay, that metrical writing and poetry are, for the common purpose of language, convertible terms. ‘In metre, as a poet,’ says Plato, ‘or without metre as a layman.’ ‘A good sentence,’ says Aristotle, ‘should have rhythm but not metre; if it have metre, it will be a poem.’” See the _Phædrus_, 258, D., and Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, III. 8.

Footnote 81:

A clear summary of the case as argued in Italy may be found in Quadrio, _Della Storia e della Ragione d’ogni Poesia_, I. Bologna, 1739; II.-VII. Milan, 1741-1752. See I. 2 ff. Quadrio is outright for the test of verse and for a generous rendering of Aristotle. He gives the names of forgotten pleaders on both sides, and thinks the noes have it against a traditional Aristotelian view; not to quarrel forever, “Basta, che nacque la Poesia col Verso e col Canto: né, propagata fra le nazioni, fu altrimenti mai lavorato che in Verso.”—Spingarn, _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_, New York, 1899, pp. 9 ff., points out that Mantuan was for the verse-test, Savonarola, Minturno, Daniello, against it.

Footnote 82:

“Censet hoc ipsum ... Caesar Scaliger, qui, _quod raro facit, hac parte ab Aristotele recedit_,” says Vossius, _de art. poet._, § 7.

Footnote 83:

Iulii Caesaris Scaligeri ... _Poetices Libri Septem_ ... 1561, the first edition, published three years after the author’s death.

Footnote 84:

See p. 3ᵇ: “Poetae igitur nomen non a fingendo ... sed initio a faciendo versu ductum est. Simul enim cum ipsa natura humana extitit vis haec numerosa, quibus versus clauditur.”

Footnote 85:

_Ibid._, “Infans quoque prius canit quam loquitur, videmus enim plerosque haud aliter somnum captare.”

Footnote 86:

See p. 347ᵃ.

Footnote 87:

Gerardi Joannis Vossii _de artis poeticae natura ac constitutione_ ... Amstelodami, 1647. §4, “Atque ut multi ex solo metro male colligunt aliquem esse poetam: ita contrà aberrant alii, qui existimant, ne quidem requiri metrum, ut poeta aliquis dicatur. Haec tamen sententia à nonnullis ipsi tribuitur Aristoteli ... § 5. At alii censent Aristotelem numquam agnovisse ullum poema ἄμετρον....”

Footnote 88:

Isaaci Casauboni _de Satyrica Graecorum Poesi & Romanorum Satira Libri duo_, Parisiis, MDCV, pp. 352 f. “Certum heic discrimen statuitur inter eam orationem quae poema dici potest, & quae non potest, discrimen illud est metrum.... _Omnem metro astrictam orationem & posse & debere poema dici._” The rest is instructive. Borinski, to be sure, _Poetik d. Renaissance_, p. 66, says that Casaubon wished to call Herodotus a poet; but a detached phrase of this sort—compare Scaliger’s epic in prose—goes for little when it fails to force the barrier and break down the writer’s definition. Dryden, on the other hand, making “invention” the sole test of poetry, clashes badly with his opinion (_Essay on Satire_) that “versification and numbers are the greatest pleasures of poetry.”

Footnote 89:

As Howell translates the not too clear Latin “fictio rhetorica in musicaque posita,” poetry is “a rhetorical composition set to music.” See also an article in the _Quarterly Review_, with reference to the _Convivio_, April, 1899, p. 303.

Footnote 90:

See his works, ed. Blanchemain, VII. 320.

Footnote 91:

The whole dispute about rime shows this “importance capitale” of verse itself.

Footnote 92:

_Advancement of Learning_, ed. Wright, II. iii. 4 (pp. 101 ff.). Clearer in the Latin version, his antithesis, “nam et vera narratio carmine, et ficta oratione soluta conscribi potest,” is not identical with the proposition that poetry is independent of rhythm. He says it “is in measure of words for the most part restrained.”

Footnote 93:

_De Poematum Cantu et Viribus Rythmi_, Oxon., 1673. The reference to origins is interesting: “illud quidem certum omnem poësin olim cantatum fuisse.... Unde sequitur, quicquid non canitur aut cantari nequeat, non esse poema.”

Footnote 94:

_Characteristics_, 5th ed., Birmingham, 1763, I. 254, note, and III. 264.

Footnote 95:

_Essays_, “Of Poetry.”

Footnote 96:

_Praelectiones Poeticae_, 4th ed., London, 1760; see I. 24.

Footnote 97:

_Programma de Vera Indole Poeseos Praelectionihus Praemissum_, Helmst., 1719. See also his programme of 1720 introducing lectures on the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace.

Footnote 98:

_Œuvres Complètes de M. de Fénélon_, Tome V., “Discours sur le poeme épique,” pp. 34 ff. There are many discourses on this theme of prose-poetry in the _Mémoires_ of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. The Abbé Fraguier is dull but weighty for the test; Burette, a real scholar, is sensible on the same side (_Mém._ X. 212 f., in 1730). The younger Racine is very feeble; after reading his contradictory and vapid papers, one has Chaucer on one’s lips—“No more of this, for goddes dignité!”

Footnote 99:

_A Knight’s Conjuring_, Percy Soc., 1842, pp. 25, 75.

Footnote 100:

_Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope_, anon., London, 1756. The book is dedicated to Young, and in the dedication Warton gives these general views of poetry.

Footnote 101:

Pope said, “There are three distinct _tours_ in poetry; the design, the language, and the versification....” Spence, _Anecd._, p. 23. As to prose poems, he could read _Telemachus_ with pleasure, “though I don’t like that poetic kind of prose.” Its good sense was so great, “nothing else could make me forget my prejudices against the style.” _Ibid._, pp. 141 f.

Footnote 102:

_Praelectiones_, Pars Prima, Praelect. Tertia: “Poesin Hebraeam metricam esse.”

Footnote 103:

“Sed cum omni poesi haec sit veluti propria quedam lex et necessaria conditio constituta, a qua si discedat, non solum praecipuam elegantiam desiderabit et suavitatem, sed ne nomen suum obtinebit.” It should be added that Calmet, _de Poesi vet. Hebrae._, p. 15, is against this verse test, “Essentiale Poeseos quaerimus in certo quodam sermone vivido, animato, pathetico, figurisque hyperbolicis audacius ornato. Nec solam versificationem Poetas facere, nec a pedum mensura Poesin dici persuademur.” Then Plato.

Footnote 104:

_Rhetoric_, III. iii. 3.

Footnote 105:

The younger, of course.

Footnote 106:

_Dichtung und Wahrheit_, Book XI.; Hempel ed., III. 45.

Footnote 107:

“Wodurch Poesie erst zur Poesie wird,”—the _erst_ will bear a stronger translation. Schiller, too, said that one must put into verse whatever rises above the commonplace; and Goethe agreed with him: all poetry “should be treated rhythmically.” Victor Hugo, in his Preface to _Cromwell_, pp. 33 f., defends verse for the drama; prose has not adequate resources.

Footnote 108:

Milton is thinking, too, of this in his well-known passage in the treatise on Education. “I mean not here the prosody of a verse ...” boys learn that in their grammars; but in time they must be taught the great things,—“that sublime Art which in Aristotle’s _Poetics_ ... teaches what the laws are of a true Epic poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what Decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe.”

Footnote 109:

_Essay on the Imitative Arts._

Footnote 110:

No. XXXV. of the _Lectures_.

Footnote 111:

_Of the Origin and Progress of Language_, II. 50; IV. 41.

Footnote 112:

See the _Transactions_ of the Society, Vol. I. Warrington, 1785, pp. 54 ff.

Footnote 113:

_Biographia Literaria_, Chap. XIV.—“Poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem.”

Footnote 114:

_The Poetic Principle._

Footnote 115:

_On Heroes_, “The Hero as Poet.”

Footnote 116:

III. iii. 3; another part of the passage is quoted above, p. 42.

Footnote 117:

_Dissertations and Discussions_, I. 89 ff., “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties.” The article first appeared in 1833.

Footnote 118:

It would be more to the purpose if one went to the sources of poetry and religion and studied the survivals of primitive rite. At seed-time in Brandenburg, the women still go out to the fields and unbind their hair in sign that the flax may grow as long as their tresses. With such a ritual act goes nearly always a song, a repeated shout, a cry to the powers of growth; and this, if one please, is poetry in its making, while it is easy to think that the symbol would sooner or later force itself into the words—“make our flax like this hair.”

Footnote 119:

_Aesthetik, Werke_, ed. 1838, X. III.: summary, pp. 269 f.—“So ist denn jedes wahrhaft poetisches Kunstwerk ein in sich unendlicher Organismus,” etc.

Footnote 120:

IX. 9. See the translation by Roberts, p. 65.

Footnote 121:

Hegel, work quoted, p. 257.

Footnote 122:

E. S. Dallas, _Poetics_, p. 8, is sound in idea, but less happy in illustration, when he says that a poem without verse can be no more than the movement of a watch without its dial-plate.

Footnote 123:

_Literary Criticism_, p. 134.

Footnote 124:

“Als der erste und einzige sinnliche Duft.” The passages to which Gayley and Scott refer—_e.g._ Hegel, p. 227—do not change this statement in the present application. Nobody pretends that rhythm is the soul of poetry; it is a necessary form, a necessary condition.

Footnote 125:

_The Power of Sound_, London, 1880. Chap. III. is on the elements of a work of art. On p. 51, again on p. 423 f., Mr. Gurney rejects poetry in prose.

Footnote 126:

_Théorie de l’Invention_, thèse pour le doctorat ès Lettres, Paris, 1881, p. 142.

Footnote 127:

It is perhaps superfluous to point out that imagination is utterly ignored in this analysis, and to recall Mr. Swinburne’s phrase that “the two primary and essential qualities of poetry are imagination and harmony.”

Footnote 128:

A curious passage which follows (pp. 149 f.), treats poetry as a supply of coal, rapidly used and close to exhaustion, so far as originality and freshness are concerned.

Footnote 129:

_Choice of Books_, pp. 81 f., 126.

Footnote 130:

_History of Æsthetics_, pp. 461 f.

Footnote 131:

Professor Masson in the _North British Review_, 1853, reviewed the _Poetics of Dallas_, printing the review later as fifth essay in _Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats_, London, 1874; the sixth essay “On Prose and Verse,” repeats a discussion of De Quincey’s prose in the journal just named for 1854. Poets are led, Masson says, by the “flag” of imagery and the “flute” of verse; and while he inclines to the test of rhythm, he comes to no conclusion. Bain (_On Teaching English_, 1887; see Chap. VII. and pp. 249 ff.) also inclines to the test, but hedges after the manner of his brethren.

Footnote 132:

_Encycl. Brit._, article “Poetry,” which defines its subject as “the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language.... In discussing poetry, questions of versification touch ... the very root of the subject.”

Footnote 133:

In the sense, of course, that it absorbed the best labour of two centuries.

Footnote 134:

The same argument, of course, applies to Plato, as in the “hymns” to Eros, noble prose indeed; and in less degree to such passages as De Quincey on the Ladies of Sorrow.

Footnote 135:

_Œuvres_, Paris, 1810, IX. 227 ff., “De la Prose Mesurée.” See also pp. 185 ff.

Footnote 136:

See his _Petits Poëmes en Prose_, in _Œuvres Complètes_, Paris, 1869, IV. p. 2,—an interesting preface.

Footnote 137:

_Young Ofeg’s Ditties_, trans. Egerton, London, 1895.

Footnote 138:

_Also Sprach Zaruthustra_, III. “Das Andere Tanzlied.”

Footnote 139:

His defence is very fine and languid and aristocratic,—“inutile dispute _de mots_,” he protests at last: _Œuvres Complètes_, Paris, 1852, V. 84, 295 (“Examen des Martyrs”).

Footnote 140:

A foreigner is no judge in these things; but he may say how much more the lucidity of Mérimée, of M. Anatole France, appeals to him than the poetic prose of Flaubert’s _Salammbô_.

Footnote 141:

Has any one noted in the opening chapter of the _Trionfo della Morte_ a prose refrain, “Gocce di pioggia, rare, cadevano,” repeated with considerable effect?

Footnote 142:

_Ibid._, p. 396. The structure is strophic and very artistic in its complication.

Footnote 143:

See D’Annunzio’s dedication of this romance, and his artistic creed, quite an echo of the preface to Baudelaire’s poems in prose.

Footnote 144:

There is often in these prose-poems, so much praised now, a startling reminder of the golden style of certain despised folk who wrote cadenced and coloured prose in their romances three centuries ago. And not only in romances; Tom Nash tried rimed prose, both with alliteration and with actual rime, by way of helping the antithetical clause. See the “Anatomy of Absurdity,” in Nash’s _Works_, ed. Grosart, I. 6 ff., 24: inferre: averre; praise: daies; nose: rose: and the lilt of “to play with her dogge, than to pray to her God.” The _Arcadia_ is not so much a rimed or rhythmical prose, as swelling and sonorous. For mediæval rimed prose, see Wackernagel, _Gesch. d. deutsch. Lit._, 2d ed., I. 107 ff., and Sievers, _Altger. Metrik_, p. 49,—the latter for Germanic relations.

Footnote 145:

“Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in the _Preussische Jahrbücher_, LXXIII. (1893), 460 ff. See p. 465.

Footnote 146:

Driver, _Introd. Lit. Old Test._, p. 361, says that rhythm, _the restrained flow of expression_, separates poetry from prose.

Footnote 147:

Professor Sievers has announced “a discovery of the principles of Hebrew metre,” and his exposition will be welcome. See _Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, 5 February, 1899.

Footnote 148:

Professional “readers” nearly always kill a poem by reading it as prose. Tennyson read his own verses almost in a chant. De Vigny, _Journal d’un Poete_, p. 70, says, “tout homme qui dit bien ses vers les chante, en quelque sorte.” Ronsard, _Œuvres_, ed. Blanchemain, III. 12 f., asks the reader of his _Franciade_ one thing: “Be good enough to pronounce my verses well, and suit your voice to their emotion, not reading it, after the way of certain folk, as a letter, ... but as a poem, with good emphasis.” So Quintilian; but the elocutionist has no bowels of mercy.

Footnote 149:

_Geography_, Introd., I. ii. 7, translation of Hamilton.

Footnote 150:

_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, I. 434.

Footnote 151:

_Critische Dichtkunst_, pp. 70 f.

Footnote 152:

Bruchmann, _Poetik_, pp. 161, 124, 22.

Footnote 153:

Aston, _Japanese Literature_, p. 13.

Footnote 154:

The younger Racine is startling with his assertion that “poetry is the daughter of nature, while verse is the work of art.” _Mém. Acad. Inscr._, XV. 307 ff., “De la poesie Artificielle....”

Footnote 155:

Curiously enough, J. Grimm, though not too clear in his statement, is with the rationalists, in spite of his “divine origin” for poetry and the “mystery” of self-made song, which he advocates elsewhere; for in his _Ursprung der Sprache_ (reprint, 7th ed., 1879, p. 54) he says poetry and music had their origin in the reason, emotion, and imagination of a poet, and gives a genetic process not unlike that set forth by Mr. Spencer: “denn aus betonter, gemessener recitation der Worte entsprangen gesang und lied, aus dem lied die andere dichtkunst, aus dem gesang durch gesteigerte abstraction alle übrige musik.”

Footnote 156:

_Die antike Kunstprosa_, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1898. Mr. Spencer’s theory, analogous in some respects to Norden’s, is considered below.

Footnote 157:

This notion itself—see the extract above from Strabo—Norden, I. 35, refers to a desire to glorify the golden age, and to set its poetry over against the prose of degenerate modern days.

Footnote 158:

II. 762.

Footnote 159:

_Ibid._, I. 78.

Footnote 160:

_Tam apud Graecos quam apud Latinos longe antiquiorem curam fuisse carminum quam prosae_, etc. Varro in Isiodor. _Orig._, I. 38, 2, quoted and discussed by Norden, I. 32 f.

Footnote 161:

“I suppose, of course,” said a writer of considerable reputation, to whom the project of the present work was mentioned, “you will begin with Homer.”

Footnote 162:

Indeed, the very arguments from Greek oratory hardly seem convincing. Let any one read the section of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ (III. viii.), where he speaks of prose rhythm. What is this rhythm without metre but the quality, far more musically developed in Greek, which one also recognizes in the harmony of any modern artistic prose?

Footnote 163:

Work quoted, I. 30 f. See also I. 37, note; I. 156 ff.; II. 813 f.

Footnote 164:

See, however, E. Schröder, “Ueber das Spell,” _Zst. f. deutsches Alterthum_, XXXVII. 241 ff. _Spell_ and _lied_, he says, are related in terms of epic and lyric charms or incantations, and form the basis of the common antithesis of “say” and “sing” (p. 258). The epic part of a charm, he thinks, was recited, while the lyric part was sung. Unfortunately, Schröder comes to no very definite results; and, like most writers on early verse, he neglects the communal and choral conditions of primitive poetry.

Footnote 165:

Düntzer, _Zeitschr. deutsch. Gymnasialwesen_, 1857, pp. I ff., the unwearied commentator, who has had so much experience in the practical reduction of poetry to prose, decided for this view, and doubtless with some show of right. A _carmen_, he said, was anything,—oath, formula, law, incantation,—spoken in loud and solemn tones. So Livy, I. 26, on that _lex horrendi carminis_. This may be true for the medicine man, but it is not true for the throng.

Footnote 166:

The λέξις ειρομένη and the λέξις κατασταμμένη; down to Herodotus the Greeks, it is said, spoke and wrote in the former style: Norden, I. 37, note. He appeals to specimens gathered from folklore.

Footnote 167:

_Altgriechischer Versbau_, p. 55.

Footnote 168:

“Musikalische Bildung der Meistersänger,” in Haupt’s _Zeitsch. f. deutsches Alterthum_, XX. 80 f.

Footnote 169:

The reason why a folksong often fails to have a musical effect, says Böckel in the introduction to his collection of Hessian ballads, p. civ., is because it is taken down from a single singer, whereas all these songs are essentially choral, and need the voices of a throng. This hint is valuable in many directions; for example, see below on social singing at labour.

Footnote 170:

_Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsychol. u. Sprachwissensch._ IV. 85 ff. Comparetti is also unfortunate in his use of this essay to prove that poetic prose came before verse. See his _Kalewala_, p. 37.

Footnote 171:

_English Fairy Tales_, 1898, p. 247. Ferdinand Wolf, a man not given to hazy and romantic views, dismisses the _cante-fable_ as “jedesfalls ... eine Entartung,” a degenerate state of the communal ballad. _Proben port. u. catal. Volksromanzen_, Wien, 1856, p. 20, note 2.

Footnote 172:

Alfred Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, I. 135, citing Kuno Meyer, and saying that certain prose is “younger in appearance,” need not assume it to have “suffered from change,” but may take a simpler view. The verse may well be of older date.

Footnote 173:

This account is taken from Bruchmann’s _Poetik_, p. 217, and Letourneau, _L’Évolution Littéraire_, pp. 198 f., who gives other details. J. F. Campbell, _Popular Tales_, etc., 2d ed., IV. 84, mentions cases of dual performance in the Highlands, where a bard sang to his harp heroic passages, and a narrator “filled up the pauses by telling prose history.”

Footnote 174:

_Altgermanische Metrik_, pp. 165, 168.

Footnote 175:

Rudow, _Verslehre und Stil der rumänischen Volkslieder_, Halle, 1886, pp. 5, 28 f., 31.

Footnote 176:

Böckel, _Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen ... mit kulturhistorisch-ethnographischer Einleitung_ (the latter a valuable collection of material), Marburg, 1885, pp. clxxxiii. f.

Footnote 177:

Mingled verse and prose has always a late, artificial manner; for example, the _Satura Menippea_, imitated in Latin by Varro and Petronius (Teuffel and Schwabe, _Hist. Roman Literature_, trans. Warr, I. 255), and claimed for the half-rhythmical portion of Swift’s _Battle of the Books_, by Feyerabend, _Englische Studien_, XI. 487 ff. Some of Feyerabend’s scanning, by the way, is highly adventurous.

Footnote 178:

_Journal_, 12 Mai, 1857.

Footnote 179:

_De Arte Poet._, I. 75.

Footnote 180:

In Grimm’s charming article on “Poetry in Law,” and in Kögel’s _Geschichte der deutschen Litt._ I.

Footnote 181:

_Zeitschrift f. deutsche Philologie_, XXIX. 405 ff.

Footnote 182:

See Norden’s _Anhang_ on Rime, II. 810 ff. It may be noted here that the fact of which Norden makes so much, riming of inflectional endings, was pointed out by Masing, _Ursprung des Reims_, Dorpat, 1866, pp. 15 f.

Footnote 183:

In a review of Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_; see _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Litteraturgesch._, N. F. II. (1897) 369 ff. This is another darling heresy,—to break up the old tradition of evolution, and to deny that dance, song, poetry, began as a single art. Yet ethnology, as it will be seen, supports this tradition; so does a study of popular poetry. Compare, too, _Iliad_, XVIII. 569 ff., and other commonplaces, for the classic traditions, and Aristotle’s famous passage on Origins, for older science in the case.

Footnote 184:

“Dass ... Musik aus dem Gefallen an selbst hervorgerufenen Lärm sich entwickelt hat....”

Footnote 185:

“Essai de Rythmique Comparée,” in _Le Museon_, X. 299 ff., 419 ff., 589 ff.

Footnote 186:

Used to explain the actual origin of rhythm by Müller and Schumann, _Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane_, VI. 282 f., quoted by Meumann, _Untersuchungen_, etc., pp. 10 f.

Footnote 187:

See Hoffmann’s similar theory, quoted below.

Footnote 188:

The old mistake of confounding literal chronology with evolution. As if the _Avesta_ were primitive!

Footnote 189:

So M. de la Grasserie asserts in an ingenious account of the retrograde process by which in modern times poetry has retraced its old evolution, passing from verse back through rhythmic prose to prose outright. The only use which he now concedes to verse is in ... the opera. In all other fields,—epic, drama, lyric,—he thinks it is dead as King Pandion.

Footnote 190:

_Die Entstehung der arabischen Versmasse_, Giessen, 1896.

Footnote 191:

A remarkable passage. See the translation of Roberts, p. 149.

Footnote 192:

Evelyn’s _Diary_, 24 February, 1664-1665: “Dr. Fell, Canon of Christ Church, preached before the king ... a very formal discourse, and in blank verse, according to his manner.”

Footnote 193:

The whole passage is interesting with its fling at poetry, not, however, to be taken as a serious indictment: _Table Talk_, ed. Arber, p. 85: “’Tis a fine thing for children to learn to make verse; but when they come to be men, they must speak like other men, or else they will be laugh’t at. ’Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in verse.” Again, “’Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses, ’tis well enough to make them to please himself, but to make them publick is foolish. If a man in his private chamber twirls his bandstrings, or plays with a rush to please himself, ’tis well enough; but if he should go into Fleet Street,”—and so on. He thinks there is no reason why plays should be in verse; but he rescues the old poets who were forced to write verse “because their verse was sung to music.”

Footnote 194:

_Untersuchungen zur Psychologic und Aesthetik des Rhythmus_, Leipzig, 1894; reprinted from Vol. X. of Wundt’s _Philosophische Studien_.

Footnote 195:

See p. 77, where he chooses “die Freiheit des declamirten Rhythmus gegenüber dem allgemeinen rhythmischen Princip der Regelmässigkeit.” See also pp. 82, 87, 101, and especially 91.

Footnote 196:

For example, classical rendering of verse, and even modern recitation, as among the Italians. “La plupart des Italiens ont, en lisant les vers, une sorte de chant monotone, appelé _cantilene_, qui détruit toute émotion,” says Mme. de Staël, _Corinne_, Chap. III.; but the “elocutionary” emotion is usually an impertinence in simple and cadenced lyric.

Footnote 197:

Compare Lessing’s different but analogous antithesis in the _Laokoon_, XI.: “Bei dem Artisten dünkt uns die Ausführung schwerer als die Erfindung; bei dem Dichter, hingegen, ist es umgekehrt.”

Footnote 198:

See his article in Kuhn’s _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Sprach._, IX. 437 ff.; and the second volume of his _Metrik der Griechen_. For the four-accent verse as popular measure, see H. Usener, _Altgriechischer Versbau_, Bonn, 1887, a suggestive book. For the same verse in Russian, see Bistrom in the _Zeitsch. f. Völkerpsychol._, V. 185.

Footnote 199:

Wilmanns thinks the case for this “original” verse has not been made out in any convincing way.

Footnote 200:

F. D. Allen, in Kuhn’s _Zeitsch. f. vergl. Sprach._, XXIV. 558 ff., showed that this Iranian syllable-counting verse, one of the oldest of metres, is not merely counting, but a rhythmic affair, and that the rhythm lay in successive equal intervals marked by verse accent.

Footnote 201:

_Zur althochdeutchen Alliterationspoesie_, 1888, pp. 109 ff., particularly 146 ff., “über den Takt.”

Footnote 202:

_Beiträge zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Litteratur_, III., “Der altdeutsche Reimvers,” Bonn, 1887, pp. 141 f.

Footnote 203:

Sievers, _Altgermanische Metrik_, 1893, pp. 172 ff.

Footnote 204:

That strophic hymns were known in earliest Germanic poetry is shown, Sievers points out, by the fact that Middle High German _liet_ is the same as Old Norse _ljóð_, “strophe.” For the old choral poetry, he says, “wird ein im gleichen Takte fortschreitender Sangesvortrag ohne weiteres zuzugeben sein,” _Ibid._, p. 20.

Footnote 205:

Above, p. 8, and Grosse, _Anfänge_, p. 233.

Footnote 206:

See above, p. 8, note.

Footnote 207:

Other motions than that of the communal dance may induce rhythm. The movement of labour will be considered in detail; but it may be noted here that swinging, a solitary performance, tempts the savage of Borneo to sing a monotonous song and ask the spirits for a good crop (Bruchmann, _Poetik_, p. 18).

Footnote 208:

See “The Origin and Function of Music,” _Essays_, 1857; “The Origin of Music,” in _Mind_, XV. (1890) 449 ff.; and a note on certain criticisms of this article, _Mind_, XVI. 535 ff.

Footnote 209:

_The Power of Sound_, London, 1880, pp. 476 ff.

Footnote 210:

This is the basis of Wallaschek’s convincing argument against Mr. Spencer’s theory: _Primitive Music_, London, 1893, pp. 251 ff.

Footnote 211:

_Anfänge der Kunst_, p. 206, note.

Footnote 212:

Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, p. 11.

Footnote 213:

See the positive statement of Dr. Jacobsthal, quoted above, p. 69.

Footnote 214:

Work quoted, pp. 31, 42, 68, 180 f. 184, 186, 252. The evidence collected in this interesting book is so varied, so extensive, and so impartially set forth, that the conclusions drawn by Wallaschek ought to be convincing.

Footnote 215:

Gustaf von Düben, _Om Lappland och Lapparne_, ... Stockholm, 1873 (colophon), p. 319.

Footnote 216:

As impossible, says one authority, quoted by Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, p. 187, “as to separate the colour from the skin.”

Footnote 217:

_Ibid._, p. 186.

Footnote 218:

It is the neglect of choral conditions and communal consent which takes away the value for general purposes from Dr. Otto Hoffman’s otherwise praiseworthy study of the _Reimformeln im Westgermanischen_ (Leipzig, 1886, pp. 9 ff.). Man, he says, naturally speaks in breath-lengths, in periods which tend to be of equal duration. “Whoever could give to these periods, with their tendency to equal quantities, the most symmetrical and equal portions of actual speech, passed for an artist.” To this symmetry in duration was added similarity of sound; so came the short riming phrases, as well as the verse-lengths themselves. But poetry did not wait until clever artists furbished up into verse-lengths and attractive harmonies these breath-lengths of a spoken sentence. Language itself, as one will presently see, had more a festal than an individual origin; and long before the artist was practising his breath-lengths for a connected story, the rhythm of verse was fixed by the muscular rhythm of steps in a communal dance accompanied by words, often by one sound, repeated indefinitely, but in exact cadence with the steps.

Footnote 219:

Dr. Paul Ehrenrcich, “über die Botocuden,” in the _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, XIX. 30 ff.

Footnote 220:

The gnomic verses preserved in Anglo-Saxon, especially the shorter sentences in the Exeter Ms. (see Grein-Wülker, _Biblioth._, I. 345 f.) are a curious instance of the survival of _quasi_-Botocudan maxims on a higher plane of culture. As to the æsthetic value of the South American utterance, how far is it inferior to the sonorous commonplaces of our own verse,—say _The Psalm of Life_?

Footnote 221:

“The Central Eskimo,” by Dr. F. Boas, _Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology_, 1884-1885, Washington, 1888, pp. 409 ff.

Footnote 222:

_Atlantic Monthly_, XIX. (1867), 685 ff.

Footnote 223:

See below, on Cumulative Songs.

Footnote 224:

See the marching song, p. 690, _Go in the Wilderness_. Thanks to the repetitions, it “scans” correctly enough, even when it is read.

Footnote 225:

Meumann’s remarks on this subject are good, though they apply no further than the narrow circle of his experiments. See _Untersuchungen_, pp. 26, 35, 77. Grant Allen, _Physiological Æsthetics_, London, 1887, pp. 114 f., 118, is quite wide of the mark; facts of physiology, in this case, need very careful testing by the facts of poetry.

Footnote 226:

_Mind_, N. S., IV. (1895), 28 ff., “On the Difference of Time and Rhythm in Music,” supplementing researches in his _Primitive Music_.

Footnote 227:

_Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 104.

Footnote 228:

See his _Primitive Music_, pp. 239, 236, note; and Grosse, _Anfänge_, p. 213.

Footnote 229:

The theory of breath-lengths, often noted, comes here into play. Under high excitement breathing grows abnormally loud, and the recurring pauses are regular. Play-excitement, festal shouting and leaping, would of course bring this about; but the individual must be studied. Strongly accented verses result from such a process, as any one can see who undertakes to recite poetry during violent but regular exercise,—say, in swinging Indian clubs. Here, too, one learns how rhythm preceded pitch and quantity; the jerked-out accents leave little room for measuring either height or length of tones. But the throng and its consent brought out this rhythm, not oratory; and one must keep in mind the remark of Hamann, after his famous phrase about poetry as the mother-tongue of man, “wie Gesang älter als Declamation.”

Footnote 230:

The ethnological evidence for this statement is given in Wallaschek’s _Primitive Music_ on nearly every page. Many good things on the origin of rhythm could be quoted from older writers. A. W. Schlegel undertook a physiological and genetic study of rhythm, but, at Schiller’s prompting, offered more attractive metal to the Kantlings with “das Beharrliche im Wechsel.” One notes, however, the modern tone of passages in the Berlin Lectures; _e.g._ I. 242 ff. Now and then he almost anticipates Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_. Sulzer’s article in the _Allgemeine Theorie_ is very interesting. For early material, see Blankenburg’s invaluable _Litterarische Zusätze_, 3 vols., 1796-1798. A good recent discussion is found in the third book of Guyau’s _Problèmes_.

Footnote 231:

Unless it is a succession of inarticulate sounds. See Groos, _Spiele der Menschen_, Jena, 1899, p. 42.

Footnote 232:

Compare the “meaningless” words so common in savage poetry. The art of combining with exact rhythm a series of syntactic sentences which give a connected story, or express a logical series of thoughts, is no primitive process. Earliest poetry is repetition of sounds,—not meaningless, for they were connected with the occasion,—of words, of sentences, with a diminishing use of the refrain, a diminishing frequency of repetition.

Footnote 233:

In his “Art of the Future,” _Gesammelte Schriften_, III. 82 ff., he tells how dance, song, and poem were at first inseparable. Dance has as artistic material “the whole man from top to toe”; but it becomes an art only through rhythm, which is also the very skeleton of music: “without rhythm no dance, no song.” Rhythm is “the soul of dancing and the brain of music.” With the human voice comes poetry, all three being woven in one: out of this union of the three “is born the single art of lyric,” but they get their highest expression in the drama.

Footnote 234:

_Primitive Music_, pp. 174, 187.

Footnote 235:

_Psychology of the Emotions_, pp. 335 f.

Footnote 236:

In an article so entitled, in _Mind_, XVI. (1891), 498 ff., and N. S., I. (1892), 325 ff.

Footnote 237:

The tendency to use hands as well as feet in keeping rhythm is illustrated by the Ba-Ronga of Delagoa Bay (Junod, _Les Chantes et les Contes des Ba-Ronga_, Lausanne, 1897), where the use of sticks may help to explain Donovan’s “rhythmic beating.” With these people “tout s’y chante et ... tous ou presque tous les chants s’y dansent” (p. 21). Refrains are sung “ten, twenty, fifty times in succession”; the songs have two elements, the solo and the refrain _en tutti_. A circle is formed, the men holding sticks in their hands; the solo singer leaps into the middle and sings a few words; then all the dancers sing a refrain, raising and dropping their sticks in cadence, though the rhythm is primarily given by their stamping feet. Then the soloist again, only slightly varying his theme; and again the long refrain (pp. 32 f.). The war-songs are almost entirely refrain, sung by all the warriors as they dance, “antique et grandiose choral,” says Junod.

Footnote 238:

_From Lyre to Muse, a History of the Aboriginal Union of Music and Poetry_, London, 1890; Chap. V., “Fusion of Tones and Words.”

Footnote 239:

“It is said that if it is known that anybody in particular composed a song, the people in some of these places will not sing it,” _Ibid._, pp. 138 f. For this vexed question, see below, chapter on Communal Poetry.

Footnote 240:

Of course Horace (IV. ii. 10 ff.) is thinking of Pindar’s “new” compounds and fresh expressions; but the quotation agrees as well with the history of the dithyrambic poem.

Footnote 241:

“Arbeit und Rhythmus,” reprinted from the _Abhandlungen d. kgl. sächsischen Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, philol. histor. Classe_, XVII. 5, Leipzig, 1896. According to Groos, _Spiele der Menschen_, pp. 57 ff., some of these statements have been modified. In the second edition of the _Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft_, pp. 32 f., a book which the present writer could not consult, Bücher concedes the priority of play, and sees in it the starting-point of labour. This, however, does not change the validity of Bücher’s main argument for the connection of labour and rhythm, so far as they concern the beginnings of poetry.

Footnote 242:

A. W. Schlegel here and there hints at this origin of rhythm in labour; so does Sulzer. See note above, p. 101. See also the Abbé Batteux, “Sur les Nombres Poëtiques et Oratoires,” _Mém. Acad. Inscript._, XXXV. 415: “le marteau du forgeron tombe en cadence, la faulx du moissonneur va et revient avec nombre ... le rhythme soutient nos forces dans les travaux pénibles.”

Footnote 243:

Bücher, p. 101.

Footnote 244:

_Ibid._, p. 52.

Footnote 245:

“Grundelement dieser Dreieinheit,” _Ibid._, p. 78. Of course, he admits elsewhere similar functions of the dance, which was, after all, a kind of labour, even when not an imitation of labour. Hence Bücher gives priority to labour in its large sense. For primitive man the line between work and play was not too sharply drawn.

Footnote 246:

A strong support for this social foundation of song is found in observations such as Böckel has made among the peasants of Hesse. “Their song,” he says (work quoted, p. cv.), “is nearly all choral; the countryman, when sober, seldom sings alone. It is remarkable,” Böckel goes on to say, “how these people, who singly show little capacity for music, can make such an artistic effect in chorus.”

Footnote 247:

Several men, as a rule, trod the grapes with naked feet. Songs directly sprung from this labour survived for long ages. The material is indicated by Bücher, pp. 88 f. The later festal songs, of course, were symbolical and reminiscent.

Footnote 248:

The famous Greek song, preserved by Plutarch, is matched by recent songs of the Africans, as well as by those of European traditions.

Footnote 249:

“La sympathie pour les choses,” says M. de Vogüé, _Histoire et Poésie_, p. 190, is the “principe et raison de l’art d’écrire.”

Footnote 250:

Bastian, in his book _Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen_, Berlin, 1881, pp. 8 f., notes that in a modern work of art one looks for traits of the genius that brought it forth, while in the beginnings of society, of institutions, one looks “for the unconscious stirrings, in the organism, of the average man who has realized himself in them.” And in an address (same book, p. 172) on the aims of ethnology, he declares that for this science man is not the individual _anthropos_, but the social being, the _zoon politikon_ of Aristotle, which demands the social state as condition of his existence. “_Das Primäre ist also der Völkergedanke._”

Footnote 251:

_Œuvres_, Paris, 1790, III. 165 ff., from the _Mercure_ of January, 1678.

Footnote 252:

Nowhere better discussed and settled than in Goethe’s sonnet, “_Natur und Kunst, sie scheinen sich zu fliehen_,” with its concluding lines:—

In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister, Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.

Footnote 253:

_Theatrum Poetarum_, first published 1675, ed. Brydges, Canterbury, 1800 (who limits it to English poets, so changing the title), p. xxxvi.

Footnote 254:

_Ueber Ursprung und Verbreitung des Reimes_, Dorpat, 1866, p. 18. “Anschauung” and “Empfindung” are the terms.

Footnote 255:

_Nature and Elements of Poetry_, pp. 76 f.

Footnote 256:

_Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen_, Bd. III., three essays, “Die Kunst und die Revolution” (1849); “Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,” a more important work, dithyrambic, but highly interesting and full of the “folk,” as against “Ihr Intelligenten”; and thirdly, “Kunst und Klima” (1850).

Footnote 257:

_Ibid._, pp. 255 f., 261, 268.

Footnote 258:

See especially _ibid._, pp. 133-207.

Footnote 259:

Preface to _Cromwell_, p. 16: “La société, en effet, commence par chanter ce qu’elle rêve, puis raconte ce qu’elle fait, et enfin se met à peindre ce qu’elle pense,” Hugo’s well-known sequence of lyric, epic, drama.

Footnote 260:

_L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique_, p. 26.

Footnote 261:

This doctrine is in line with modern psychological notions of the part played by intelligent mental selection upon the instinctive material of consciousness. See Lloyd Morgan, _Habit and Instinct_, pp. 323 f.

Footnote 262:

See _Shepheard’s Calender_, October, Argument,—a specimen of the doctrine in that never-published _English Poete_.

Footnote 263:

“Abbregé de l’Art Poetique,” in _Works_, ed. Blanchemain, VII. 318.

Footnote 264:

_Ibid._, VII. 340. “Aussi les divines fureurs de Musique, de Poësie, et de paincture, ne viennent pas par degrés en perfection _comme les autres sciences_, mais par boutées et comme esclairs de feu, qui deçu qui dela apparoissent en divers pays, puis tout en un coup s’esvanouissent.”

Footnote 265:

For writers in the vulgar tongue, Dante reverses the rule of more matter and less art. They are too facile. “Pudeat ergo, pudeat idiotas tantum audere deinceps, ut ad cantiones prorumpant,” _de vulgar. Eloq._, Cap. vi. The _canzone_ must not be content with the speech of common life; let it essay an exalted style.

Footnote 266:

Cap. iv., _Pastoralia_, p. 6.

Footnote 267:

G. J. Vossius, _de artis poeticæ natura_, 1647, Cap. iii. Many subsequent writers followed Scaliger’s account of origins.

Footnote 268:

_Critische Dichtkunst_, 1737, pp. 86, 72.

Footnote 269:

_Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie, deren Ursprung, Fortgang und Lehrsätzen_, Kiel, 1682. This book has been called the first attempt at a history of German, and, indeed, of collective European, poetry. Morhof gives a historic account of rime, compares German verse with verse of other nations, and is the first writer in Germany to name Shakspere.

Footnote 270:

“De la Poésie Naturelle ou de la Langue Poétique” and “De la Poésie Artificielle,” in _Mém. Acad. Inscript._, XV. 192 ff., 207 ff. (1739). The only interest lies in the titles, the text is all verbal quibbling. In _Mém._, XXIII. 85 ff., is a plan for a general history of poetry. But Racine Junior is negligible.

Footnote 271:

_Ibid._, IX. 320 f. (1731-1733), in a paper on the songs of ancient Greece. He repeats the idea that art comes out of nature, but lays stress on a development of special singers, a sort of guild, as contrasted with earlier universality of song. This is the contrast made afterward by Wilhelm Grimm (_Heldensage_, 2d ed., pp. 382 f.) between “free” and professional song.

Footnote 272:

_Augustini Calmet dissertatio de poesi veterum Hebraeorum_, ... Helmstadii, 1723. A French version is in the _Dissertationes qui peuvent servir de Prologomenes de l’Ecriture Sainte_, ... Paris, 1720, 3 vols., I. 128 ff. See particularly 15 ff. of the Latin: “Duo habentur Poeseos genera: naturale et artificiale,” etc.

Footnote 273:

“Non incommode ergo dicimus, Poesin methodicam artem esse, accurate et studiose exprimendi passiones, naturalem vero, quae sine arte, sine meditatione praevia, eas sistit. Omnis populus, omnis terra, omne temperamentum, omnis affectus sua non destituitur rhetorica aut poesi naturali.... _Natura semper producit rudius aliquid, quod ars perficere conatur._”

Footnote 274:

See Barth, _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_, Leipzig, 1897, I. 202.

Footnote 275:

“Sur les progrès successifs de l’esprit humain,” _Œuvres_, II. 597 ff.

Footnote 276:

On this change in poetic criticism, see Von Stein, _Entstehung der neueren Aesthetik_, p. 97. It must be remembered, however, that while Turgot clung to the individual in this sense, his search for laws of progress, movements, tendencies, was really preparing ruin for individualism, and making Condorcet’s and Herder’s task more easy.

Footnote 277:

_Characteristics_, 5th ed., Birmingham, 1765, I. 22.

Footnote 278:

_Stimmen der Völker_, Dedication: _Euch weih’ ich die Stimme des Volks der zerstreueten Menschheit._

Footnote 279:

Leslie Stephen, _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_, II. Chap. XII. § vii., divides the general course of thought into sentimental, romantic, and rationalistic tendencies.

Footnote 280:

_Essais_, I. liv., near the end: “La poësie populere et purement naturelle a des naifvetez et graces par où elle se compare à la principale beauté de la poësie parfaicte selon l’art: comme il se voit ès villanelles de Gascoigne, et aus Chançons qu’on nous raporte des nations qui n’ont conoissance d’aucun sciance ny mesmes d’escriture. La poësie mediocre qui s’arrete entre deus est desdeignée, sans honur et sans pris.”

Footnote 281:

On Cannibals, I. xxx. “Ce premier couplet, c’est le refrain de la chanson.... Toute la journée se passe à dancer.”

Footnote 282:

Fresenius, _Deutsche Litteraturzeitung_, 1892, col. 769 ff.

Footnote 283:

Or whoever wrote the book. See Arber’s ed., pp. 26, 53.

Footnote 284:

So says Ferdinand Wolf in his famous essay on Spanish ballads.

Footnote 285:

_Stimmen der Völker_ and _Volkslieder_. _Volkslied_ is original with Herder. See note, p. xxvi., of the author’s _Old English Ballads_.

Footnote 286:

“Nicht jeder versteht Poesie zu wittern,” is a remark of his still in some need of emphasis, _Lectures_ (_Neudruck_), III. 141.

Footnote 287:

“We shall treat first the poetry of nature, and then the poetry of art. We shall follow this development historically.”... _Lectures_ (_Neudruck_, etc.), I. 25 f.

Footnote 288:

_Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues_, a part of the introduction to his researches on the Kawi language, § 20, _Werke_, VI. 249.

Footnote 289:

See the introduction to the author’s _Old English Ballads_.

Footnote 290:

A. W. Schlegel, _Werke_, ed. Böcking, VIII. 64 ff., written in 1800. See particularly pp. 79 f.

Footnote 291:

“Deren Dichter gewissermassen das Volk im ganzen war.”

Footnote 292:

Reprinted, _Werke_, XII. 383 ff., from the _Heidelberger Jahrbücher_ of 1815.

Footnote 293:

Oral and communal literature, it is almost superfluous to point out, are not one and the same thing. See Max Müller on “Literature before Letters,” _Nineteenth Century_, November, 1899, pp. 798 f.

Footnote 294:

Such an assumption takes most of the value from Berger’s detailed account of the controversy over popular song, “Volksdichtung und Kunstdichtung,” _Nord and Süd_, LXVIII. (1894), 76 ff., an account which is often inaccurate and quite incomplete. Berger’s conclusion that there is no essential difference between poetry of the people and poetry of art confuses, as is usual in this school of Germans, the poetic impulse with the poetic product.

Footnote 295:

As direct, unqualified fact. One is dealing here with no phrases, no illustrations, such as the editor of Brantôme employs when he says (preface to the _Vie des Dames Galantes_, p. x), “dans un siècle, il y a deux choses, l’histoire et la comédie: l’histoire, c’est le peuple, la comédie, c’est l’homme.”

Footnote 296:

_La Vie Littéraire_, II. 173.

Footnote 297:

Work quoted, p. 340.

Footnote 298:

For the psychological study of individuality in art and letters, see Dilthey, “Beiträge zum Studium der Individualität,” _Sitzungsberichte_, Berlin Academy, 1896, I. 295 ff. For a historical study, with sociological leanings, see the admirable work of Burckhardt, _Cultur der Renaissance in Italien_, ed. 1898, I. 143 ff. (“der Mensch wird geistiges Individuum”), 154 f., 178; II. 29 f., 48; and Brunetière, _Évolution des Genres_, pp. 39, 167 (Rousseau and individualism), and _Nouveaux Essais_, pp. 66, 150, 194.

Footnote 299:

If one had the materials, a similar emancipation of the poet could be noted in Latin, beginning, perhaps, with Ennius—_volito vivus per ora virum_—and Naevius, down to Horace, his fountain made famous _me dicente_, and the _non omnis moriar_.

Footnote 300:

Vossler, _Poetische Theorien in der italienischen Frührenaissance_, Berlin, 1900, p. 3: “Im Mittelalter hatte jede Gesellschaftsklasse ihren eigenen zünftigen Sänger (_rimatore_ oder _dicitore per rima_), der nur von ihr verstanden und anerkannt wurde.”

Footnote 301:

Lounsbury, _Chaucer_, III. 14.

Footnote 302:

Nyrop, _Den oldfranske Heltedigtning_, p. 288.

Footnote 303:

On the individual poet as mouthpiece of the clan, see Posnett, _Comp. Lit._, pp. 130 ff., and Letourneau, _Évolution Littéraire_, p. 78.

Footnote 304:

_Purgat._, xxiv. 52 ff.:—

Io mi son un che quando Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo Che ditta dentro, vo significando.

But it must be read with what precedes and what follows.

Footnote 305:

It is almost impertinent to remind the reader of Dante’s famous verses, _Purgat._, viii. 1 ff. Perhaps Hugo remembers his Dante here. Compare Section iv. of this same _Chant_.

Footnote 306:

The emancipation of woman as an individual begins here in Italy. See M. de Vogüé’s study of the Sforza (in _Histoire et Poésie_), and the general statement of Burckhardt, _Cult. Ital. Ren._, I. 144, note 3.

Footnote 307:

“Ego velut in confinio duorum populorum constitutus simul ante retroque prospicio,” a saying of Petrarch, would apply better to Dante. The _Vita Nuova_ has psychological analysis enough for ten moderns; but the mediæval in it all conquers the modern, as one feels the moment one turns to Petrarch’s correspondence. Perhaps Norden, _Antike Kunstprosa_, II. 732, lays too much stress on Petrarch’s backward gaze; he did look backward to the classics, but he was not mediæval. See the charming extracts given in Robinson and Rolfe’s _Petrarca_.

Footnote 308:

Hardly borrowed from the classics, as Gautier hints in general, and asserts for Old French epic. See Benezé, _Das Traummotiv in der mhd. Dichtung bis 1250, und in alten deutschen Volksliedern_, Halle, 1897, pp. 53 ff.

Footnote 309:

_Development of English Thought_, pp. 81 f.

Footnote 310:

Déor’s song, first in point of time of English lyrics, is a _vox clamantis in deserto_. The breezy personality of it, the individual confidence, the appeal to great names and great things to prop Master Déor’s own hope that something good will turn up,—all this is discouragement to the critic who likes to go about pasting labels on various epochs of literature. But there is Déor’s rival, Wîdsîð, the typical singer lost in the guild, or rather a dozen singers rolled into one,—communal triumph.

Footnote 311:

_Causeries du Lundi_, XIV. 296 f. Learned research on the _ubi sunt_ formula is noted by Professor Bright, _Modern Language Notes_, 1893, Col. 187.

Footnote 312:

Classical parallels go for little here; changes rung upon the _memento mori_, like Horace’s _quo pater Æneas_, a statement, are not in line with these mediæval queries.

Footnote 313:

Chaucer, _Troilus_, V. 1174 ff.:—

From hazel-wode, ther Ioly Robin pleyde, Shal come al that that thou abydest here; Ye, farewel al the snow of ferne yere!

Boccaccio has instead an allusion to the “wind of Etna.” Chaucer’s phrase is “a reference to some popular song or saying,” in Skeat’s opinion.

Footnote 314:

Printed by Morris, _Old English Miscellany_, pp. 90 ff.

Footnote 315:

Not, of course, merely in this ballade. Among other examples of the quality, see stanzas 28, 29, 38 ff. of the _Grand Testament_. See other ballades; passages in the _Petit Testament_:—

“Au fort, je meurs amant martir,”

and of course the _Regrets de la Belle Heaulmiere_.

Footnote 316:

About 1300; modernized, of course. Compare the sweep and firm individual control of Wordsworth’s _Loud is the Vale_,—lines on the expected death of Fox.

Footnote 317:

M. Gaston Paris, _Poésie du Moyen Age_, II. 232, contrasts Villon with Charles of Orleans, the “dernier chanteur du moyen age,” while the other is “premier poète moderne,” and that “par le libre essor de l’individualisme.” See the rest of this admirable summary.

Footnote 318:

The Lorelei legend would once have been given for its own sake; now it is merely a reason, which the poet imparts to his reader, “dass ich so traurig bin.”

Footnote 319:

_Lament for the Makaris_ (dead poets for dead ladies), _quhen he wes Seik_,—a significant situation, like Tom Nash—again with dead lords and ladies—and his “I am sick, I must die: Lord have mercy on us!” For the imitation of Villon by Dunbar, see the notes by Dr. Gregor in Small’s edition of Dunbar’s _Works_.

Footnote 320:

Mr. Sidney Lee has surely gone too far in divorcing sentiment from Elizabethan sonnets; as in the case of dance and ballad, literary bookkeeping can be overdone, and borrowing may too easily obscure production.

Footnote 321:

See Ribot, _Psychol. Emot._, p. 267, on arrested development of emotion. He allows, by the way, p. vi., not only a physiological basis of emotion, but, pp. 7, 12, gives autonomy to the emotional states, and allows them to exist independently of intellectual conditions.

Footnote 322:

The tyranny of terms mars some of the conclusions in Professor Francke’s valuable book on _Social Forces in German Literature_, and the “individualism” to which he often refers has divers meanings.

Footnote 323:

See next chapter.

Footnote 324:

Becker, _Ursprung der romanischen Versmasse_, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 6 f., notes that a mediæval hymn by no means expressed mediæval life; it was an individual affair, as was proved at length by Wolf, _Lais_, pp. 86 ff., who calls the hymns “kunstmässige Gedichte (_carmina_)” by known and named churchmen. These often had classical models in mind. Later the hymns were suited to congregational purposes.

Footnote 325:

See p. 172; and cf. the passage about the solitary way of the poet, p. 175: “Les animaux lâches vont en troupes. Le lion marche seul dans le désert. Qu’ainsi marche toujours le poëte.”

Footnote 326:

Gervinus thinks that the individual came to his rights in the crusades, when Christian ideals were substituted for ancient ideals. But the classical traditions of authorship, if not of wider issues, were one with the individual spirit of Christianity. The struggle was against communal conditions of life in general.

Footnote 327:

“To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow....”

Footnote 328:

A pretty study in communal feeling, as compared with artistic and individual sentiment, could treat the use of a supernatural element in the ballad _Clerk Saunders_ and in Keats’s _La Belle Dame sans Merci_.

Footnote 329:

See Texte, _Rousseau_, pp. 330 ff.

Footnote 330:

_Cult. Ren. in Ital._, II. 72.

Footnote 331:

Even Icelandic sagas, which show considerable artistic skill, make the diction of their heroes anything but pathetic, whatever the situation. See Heinzel, “Beschreibung d. isländ. Saga,” _Sitzungsberichte Wiener Akad._, XCVII. 119.

Footnote 332:

Work quoted, I. 167.

Footnote 333:

Northall, _English Folk-Rhymes_, prints a number of these; for example, p. 34, in Lancashire, Gorton lads sing:—

The Abbey Hey bulldogs drest i’ rags, Dar’ no com’ out to the Gorton lads.

One thinks, too, of the Scottish feuds, and a favourite tune like that of Liddesdale:—

O wha dare meddle wi’ me? O wha dare meddle wi’ me? My name it is little Jock Elliot, And wha dare meddle wi’ me?

See Chambers’s _Book of Days_, I. 200.

Footnote 334:

Vilmar, in his little _Handbüchlein_, p. 5, is full of righteous enthusiasm for an old cutthroat ballad, and full of righteous scorn for Heine’s cynical lines, “Spitzbübin war sie, er war ein Dieb;” the modern reader, for his sins, prefers Heine and chances the moral turpitude involved in his choice.

Footnote 335:

Interest even in the great tragedies has come to be duty rather than inclination. In the Abbé Dubos’s day tragedy was still preferred; but he says that whereas he read Racine with keenest delight at thirty (“lorsqu’il etoit occupé des passions que ces pièces nous dépeignent”), at sixty it was Molière.

Footnote 336:

_Der Scheidende._ Sentiment naturally turns to the cadence of rhythm, while humour feels at home in prose; hence it is easy to see that humour in verse, as with Heine, is ancillary to sentiment, while sentiment in prose, as with Sterne and even Lamb, is ancillary to humour.

Footnote 337:

See below, Chap. VII.

Footnote 338:

See the author’s _Old English Ballads_, p. xxx, and reference to Wordsworth’s famous preface. See also Gray’s letter to R. West, April, 1742, “The language of the age is never the language of poetry,” and what follows.

Footnote 339:

See the author’s _Old English Ballads_, Boston, 1894, Introduction (on terminology, origins, criticism), and Appendix I. (_The Ballads of Europe_). For collections, see, of course, the material in the tenth volume of Child’s great work. On the relations of this communal ballad to the other kind of ballads, see Holtzhausen, _Ballade und Romanze_, Halle, 1882, and Chevalier, _Zur Poetik der Ballade_, Programme of the Prague _Obergymnasium_, in four parts, Prague, 1891-1895.

Footnote 340:

“Volkslied und Kunstlied in Deutschland,” Beilage zur _Allgemeinen Zeitung_, Munich, Nos. 53, 54, March, 1898,—a paper first read in October, 1897.

Footnote 341:

Only the narrative song is here considered; for popular lyric see below.

Footnote 342:

“Volksdichtung und Kunstdichtung,” in _Nord und Süd_, LXVIII. (1894), 76 ff. It may be noted here that the temptation to take this easy attitude toward poetry of the people, as toward a fictitious and fanciful affair, is largely due to a misunderstanding of the evolutionary side of the case. The distinction is not one of coexistent forms of poetry so much as of successive stages of evolution. It is no hard matter to take so-called popular poetry of the day and reduce it to terms of art—the lowest terms, of course; but with poetry of the people treated as a closed or closing account, and with historical evidence about it in former times, a very different problem is presented. An important hint to this effect was given by Dr. Eugen Wolff in his paper “über den Stil des Nibelungenliedes,” _Verhandlungen der vierzigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen_, etc., Leipzig, 1890, pp. 259 ff.

Footnote 343:

_Norske Folkeviser_, Christiania, 1853, pp. iii f.

Footnote 344:

_Chants et Chansons Populaires des Provinces de l’Ouest_, Niort, 1895, I. 12. For the authorship, Le Braz, remarks, _Soniou-Breiz-Izel, Chansons Pop. d. l. Basse-Bretagne_, Introd., p. xxv, “à mesure que les productions populaires deviennent plus médiocres, leurs auteurs se font un devoir de conscience de les contresigner.”

Footnote 345:

_Songs of the Russian People_, p. 40.

Footnote 346:

Krohn, “La Chanson Populaire en Finlande,” Proceedings Internat. Folk-Lore Congress, 1891, pp. 134 ff., a valuable paper. “La poésie s’est refugiée dans la pensée, mais elle n’a pu se maintenir intacte de trivialité.” See also Comparetti, _Kalewala_, pp. 16 f.

Footnote 347:

E. H. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, pp. 327, 331.

Footnote 348:

_James Hogg_ (Famous Scots Series), p. 25.

Footnote 349:

In _Mélusine_, IV, (1888-1889), pp. 49 ff., and continued.

Footnote 350:

It is significant that the vogue of singing-clubs in German rural districts, which would seem to make for communal ballads, really drives them out. See Dunger, _Rundâs u. Reimsprüche aus dem Vogtlande_, Plauen, 1876, p. xxx.

Footnote 351:

The introduction to Rosa Warrens’s _Schwedische Volkslieder_, 1857, is by Wolf, and Grundtvig did a similar favour for her _Dänische Volkslieder_, 1858; opposed as regards authorship, the two are agreed on the source of a ballad in the homogeneous community. This even Comparetti recognizes: _Kalewala_, p. 21. See, too, Liliencron, _Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530_, p. xi., and Baring-Gould, _English Minstrelsie_, Vol. VII. Introduction (“On English Song-Making”). But it is useless to pile up these references.

Footnote 352:

January 27, 1900.

Footnote 353:

Of course, one community may still sing, while another has forgotten. Beaurepaire, _Étude sur la Poésie Populaire en Normandie_, 1856, pp. 24 f., notes this, as well as the fact that some kinds of songs linger while others die. He found no _vocero_ left in Normandy, but old choral wedding songs still were heard. The dance is going—the old village dance, the _ronde_: pp. 30 f.

Footnote 354:

Böckel, _Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen_, Marburg, 1885, has an introduction of great value, which shows how utterly German folksong is a closed account. Traditional ballads are still sung, but none are made; what is now made is mainly “Schmutz und Rohheit.” Factories, singing-schools, are putting an end to communal song. The process of decay, he thinks, began as early as 1600. For description of modern communal songs, see p. cxxviii. Folksong, he says (p. clxxxiii), is dead throughout civilized Europe.

Footnote 355:

See John Ashton, _Modern Street Ballads_, London, 1888. For the French, see C. Nisard, _Les Chansons Populaires chez les Anciens et chez les Français, essai historique suivi d’une étude sur la chanson des rues contemporaine_, ... Paris, 1867, 2 vols. Vol. II. treats street songs. This is really a continuation of Nisard’s _Histoire des Livres Populaires_, 2 vols., 1854, on almanacs, prophecies, divinations, magic, etc. Nisard’s account of origins is ridiculous,—or perhaps it is meant to be playful. See I. 69.

Footnote 356:

In addition to the material quoted in the introduction to _Old English Ballads_, see Nash, Harvey, and the other pamphleteers on nearly every page. Chettle, _Kind-Harts Dreame_ (Percy Soc., 1841), particularly pp. 9 ff., has a lively account of ballad making, printing, selling, singing, in this lower stratum. What is so lewd, he asks, that it has not been printed “and in every streete abusively chanted”? For the state of things somewhat later, see a curious publication, _Whimzies, or a New Cast of Characters_, London, 1631; it describes in alphabetical order, “almanach-maker,” “ballad-monger,” and so on, down to “zealous brother”; for ballad-monger, see pp. 8-15.

Footnote 357:

_Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs._

Footnote 358:

_National Ballad and Song: Merry Songs and Ballads Prior to the Year 1800_; 5 vols., privately printed for subscribers only, 1897. The fourth volume of the Percy Folio teaches a like lesson.

Footnote 359:

_Werke_, ed. Suphan, XXV. 323.

Footnote 360:

See above, p. 121.

Footnote 361:

_Poetik_ (well called _Naturlehre der Dichtung_, and an excellent piece of work), pp. 99 ff.

Footnote 362:

When folk read and write, they cease to improvise poetry, and the folksong really ceases; that the æsthetic impulse, however, abides with them, even in low levels, but has other results, is shown by Gustav Meyer in an interesting passage of his “Neugriechische Volkslieder,” _Essays_, p. 309.

Footnote 363:

Sir George Douglas, _Hogg_, pp. 38 f.

Footnote 364:

See the context of it in Lachmann u. Haupt, _Minnesangs Frühling_, pp. 221 ff.

Footnote 365:

Jeanroy, _Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France_, Paris, 1889, Part III., shows conclusively the origin of these songs in the public dance.

Footnote 366:

“Balade” of the twelfth century: Bartsch, _Chrestomathie Provençale_, p. 107. _Alavia_ = “away from us, begone,” the _procul este profani_ of the dancers. See also G. Paris, _Origines de la Poésie Lyrique_, etc., a review of Jeanroy, Paris, 1892, pp. 12 ff. The rimes in -_ar_ running through this stanza and the rest, and certain touches of art, show the changes in record; but the refrain and the spirit of the piece are quite communal.

Footnote 367:

Quellien, _Chansons et Danses des Bretons_, Paris, 1889, p. 11, notes that one event is not likely to be treated both in the song and in the tale: “ce qui est tombé dans le domaine de la narrative prosaïque est par cela même exclu desormais de la chanson.” Communal song must seize present things; in the tales it was “once upon a time.”

Footnote 368:

Buckle, _Hist. Civ. Engl._, I. Chap. vi., calls ballads “the groundwork of all historical knowledge,” and says they are “all strictly true” at the start. The use of writing, he thinks, put an end to their value.

Footnote 369:

This traditional, narrative song is called ballad throughout the present book,—unfortunately an equivocal term. The terminology of the whole subject is notoriously bad, and “ballad” is no exception to the rule. See _Old English Ballads_, pp. xviii ff.; Blankenburg, _Litterarische Zusätze u. s. w._, I. 387 ff., under “Dichtkunst”; for modern “ballad,” Werner in the _Anzeiger für deutsches Alterthum_, XIV. 165 ff., 190 f., XV. 259; for German names, Erich Schmidt, _Charakteristiken_, pp. 199 ff.; on _balada_, Jeanroy, _Origines_, etc., p. 403, who shows the passage of the word from its meaning as a dance-song to the technical term for a fixed form of verse. In Corsica a _ballata_ can be a lament (see below under _vocero_), and derives from the dance round a corpse: J. B. Marcaggi, _Les Chants de la Mort_, etc., Paris, 1898, p. 121, note on the _caracolu_, “a sort of pantomime danced about the corpse by the mourning women, with gestures of grief,” but now fallen out of use. Of course, the only point here is to separate the ballad from songs like _Greensleeves_, from journalism (for the so-called “ballad” under Elizabeth shows that her folk were as anxious to get into print, or to keep out of it, as we are in days of the newspaper), from occasional poetry, scurrilous rimes, hymns, and all the rest. “Sonnet” was a word that then not only meant any short poem, but occasionally made a little competition with “ballad”; several of the ballads in the Rawlinson Collection, Bodleian Library, are called “sonnet” either by title or in the text.

Footnote 370:

Work quoted, p. lxviii. Critics look at this narrative and treat it as the only element in the ballad; but at every turn they should remember that the original ballad was always property of a throng, was always sung, was always danced, and was never without a dominant refrain.

Footnote 371:

Even Kleinpaul, sarcastic enough against Grimm, implies this condition in his nine characteristics of popular poetry: _Von der Volkspoesie_, published anonymously, 1860, and as supplement to his _Poetik_, 1870. See p. 29.

Footnote 372:

Introduction to Rosa Warrens’s _Schwedische Volkslieder_, p. xix.

Footnote 373:

_Ancient Danish Ballads_, 1860, I. ix.

Footnote 374:

_Altgermanische Poesie_, p. 118. See also p. 52.

Footnote 375:

Heinzel, “Beschreibung d. isländ. Saga,” _Sitzungsberichte_, Vienna Acad., phil. hist. class, 1897, p. 117.

Footnote 376:

Said of the Castilian and Aragonese ballads in Wolf’s _Proben portug. u. catalan. Romanzen_, Vienna, 1856, p. 6. Here, too, he opposes the idea, presently to be considered, that ballads are degenerate epic or romance.

Footnote 377:

A broader account of the origin of ballads is given by Comparetti, _Kalewala_, pp. 282 f. He refers them to the romantic and chivalric sentiment of the late Middle Ages—beginning, say, with the eleventh century—which passed from the “Romanic-Germanic centre of Europe” into various tongues, was delivered to oral tradition as popular verse, spread and flourished down to the sixteenth century, where it was collected as _romancero_, _romanze_, _kæmpevise_, ballad. But Comparetti neglects the communal conditions.

Footnote 378:

Of course it was the revival of learning, the humanistic spirit, dividing lay society into lettered and unlettered, which really broke up the communal ballad.

Footnote 379:

_Characters_, “A Franklin.”

Footnote 380:

Brand-Ellis, under Harvest Home. The “mell-supper,” may not derive its name from _mesler_, as suggested, but the fact is clear enough.

Footnote 381:

Grosse, _Formen der Familie_, pp. 134 f.

Footnote 382:

_Proben_, etc., p. 6, as above, and also p. 31.

Footnote 383:

_Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, new ed., IV. 114 ff.

Footnote 384:

_Proceedings_, Internat. Folk-Lore Congress, 1891, p. 64.

Footnote 385:

Even in the material itself there is a shading from highly artistic down to communal. _Thomas Rymer_ undoubtedly comes from a romance. _The Boy and the Mantle_ has the flippancy of its origin in the _fabliau_; Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 155, declares such a touch of the cynical to warrant one in taking the ballad out of that class which he calls popular. _King Orfeo_ is a distorted tale from the classics. Plain kin-tragedies, however, like _Babylon_, _Edward_, _The Twa Brothers_, are simple enough for one to leave them to communal origins, and not go source-hunting. Even where the motive seems international, details may be home-made; how much of _Hero and Leander_ is left in that Westphalian ballad, _Et wasen twei Kunnigeskinner_? This story of the lovers and the lighted taper is found in many folksongs. See Reifferscheid, _Westfälische Volkslieder_, pp. 127 ff. In the classics and modern poetry,—witness Musæos and Marlowe,—it belongs to art. Comparative mythology laid hold of it, followed it back to India, and from India to the skies,—spring-god, sea, stars, autumn storms, and the rest. But this is needless bewilderment of a plain case; we have only to deal with the way in which Westphalian peasants sing of prince and princess. In three stanzas the story is told; all the rest deals with the situation so given, and here the communal elements (see below, p. 196) come in. The point is that study of subject-matter in ballads is distinct from the study of ballad elements. These are constant in good ballads, whether the subject be borrowed, or be local history, as in _Bessy Bell and Mary Gray_, and the Border ballads generally. In addition to the studies of ballad migration (e.g. _Sir Aldingar_) by Grundtvig and by Child, see a close piece of investigation by Professor Bugge, “Harpens Kraft,” in the _Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi_, VII. (1891), 97 ff.

Footnote 386:

In his introduction to the _Canti Populari del Piemonte_, p. xviii.

Footnote 387:

On the chasm between ballads of the collections and the recorded beginnings of national literatures, see _Old English Ballads_, p. lxxi.

Footnote 388:

See below, under Improvisation.

Footnote 389:

See remarks on “Crow and Pie,” _Ballads_, II. 478.

Footnote 390:

_Essays_, pp. 309 f.

Footnote 391:

See appendix on minstrels in the author’s _Old English Ballads_.

Footnote 392:

_Social Forces in German Literature_, p. 117. Talvj draws similar conclusions: _Charakter._, etc., pp. 339, 405.

Footnote 393:

_Altdeutsches Liederbuch_, p. xxii. The personal theory is much more temperately set forth, and with a better idea of throng-conditions, by Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 396.

Footnote 394:

This leprous monk has been a godsend to the writers on ballad origins. But one might as well appeal to the _ego_ in a passage from Thomas Cantipratensis, written near Cambrai, in 1263, and often quoted: Quod autem obscoena carmina finguntur a daemonibus et perditorum mentibus immittuntur, quidam daemon nequissimus qui ... puellam nobilem ... prosequebatur, manifeste populis audientibus dixit: “Cantum hunc celebrem de Martino ego cum collega meo composui et per diversas terras Galliae et Theutoniae promulgavi”.... Here are individual authorship—or collaboration: “I and a colleague of mine,” says the demon,—aristocratic origins, and Prior’s lady in the case.

Footnote 395:

Villemarqué, _Barzaz-Breiz_, Paris, 1846, II. 285. _Le Temps Passé_ begins p. 273.

Footnote 396:

Or suppose one should pin the _ego_ folk to a belief in the statement found in so many ballads that they are written by the person of whom they sing! This statement is a favourite in Basque songs. See F. Michel, _Le Pays Basque_, pp. 320 f.

Footnote 397:

Or take the _Schloss in Oesterreich_:—

Wer ist, der uns dies Liedlein sang? So frei ist es gesungen; Das haben gethan drei Jungfräulein Zu Wien in Oesterreiche.

Footnote 398:

Compare the dance and singing of the Botocudos, above, p. 95.

Footnote 399:

No one now pretends that “Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale,” at the end of the Ms. of the old Cheviot ballad, makes Sheale the author of it.

Footnote 400:

Work quoted, p. lvii. The implied protest against Grimm, p. lxxxii, must be read along with the passage just cited.

Footnote 401:

“Una creazione spontanea essenzialmente etnica.”

Footnote 402:

_Histoire Poétique de Charlemagne_, p. 2.

Footnote 403:

_Romania_, XIII. 617.

Footnote 404:

_Ibid._, p. 603.

Footnote 405:

_Hist. Po. Charl._, p. 11.

Footnote 406:

Driver, _Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament_, p. 389, sums up for a modified acceptance of this theory. It seems clear that some of the Psalms are distinctly individual in every way, and as clear that many others are congregational and communal.

Footnote 407:

“Ueber das Ich der Psalmen,” _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft_, VIII. (1888), 49-148. Against him _in toto_ is Dr. Robertson, _The Poetry and the Religion of the Hebrews_, 1898. See pp. 20 ff., 260 ff.

Footnote 408:

_Religion of Israel to the Exile_, p. 198.

Footnote 409:

Robertson’s objection to this is trivial (work quoted, p. 283), and shows a total lack of insight into the conditions of old communal song. “It is becoming more and more plain,” says Donovan, _Lyre to Muse_, p. 162, “that individuals could have had little to do with forming the fashions and manner of Hebrew song.” It sprang from the choral dance of the people, which later times called “idolatrous.”

Footnote 410:

_Vore Folkeviser fra Middelalderen_, Copenhagen, 1891, an admirable book. See particularly, p. 39; also Talvj, _Charakteristik_, p. 340.

Footnote 411:

Wright and Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, I. 248 f.

Footnote 412:

Sc. _fine_,—finish, end?

Footnote 413:

_Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsych._, V. 201. He notes a curious close found in many ballads.—

Danube! Danube! Thou shalt sing no more.

Footnote 414:

The opening or close of Germanic epic is often of this “I” character. So the Hildebrand Lay, the _Béowulf_, the _Nibelungenlied_ at its end. Later epic shows a poet in the case, who has his own wares to announce. See R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 357 ff., and his references.

Footnote 415:

Steenstrup, work quoted, pp. 43, 28 f.

Footnote 416:

Often the reciter remarks that it is night; that he is tired, thirsty; let the hearers come again on the morrow and each one bring a coin with him,—and so on. See A. Tobler, _Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsych._, IV. 175, quoting from _Huon de Bordeaux_.

Footnote 417:

It was noted that the Botocudos had no legends, no song of the past. A narrative song in the legendary sense is unknown to primitive folk; what they sing is the event of the day, an improvised song of sentences almost contemporary with the facts, cadenced by the communal dance. The sense of time past is so slender even among North American Indians (Powell, First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology to Smithsonian Inst., 1881, pp. 29 ff.), that while they admit that grass grows, they “stoutly deny that the forest pines and the great sequoias were not created as they are.” Now this primitive trait of poetry is preserved in communal ballads; and from this strictly communal class, long historical ballads, like those in German collections, should be excluded. Kögel, _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_, I. 111, notes that “the epic song ... is one of the later kinds of poetry.... It cannot even be regarded as belonging to the common Germanic stock.” But the communal narrative song is another matter.

Footnote 418:

“On American Aboriginal Poetry,” _Proc. Numismat. and Antiquar. Soc. Philadelphia_, 1887, p. 19.

Footnote 419:

See Böckel, work quoted, cxix.

Footnote 420:

Steenstrup has some good remarks on this point, work quoted, pp. 188 ff., 203 ff.

Footnote 421:

Of far earlier date than ballads, this poetry is in a later stage of evolution. _Wîdsið_, the oldest recorded English poem, shows more art and more poetic dialect than many a bit of Scottish verse picked up a century ago.

Footnote 422:

See R. Heinzel, _Ueber den Stil der altgermanischen Poesie_, Strassburg, 1875; W. Bode, _Die Kenningar in der angelsächsischen Dichtung_, Darmstadt u. Leipzig, 1886; R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_. See too Uhland, _Klein. Schrift._, I. 390.

Footnote 423:

A kenning, with many branches in Anglo-Saxon poetry, calls survivors of battle “the leavings of weapons.” This may once have been literal; but in its context it looks as deliberate as Lamb’s phrase for a resuscitated victim of the gallows,—“refuse of the rope, _the leavings of the cord_” (_Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged_).

Footnote 424:

_Pop. Tales_, IV. 152.

Footnote 425:

The general testimony for all ballads. For example, Fauriel, _Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne_, I. cxxix; these, he says, are full of commonplaces and recurrent phrases; the diction is “simple, nervous, and direct, that is, it has few figures, almost no inversions, and progresses in short periodic and nearly equal passages.” Remains of oldest Greek folk song show the same traits: Usener, _Altgriech. Versbau_, p. 45.

Footnote 426:

_Wolfram von Eschenbach_, ed. Lachmann, p. 4.

Sîne klâwen durh die wolken sint geslagen, er stîget ûf mit grôzer kraft, ih sih in grâwen ... den tac ...

Footnote 427:

This may well go back to the summer songs, May-day songs, chorals, and so on, of festal crowds; so Bielschowsky, _Geschichte der deutschen Dorfpoesie_, Berlin, 1891, p. 13, concludes for the songs of Neidhart. So, too, with songs on the conflict of summer and winter. Latin poets of the Middle Ages led the way in regular description of nature. See Wilmanns, _Walther_, p. 409. For the general case, Burckhardt, _Cultur d. Renaissance_, II. 15; Uhland, _Klein. Schrift._, III. 388, 469.

Footnote 428:

_Færøiske Qvaeder_, p. 74.

Footnote 429:

Child, _Ballads_, I. 170.

Footnote 430:

Refrain or burden, not printed with the other stanzas, but sung throughout.

Footnote 431:

Maid.

Footnote 432:

Of = by.

Footnote 433:

Deprived, parted.

Footnote 434:

The incremental repetition of this ballad could be matched by many other cases. Typical is the combination of simple and incremental repetition, also in triads, at the end of a French ballad, “Sur le Bord de l’Ile,” Crane, _Chansons Populaires_, p. 28. Typical, too, is the interesting Westphalian ballad, already noted, of the Hero and Leander story: Reifferscheid, _Westf. Volksl._, pp. 2 f.; see _ibid._, Nos. 2, 5. “Mother, my _eyes_ hurt me,—may I _walk_ by the sea?”—“Not alone; take thy youngest brother.” Reasons follow against and for this. Then repetition: my _eyes_ hurt me, may I not _walk_, etc. “Take thy youngest sister,”—and incremental repetition of the reasons. Then:—

“O mother,” said she, “mother, My _heart_ is sore in me; Let others go to the churches,— I will _pray_ by the murmuring sea.”

Usually each increment has a stanza, but now and then compression takes place, as in Motherwell’s version of _Sir Hugh_:—

She wiled him into ae chamber, She wiled him into twa, She wiled him into the third chamber, And that was warst o’t a’ ...

And first came out the thick, thick blood, And syne came out the thin, And syne came out the bonnie heart’s blood ...

So with three horses, and what not. This triad is not necessarily sprung from the “Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” of which Veit Valentin discourses in the _Zeitschr. f. vgl. Lit._ (New Series) II. 9 ff. “Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” comes rather from communal iteration in primitive song and dance.

Footnote 435:

See his letter to Mason, _Works_, ed. Gosse, II. 36.

Footnote 436:

Professor Earle confuses, in a very uncritical way, the garrulity of romances with the garrulity of epics and of ballads: see his _Deeds of Béowulf_, p. xlix. A “voluble and rambling loquacity,” he says, is the “natural character of the lay, and still more of the epic, which is a compilation of lays.” And presently he says that the romances are “the nearest extant representative of that unwritten literature which from the very nature of things was undisciplined and loquacious.” Confusion could hardly go beyond this.

Footnote 437:

_Ferienschriften_, I. 87.

Footnote 438:

“Das russische Volksepos,” _Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsych._, V. 187.

Footnote 439:

See above, p. 69.

Footnote 440:

See Porthan, _Opera Selecta_, III. 305-381. I quote from the original dissertations _de Poesi Fennica_ 1778, pp. 57 ff. He begins by lamenting the decay of old national song near the coast and under clerical influence; intimates that song was a universal gift and was improvised, although sundry bards are now eminent. Memorable events slip into song, now convivial, now satiric; and there is great store of proverbs. The description of dual singing begins with § XI.

Footnote 441:

“Præcentor, _Laulaja_ ... adjungit sibi alium socium sive adjutorem, _Puoltaja_ sive _Saistaja_ dictum.”

Footnote 442:

“Quod facile jam ex sensu ipso, atque metri lege, reliquum pedem conjectando definire licet.”

Footnote 443:

“Rarissimi stantes canunt; et si contingit aliquando, ut musarum quodam afflatu moti stantes carmen ordiantur, mox tamen, conjunctis dextris sessum eunt, et ritu solito cantandi continuant operam.” They observe the rules of the game. Porthan, to be sure, notes the absence of dancing as a national and pervasive affair; but the statement must not go unchallenged. Long before this, Olaus Magnus (_Hist. de gentibus Septentrion._, Romæ, 1555, Cap. VIII. lib. IV. 141) said of the Lappland and other northern folk that they were often moved to dance,—“excitentur ad saltum, quem vehementius citharoedo sonante ducentes, veterumque heroum ac gigantum præclara gesta patrio rhytmate et carmine canentes, in gemitus et alta suspiria, hinc luctus et ululatum resoluti, dimisso ordine in terram ruunt,” a parlous state. Scheffer, to be sure, discredits this statement of the archbishop (_Lapponia_, 1673, p. 292); but Donner, _Lieder der Lappen_, p. 38, believes it, and says it is confirmed by the report of a recent Russian traveller.

Footnote 444:

Castrén, quoted by Comparetti, _Kalewala_, p. 66, note.

Footnote 445:

Talvj, _Charakteristik_, p. 87; Steenstrup, pp. 85 f.

Footnote 446:

_Ibid._, pp. 23 f.

Footnote 447:

Child, _Ballads_, I. 21.

Footnote 448:

See “Hans Michel,” and the notes to it in Reifferscheid, _Westjälische Volkslieder_, pp. 47, 175. The song “Drüben auf grüner Haid,” pp. 51, 176, is used in the spinning-room, old home of communal minstrelsy, to stir the women to their work. Further, see Coussemaker, _Chants Pop. des Flamands de France_, p. 129, for a pious chanson: One is one, One is God alone, One is God alone, And that we believe. Two is two, Two Testaments, One God Alone ..., etc. Three is three, Three Patriarchs, Two Testaments ... and so on, up to the Twelve Apostles. _Ibid._, pp. 333, 336 ff., 353, are comic songs of the kind; and these are highly important, for they are songs of the dance, and still in vogue for communal processions. Their main features are repetition—and the refrain.

Footnote 449:

See Halliwell, _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 197:—

John Ball shot them all. John Scott made the shot,— But John Ball shot them all. John Wyming made the priming, And John Brammer made the rammer, And John Scott ..., etc.

This is cumulative. But an old song of the fifteenth century is incremental, a jolly bit of verse withal: Wright-Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, I. 4 f.—

The fals fox camme into owre croft, And so owre geese ful fast he sought; _Refrain_: With how, fox, how, with hey, fox, hey, Comme no more into oure house to bere owre gese awaye.

The fals fox camme into _oure stye_ ..., etc.

Footnote 450:

E. H. Meyer, _Deutsche Volkskunde_, p. 124.

Footnote 451:

_Proben_, p. 34: “La Mina de Puigcerdá.”

Footnote 452:

K. L. Schröer, “Ein Ausflug nach Gottschee,” in _Sitzungsber._, Vienna Acad., phil.-hist., LX. (1868), 165-288. See pp. 231 ff. One is distantly reminded of the cumulative song (Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, p. 35) of “Katie Beardie,”—for the dance:—

Katie Beardie had a coo, Black and white about the mou’; Wasna that a dentie coo? Dance, Katie Beardie!

Katie Beardie had a hen,—

and cock, “grice,” so on,—probably as many animals as were won by her distant cousin in Gottschee. See also the “Croodin Doo,” p. 51; “My Cock, Lily Cock,” p. 31; “The Yule Days,” p. 42; and others.

Footnote 453:

Schröer, p. 274.

Footnote 454:

_Ibid._, p. 277.

Footnote 455:

To the young men invited thus to the wedding.

Footnote 456:

The Armenian bride does the singing herself, combining incremental repetition with a refrain in which the crowd may join (Alishan, _Armenian Popular Songs_, Venice, 1852: the third edition, 1888, omits the name of the translator):

Little threshold, be thou not shaken; It is for me to be shaken, To bring lilies.

Little plank, be thou not stirred; It is for me to be stirred, To bring lilies.

Footnote 457:

Bladé, _Poésies Populaires de la Gascogne_, II. 220 ff. In the _Chants Heroiques des Basques_, p. 48, Bladé tells how the Basques use these songs of number.

Footnote 458:

_Ibid._, same page. Herd, _Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs_, I. 117 (reprint of 1869), among a number of marches more or less artificial, prints a chorus:

Little wat ye wha’s coming, Little wat ye wha’s coming, Little wat ye wha’s coming, Jock and Tam and a’s coming,

to which an indefinite series of incremental stanzas can be added,—as:—

Duncan’s coming, Donald’s coming, Colin’s coming, Ronald’s coming ...

and so the chorus, and again another stanza, and so on. A different kind of song for the march is “Un wenn nu de Pott en Lock hett,” printed by Firmenich, _Germaniens Völkerstimmen_, p. 187.

Footnote 459:

See his references, _Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, p. 71.

Footnote 460:

_Primitive Culture_, I. 86.

Footnote 461:

Tacitus, _Germania_, c. 10. Liliencron u. Müllenhoff, _Zur Runenlehre_, Halle, 1852. Simple iteration, of course, is everywhere in charms: _ter dices_ is the stage direction.

Footnote 462:

Grein-Wülker, _Bibliothek_, I. 317 ff.

Footnote 463:

D’Annunzio, following Baudelaire, revives repetition with considerable effect to make up for lack of rimes in his _Elegie Romane_. See p. 69, “Villa Chigi.”

Footnote 464:

By R. B. Gent. (Barnfield?), London, 1594, a rare book. See Barnfield’s own _Hellens Rape_, ed. by Grosart for the Roxburgh Club, 1876.

Footnote 465:

A gentle shepherd born in Arcady, Of gentlest race that ever shepherd bore.

No small influence in introducing this kind of repetition is due to the imitations of classic verse, and the struggles of the Areopagus to expel the tyrant Rime. Compare Spenser’s own experiment: _Now doe I nightly waste_, quoted by Guest, _English Rhythms_, II. 270.

Footnote 466:

A suspicion that R. B. is japing (see his _Amyntas: A-mint-Asse_, in the 4th of the fourteen “sonnets”), vanishes with careful reading of these highly interesting “experiments.”

Footnote 467:

_Carm._ lxii. 39 ff.

Footnote 468:

Recorded as a fifteenth-century carol in the Sloane Ms.

Footnote 469:

See, however, the caution uttered by M. Jeanroy against the idea that songs of the _Carmina Burana_ represent popular poetry (_Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France_, pp. 304 f.). Ingenious repetition, whether in refrains of the _triolet_ type, or in the Portuguese type represented by these verses, and in certain other poems of artificial construction (Jeanroy, p. 309):—

Per ribeira do rio vy remar o navio; _et sabor ey da ribeyra_!

Per ribeyra do alto vy remar o barco; _et sabor_, etc.

Vy remar o navio hy vay o meu amigo; _et sabor_, etc.

Vy remar o barco, hy vay o meu amado; _et sabor_, etc.

are probably no popular making. See, however, above, p. 139, the folksong of this type.

Footnote 470:

“Chume, chume, geselle min.” _Carmina Burana_, ed. Schmeller, pp. 208 f.

Footnote 471:

See also R. H. Cromek, _Select Scottish Songs_, London, 1810, I. 14,—

_Saw ye my Maggie?_

Footnote 472:

_Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 228 f. See also Kluge, in Paul-Braune, _Beiträge_, IX. 462 f.

Footnote 473:

Uhland, _Volkslieder_, I. 78.

Footnote 474:

Variations may advance the sentence, or simply hold it; thus (_Bareaz-Breiz_):

Little Azénor the Pale is betrothed, but not to her lover, Little Azénor the Pale is betrothed, not to her sweet “clerk”;

no advance; otherwise in a refrain:—

Come hearken, hearken, O folk, Come hearken, hearken to the song!

which suggests the syntactic structure of old English poetry due to alliterative variation.

Footnote 475:

A single sentence to the single verse is indicated in all primitive poetry, and is still the rule in Russian folksong: Bistrom, _Zeitschr. für Völkerpsy._, V. 185. Progress lay both in intension and in extension,—regulation of the verse-parts, and combination of verses in a strophe. For example, an element like rime or assonance was used to bind verses now in couplets, now in a series like the old French _tirade_.

Footnote 476:

_Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Siberiens_, St. Petersburg, 1866 ff.

Footnote 477:

_Ibid._, III. xix. See above on the closed account. Exotic literature, and the _mullas_, learned poets, Radloff declares, are slowly driving out folksong of every sort.

Footnote 478:

For a study of the artistic side of this improvised song, see Chap. VIII. Here the communal conditions are to be emphasized, and the basis of unvaried repetition is to be inferred.

Footnote 479:

Radloff, III. 34, note; 41.

Footnote 480:

Compare Hildebrand in the older lay, bidding his son Hathubrand put him to the test of genealogies:—

“ibu dû mî ênan sagês, ik mî dê ôdre uuêt, chind, in chuninerîche: chûd ist mî al irmindeot.”

Footnote 481:

Radloff, III. 48 f.

Footnote 482:

The so-called _Oelong_, with rime or assonance. _Ibid._, III. xxii. The quatrain, as Usener points out in his _Altgriechischer Versbau_, seems to have been the favourite measure for popular verse.

Footnote 483:

_Ibid._, I. 218 ff.

Footnote 484:

White and blue are the favourite variation. In a series, climax is often displaced by anticlimax, as in the quotation below: wife—betrothed; gold—silver; back—neck. For anticlimax with decreasing numbers, see Radloff, II. 670.

Footnote 485:

Radloff, II. 669.

Footnote 486:

See Vilmar, _Deutsche Altertümer im Hêliand_, Marburg, 1862, pp. 3 f.

Footnote 487:

_Essai sur l’Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs_, Paris, 3d ed., 1887, pp. 6 f.

Footnote 488:

_Odyssey_, I. 352.

Footnote 489:

A study of marriage-songs must begin with choral sex-dances and songs of the great periodic excitement, the mating-time, still observed by Australian tribes, and work up through survivals of every sort to the festal “epithalamies” and their deputies in the poetry of art.

Footnote 490:

E. H. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, p. 168.

Footnote 491:

Perhaps a survival, but surely an exceptional case, valuable only for the communal feeling. See Pearson, who gives the facts, _Chances of Death_, II. 141.

Footnote 492:

_Old English Ballads_, pp. xxxii ff.

Footnote 493:

Fauriel, _Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne_, Paris, I. 1824, II. 1825. See I. xxxvi. Roman literature gives hints of the same sort. The first epithalamium of Catullus (lxi) is “an imitation of the national custom”: Teuffel, _Hist. Roman Lit._, trans. Warr, p. 5.

Footnote 494:

The older wedding in Greece was of the same kind. See _Iliad_, XVIII. 491 ff.; K. O. Müller, _Griech. Lit._, p. 34. See too the burlesque at the end of Aristophanes’s _Birds_, and H. W. Smythe, _Greek Melic Poets_, p. cxx.

Footnote 495:

Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, I. 144 ff.

Footnote 496:

See the whole section in Brand’s _Antiquities_ under “Marriage Customs and Ceremonies.” The quotation is from _The Christian State of Matrimony_, 1543.

Footnote 497:

_De antiquissima Germanorum poesi chorica_, Kiel, 1847, pp. 23 f.—“carmina nuptialia, quorum varia erant nomina,” etc. See also Kögel, _Geschichte der deutschen Lit._, I. 44 f.

Footnote 498:

Kögel, pp. 44 f.

Footnote 499:

_Chronik_, ed. Dahlmann, I. 116 ff., 176. It is here that the good man breaks out in a lament for the “leffliche schone Gesenge” that have been lost. Bladé, _Poesies Pop. d. l. Gascogne_, I. xix ff., says the wedding songs are both traditional and improvised, taking the form of choral dialogues, where repetition is of course abundant.

Footnote 500:

“Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in _Preussische Jahrbücher_ LXXIII. (1893), 462.

Footnote 501:

Wetzstein, “Die syrische Dreschtafel,” in _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, V. (1873), 288 ff. See p. 297.

Footnote 502:

The various German bridal songs printed by Firmenich, _Germaniens Völkerstimmen_, are mostly artificial things; and one which goes to a lively rhythm and is meant for a dance (I. 165) has fallen into mere barnyard filth.

Footnote 503:

Lucian, _On Mourning_, 12 f. “A speech senseless and ridiculous,” he says of the oration.

Footnote 504:

_Kl. Schrift._, III. 445.

Footnote 505:

See his _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 47, 51.

Footnote 506:

Professor Smythe points out, _Greek Melic Poets_, p. cxiv, that Homer describes a hymeneal but “nowhere alludes to the religious element in the celebration of the rite.”

Footnote 507:

_Iliad_, XXIV, 719 ff., trans. Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

Footnote 508:

See H. Koester, _de Cantilenis Popularibus Veterum Graecorum_, Berol., 1831, p. 15. Roman _neniae_, of course, are in point (see Sittl, _Gebärden der Griechen und Römer_; Cap. IV.); but the artificial element is very strong, and primitive survivals are few. Wordsworth, _Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_, p. 562, says of the epitaphs on the Scipios, “Whether they were or were not fragments of _neniae_ is quite uncertain.”

Footnote 509:

Crude enough, to be sure, compared with Chaucer’s humour in dealing with the funeral of Arcite:—

“Why woldestow be deed,” thise wommen crye, “And haddest gold ynough, and Emelye?”

For this is the conventional question, in whatever form, in the _vocero_ of all places and ages: “Why did you die? You had enough to eat, you had clothes,” etc. Old Egeus has the modern consolation, and philosophizes in no communal vein.

Footnote 510:

_Odyssey_, XXIV. 59 ff.

Footnote 511:

1117 f. It has been noted that Kögel, _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 54, says, without good reason, that this was a magic song, a _spruch_. It was surely what it is called, a song of lament, a _vocero_, and doubtless asked the same old question.

Footnote 512:

St. Augustine tells how such songs were sung at the tomb of St. Cyprian: “per totam noctem cantabantur hic nefaria, et _cantantibus saltabatur_.” See also the well-known passage from Burchard of Worms: “cantasti ibi diabolica carmina et fecisti ibi saltationes”—_i.e._ at the “vigiliis cadaverum mortuorum.” Müllenhoff, work quoted, pp. 26 ff., gives some of these protests of the church. On p. 30 he notes that the songs themselves were improvised: _extempore et subito facta_. The older the rite, the more choral and communal it grows. The names (_ibid._, p. 25) are significant: _dâdsisas_, _leidsang_, _chlagasang_, etc., for older German; _lîcsang_, _lîcleóð_ (_epicedium_), _byrgensang_ (_epitaphium_), etc., for older English.

Footnote 513:

_Béow._, 1322, 2124 f.

Footnote 514:

_Ibid._, 2446 f., 2460. There is a sort of _vocero_ echo here. Remarkable, too, in the story of the self-buried chief, is a _vocero_ of that old man over himself, the last of the race burying his treasure as a kind of substitute: _ibid._, 2233 ff. It is superfluous to point out how English lyric poetry, from the _Ruin_ to the _Elegy_, and on to our own day, loves to linger by a grave. Traces of the _vocero_ that led to the vendetta might be found in the countless stories of old Germanic feud.

Footnote 515:

_De Orig. Act. Getarum_, ed. Holder, c. 49. A similar story is told (c. 41) of the funeral of King Theoderid of the Visigoths, killed in 451, and of the wild songs that were sung even on the field of battle as the warriors bore away the body of their king.

Footnote 516:

Child, I. 182.

Footnote 517:

_Folk-Lore Soc. Pub._, IV. (1881), pp. 21, 31.

Footnote 518:

Scott, _Minstrelsy_, 1812, II. 361 ff.

Footnote 519:

Still found in remote places,—among Germans in North Hungary, and in Gottschee in Krain, speech-islands both. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, p. 272.

Footnote 520:

“Dans der Maegdekens,” heard at Bailleul by Coussemaker. See his _Chants Populaires des Flamands de France_, Gand, 1856, pp. 100 f. Soon after 1840 it was forbidden, and the song is no more, save in the record. It goes back, says C., to the oldest times.

Footnote 521:

_Ibid._, p. 101.

Footnote 522:

Budde, “Das hebräische Klagelied,” _Zeitschr. f. alttestamentl. Wissensch._, II. 26 f.; and Wetzstein, “Syrische Dreschtafel,” as quoted above. See also same _Zeitsch._, III. 299 ff. For the professional singing-women, the _praeficae_ of Israel, see Jer. ix. 19.

Footnote 523:

Budde, “Die hebräische Leichenklage,” _Zeitschr. d. deutsch. Palästina-Vereins_, VI. 181 f., 184 ff.

Footnote 524:

Work quoted, p. cxxxiii.

Footnote 525:

J. G. Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, I. 150 f.

Footnote 526:

Precisely as among the Irish. See Miss Edgeworth’s account, quoted by Brand, _Antiquities_, “Watching with the Dead.”

Footnote 527:

In a note, I. 198, Hahn notes that Plato forbade this wild cry (_Legg._ xxi), but allowed the song of lament. For calling on the dead, cf. Latin _inclamare_.

Footnote 528:

One of the canons which condemned heathen customs at Christian funerals forbids not only song and dance, but also _illum ululatum excelsum_.

Footnote 529:

The _vocero_ sung by natives of Algiers has been noted as strongly resembling the Corsican. A specimen, quoted from Certeux and Carnoy, _L’Algérie Traditionelle_, is full of repetition and refrain.

Footnote 530:

Springer, _Das altprovenzalische Klagelied_, Berlin, 1895, pp. 8 ff. It is this formal poem of grief which is in the mind of Crescimbeni, _Comentarj Intorno all’ Istoria della Volgar Poesia_, 1731, I. 256, when he traces the Italian funeral song back to Latin and Greek.

Footnote 531:

This English Boileau, who “flourished,” in two senses, about 1200, is good reading. His _Poetria_ begins at p. 862 of Polycarpi Leyseri ... _Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Ævi_, Hal. Magd., MDCCXXI.

Footnote 532:

_C. T._, 4537 ff. The Latin:

_Temporibus luctus, his verbis exprime luctum._

Footnote 533:

Marcaggi, _Les Chants de la Mort et de la Vendetta de la Corse_, Paris, 1898, p. 193, gives a _vocero_ said to have been made by a monk, who calls on the celestial powers to join the chorus and wail the death of his two friends: “Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Sacred Sacrament, and all of you here in chorus, sing this _lamento_.” Bandits make a _vocero_, pp. 307 f.

Footnote 534:

Jer. xxii. 18. See below, on the Linos song.

Footnote 535:

_Trionfo della Morte_, pp. 419 f. “Era l’antica monodia che da tempo immemorabile in terra d’Abruzzi le donne cantavano su le spoglie dei consanguinei.” See another account of the Italian _vocero_ in Guastella, _Canti Popolari del Circondario di Modica_, Modica, 1876, p. lxxix. He notes, moreover, that in Sicily the _prèfiche_ are called _ripetitrici_.

Footnote 536:

Mérimée’s _Columba_ has made the _vocero_ familiar to readers. See also Marcaggi, work quoted; Ortoli, _Les Voceri de l’Ile de Corse_, Paris, 1887; Paul de St. Victor, _Hommes et Dieux_, Paris, 1872, pp. 349-369, a reprinted article cannily decocted and pleasantly served in the English periodical _Once a Week_, 1867, pp. 437-442. St. Victor refers to the older collections of Tommaseo and of Fée.

Footnote 537:

Marcaggi, p. 161. See above on the ride round the body of Beowulf and of Attila, and the older dance. The _caracolu_ is “a sort of pantomime, a funeral dance done by the mourners round the corpse as they make gestures of grief.” The _caracolu_ is danced no more. And again, Marcaggi, p. 231, note: “_vocerare_ ou _ballatrare_ veut donc dire improviser un vocero,”—highly suggestive fact.

Footnote 538:

_Ibid._, p. 4; Ortoli, p. xxxiv. Of these two, Marcaggi prints mainly the older material, with a few new pieces of miscellaneous character, such as cradle-songs and serenades.

Footnote 539:

His philology is unnecessary, p. 85. Ortoli, too, should stick to his “espèce de sanglot,” rather than follow his colleague’s “racine de _titiare_” or contraction of _Oh Dio!_

Footnote 540:

Ortoli, p. 248.

Footnote 541:

_Manquait de tenue_, M., pp. 24 f.

Footnote 542:

See Marcaggi, pp. 157, 231, for a _vocératrice célèbre_. “La vocératrice marche toujours à la tête des pleureuses,”—in going to the funeral.

Footnote 543:

Such is No. X. in Marcaggi, a “_vocero_ sung by a woman in the square of Canonica in the midst of a great crowd of women, priests, doctors, and magistrates come from neighbour villages.”

Footnote 544:

A child who does this, and makes a _vocero_, declares that he will bind the kerchief about his neck whenever he feels moved to laugh,—a grim bit which throws into the shade that “child on the nourice’s knee” of English ballads, who vows revenge if he shall live to be man.

Footnote 545:

On the vendetta in Italy during the renaissance, see Burckhardt, _Cult. d. Ren._,⁶ II. 179 ff.

Footnote 546:

J. K. Bladé, _Dissertation sur les Chants Historiques des Basques_, Paris, 1866, pp. 6 ff.; Borrow, _The Bible in Spain_, 1843, II. 394; F. Michel, _Le Pays Basque_, 1857, pp. 277 f.

Footnote 547:

“They have not utterly disappeared from my country,” says Bladé, _Poésies Populaires de la Gascogne_, introduction to Vol. I. p. xi; and he prints a collection of them, pp. 212-231.

Footnote 548:

This is Bladé’s French rendering, pp. 212 ff. Beaurepaire, work quoted, pp. 24 f., says these cries are no longer heard in Normandy.

Footnote 549:

“The men, old and young, take no part,” Bladé, I. xiii.

Footnote 550:

“Die syrische Dreschtafel,” _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, V. (1873), 295 f.

Footnote 551:

_Die Adonisklage und das Linoslied_, Berlin, 1852, pp. 16 ff.

Footnote 552:

K. O. Müller, _Gesch. d. Griech. Lit._, I. 28, makes Linos the personification of the soft spring slain by heats of summer.

Footnote 553:

Quoted by Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 32.

Footnote 554:

Taken from the German rendering of Brugsch.

Footnote 555:

_Mythologische Forschungen_, pp. 16, 55. Herodotus, II. 79, distinctly says that the Maneros song was of the people.

Footnote 556:

For the general custom, see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 36 ff.; for Germanic relations, Pfannenschmidt, _Germanische Erntefeste_, pp. 165 ff.

Footnote 557:

Grosse, _Anfänge der Kunst_, p. 234.

Footnote 558:

_A Tour in Scotland_, 3d. ed., Warrington, 1774, p. 99.

Footnote 559:

Chaucer, who puts several home touches not known to Boccaccio or Statius into his account of the funeral of Arcite in the “Knight’s Tale,” speaks of the _lyche-wake_ as well as of the _wake-pleyes_,—the latter, of course, funeral games. Pennant, by the way, in his _Second Tour in Scotland_ (Pinkerton, III. 288), speaking of Islay and its antiquities, says “the late-wakes or funerals ... were attended _with sports and dramatic entertainments_.... The subject of the drama was historical _and preserved by memory_.” (No italics in the original.)

Footnote 560:

See above, p. 222.

Footnote 561:

_Æn._, X. 473 ff.

Footnote 562:

Perhaps best in Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall’s _Ireland: its Scenery, Character_, etc., 3 vols., London, 1841-1843. See I. 222 ff. The authors mention the women who wept over Hector, with the odd explanation that the Greeks were once in Ireland. Other accounts of Irish funerals are quoted in Brand-Ellis, _Popular Antiquities_, as of “the men, women, and children” who go before the corpse and “set up a most hideous _Holoo_, _loo_, _loo_, which may be heard two or three miles round the country.”

Footnote 563:

Quoted by J. C. Walker, _Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards_, London, 1786, pp. 20 f. The keening of women who follow the hearse, dressed sometimes in white and sometimes in black, “singing as they slowly proceed ... extempore odes,” is sufficiently like the march of the _praeficae_ at a Roman funeral; and in neither case has one the primitive form of the rite.

Footnote 564:

_Transact. Royal Irish Academy_, IV., “Antiquities,” pp. 41 ff., read December, 1791.

Footnote 565:

“Present State of Ireland,” _Works_, ed. Morris, pp. 625 f. Camden, about the same time, _Britannia_, trans., ed. 1722, p. xix, speaks of the bards as men who “besides ... their poetic functions do apply themselves particularly to the study of genealogies.” See also Evan Evans, _Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards_, ... London, 1764, p. 91. This is not primitive song.

Footnote 566:

Spenser, p. 633.

Footnote 567:

“Totenklagen in der litauischen Volksdichtung,” _Zst. f. vgl. Litteraturgesch._, N. F., II. 81 ff.

Footnote 568:

A similar series of questions, with interesting details of the ceremony, is given in the _Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum_ ab Angerio Gislenio Busbequij ... Antverpiæ, 1681, p. 28: “deuertimus in pagum Semianorum Iagodnam: ubi ejus gentis ritus funebres vidimus multum à nostris abhorrentes. Erat cadauer in templo positum detecta facie: iuxtà erant apposita edulia, panis et caro et vini cantharus: adstabant coniunx et filia melioribus ornata vestibus, filiae galerius erat ex plumis pavonis. Supremum munus, quo maritum jam conclamatum uxor donauit, pileolum fuit purpureum, cuius modi virgines nubiles illic gestare solent. Inde lessum audiuimus et naeniam lamentabilesque voces; quibus mortuum percunctabantur _quid de eo tantum meruissent, quae res, quod obsequium, quod solatium ei defuisset; cur se solas et miseras relinqueret: et hujus generis alia_.”

Footnote 569:

Compare the pathetic word of David about his dead child: 2 Sam., xii. 23.

Footnote 570:

Spencer, _Sociology_, I. § 142, quotes Bancroft, of the Indians of the West, that for a long time after a death, relatives repair daily at sunrise and sunset to the vicinity of the grave, to sing songs of mourning and praise. Hahn tells the same thing of his Albanians, _Alb. Stud._, I. 151 f.

Footnote 571:

Radloff, III. 22.

Footnote 572:

Often quoted from Kranz, _Grönländische Reise_. See also Boas, “The Central Eskimo,” in _Report Bur. Ethn._, 1884-1885, Washington, 1888, p. 614.

Footnote 573:

Quoted Spencer, _Soc._, III. § 126.

Footnote 574:

There was also a lament sung hard upon the death of a warrior in battle. As the Goths bore away their dead king, singing a song of woe in the midst of flying weapons, so with many savages. In a skirmish which followed the murder of Captain Cook, a young islander was killed, and the Englishmen next morning saw “some men carrying him off on their shoulders, and could hear them singing, as they marched, a mournful song.” Cook’s Last Voyage, in Pinkerton, _Voyages and Travels_, XI. 723.

Footnote 575:

On _neniae_ as incantations, see Grimm, _Mythologie_,⁴ p. 1027.

Footnote 576:

The phrase for a capable person in incantation is found for Germanic usage in the Merseburg Charm, here said of Wodan himself,—_sô hê unola conda_; in Anglo-Saxon the same phrase is used for a skilled poet: _se þe cuðe_, _Béow._, 90; and in Old Saxon for a wise man: _én gifrôdðt man the sô filo konsta wisaro wordo_, _Hêliand_, 208.

Footnote 577:

For example, in mere invocation, the _Erce, Erce, Erce, eorðan modor_ of an Anglo-Saxon charm (Grein-Wülker, I. 314), and the actual spell against stitch in the side (_ibid._, p. 318):—

Wert thou shot in the fell, or wert shot in the flesh, Or wert shot in the blood [or wert shot in the bone], Or wert shot in the limb ...

with more of the sort, and the solemn,—

This to heal shot of gods, this to heal shot of elves,

and so on, with a refrain in the epic part,—

Out, little spear, if it in here be’

Footnote 578:

Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, I. 367 ff.

Footnote 579:

Translated from the French in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, XVI. 598 ff. See pp. 623 f.

Footnote 580:

_Ibid._, XVI. 877, 685, 596.

Footnote 581:

_Ibid._, VII. 534.

Footnote 582:

_Histoire d’un Voyage fait en la Terre de Bresil autrement dite Amerique_ ... à la Rochelle, MDLXXVII. pp. 336 f.

Footnote 583:

“Au surplus au refrein de chacune pose.”

Footnote 584:

_Histoire de la nouvelle France_, Paris, MDCIX. See pp. 691 ff. On the title-page he declares himself “témoin oculaire d’une partie des choses ici recitées.”

Footnote 585:

_Mœurs des Sauvages Ameriquians, Comparées aux Mœurs des Premières Temps_, ... 2 vols., 4to, Paris, 1724. See II. 321. Lafitau spent five years in a mission in Canada, and also got information from a brother Jesuit of sixty years’ experience in the new world (I. 2). It was this book which moved Dr. John Brown, a century and a half ago, to write his essay on the history of poetry and music, and to use so effectively the comparative method in literature.

Footnote 586:

_Ibid._, II. 395.

Footnote 587:

_Anf. d. K._, p. 229.

Footnote 588:

_Indian Tribes_, IV. 71, question 254 (see I. 556): “Is it the custom to call on certain persons for these laments? Are the laments themselves of a poetic character?” Answered by Mr. Fletcher for the Winnebago Indians.

Footnote 589:

_Ibid._, answer to question 253.

Footnote 590:

_Three Years’ Travel through the Interior Parts of North America_ (1766-1768), Philadelphia, 1796. See p. 179.

Footnote 591:

_Rep. Bureau Ethnol._, I. 194 f.

Footnote 592:

Wallaschek, _Prim. Mus._, p. 54.

Footnote 593:

_Ibid._, p. 198.

Footnote 594:

Wallaschek, _Prim. Mus._, p. 199. It is needless to insist on the custom of dancing at funerals, and, in memorial rites, over the graves of the dead; mediæval councils were full of warning against this habit. The “dance of death,” of course, became symbolic and artistic.

Footnote 595:

Denied as a literal fact, as an affair of government and authority, the matriarchate, so called, is sufficiently proved as the early form of family life.

Footnote 596:

As the clan or horde had its song of triumph, and this is echoed and prolonged in “national” songs like the _Marseillaise_, or, better, the _Ça ira_, so the clan grief can expand into a national lament. Something of this sort is found in that wail over the downfall of their power sung by the Moors in Spain and so potent to stir the heart that it was forbidden by government; its refrain, _Woe is me, Alhama_, has all the iterated passion of grief that one finds in the primitive _vocero_. Then there is the song or psalm of the captives in Babylon,—and the list could be extended indefinitely.

Footnote 597:

The story is at first hand.

Footnote 598:

Work quoted, II. 324.

Footnote 599:

Account of Shelley’s last days, quoted in _Harper’s Magazine_, April, 1892, p. 786.

Footnote 600:

Schoolcraft, III. 326, “Poetic Development of the Indian Mind.”—For a good collection of facts about iterated words as song, see the sixth chapter of Wallaschek’s _Primitive Music_. For example, p. 173, “The Macusi Indians in Guiana amuse themselves for hours with singing a monotonous song, whose words, _hai-a_, _hai-a_, have no further significance.” See also pp. 54, 56 f.

Footnote 601:

_Report Proceed. Numism. and Antiquar. Soc., Philadelphia_, 1887, pp. 18 f. (Printed 1891.)

Footnote 602:

Lectures, as quoted, II. 117, speaking of poetry before Homer. On the origin of poetry in unintelligible sounds, see Ragusa-Moleti, _Poesie dei Popoli Selvaggi_, Torino-Palermo, 1891, pp. vi ff., and Jacobowski, _Anfänge der Poesie_, p. 66, who assumes that early man held fast to those tones and gestures which expressed an original sensation or emotion. On the repetition of mere sounds to express emotion, see Alice C. Fletcher, _Journal American Folklore_, April-June, 1898, p. 87.

Footnote 603:

_Travels in West Africa_, pp. 66 f.

Footnote 604:

V. 559 ff. “Original Words of Indian Songs literally translated.”

Footnote 605:

“Choral chant, four times repeated.” All Schoolcraft’s examples here are full of repetition.

Footnote 606:

_Ibid._, III. 328.

Footnote 607:

_Ibid._, V. 563 f. See below, p. 310.

Footnote 608:

See above on Rhythm. In addition to the references given there, see some sensible remarks in Emerson’s “Poetry and Imagination”; for scientific discussion of repetition as basis of rhythm, see Gurney, _Power of Sound_, pp. 455 f., and Masing, _über Ursprung u. Verbreitung des Reims_, pp. 9 f. J. Grimm pointed out that alliteration is really a form of repetition, _Kl. Schr._, VI. 161 f. Adam Smith, _Essays_, pp. 154 f., has some curious remarks on repetition as possible in music, but impossible in poetry.

Footnote 609:

W. von Biedermann, in two articles,—“Zur vergleichenden Geschichte der poetischen Formen,” _Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litteraturgesch._, N. F., II. 415 ff.; IV. 224 ff., and “Die Wiederholung als Urform der Dichtung bei Goethe,” _ibid._, IV. 267 ff.,—traces the development of poetical style from this fundamental fact of repetition. First, simple words were repeated, then only part of the words in a sentence: such is the case in old Chinese, in Zend, in Accadian. Then came parallelism; then the repetition of similar sounds; _and finally metre or rhythm_ (_Versmass_). Where were the dancing throngs in this interesting stretch of development, with rhythm as an afterclap of rime? As later in his review of Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_, so here, Biedermann denies that rhythm came into poetry through music and the dance. He fails, however, to make good this assertion by any show of proof (see above, p. 75); but his references are useful for the student of repetition. For another scheme of repetition in poetry, see R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 12 f.

Footnote 610:

Hence the inadequate character of its treatment, say for Old Norse, by Vigfusson and Powell, _Corp. Poet. Bor._, I. 451 ff. R. M. Meyer, _Altgerm. Poesie_, p. 341, takes a more excellent way, but he lays too much stress on the ancient refrain, and not enough on the ancient choral and the primitive communal conditions of song. Much more to the point is the admirable though incomplete chapter on “Early Choral Song” in Posnett’s _Comparative Literature_: see especially pp. 127 ff.

Footnote 611:

Wolf, _Lais_, pp. 23 f. The refrain was insistent in all poetry of the troubadours and trouvères, and so leads back to refrains as the prevalent characteristic of all songs in the vernacular. See Wolf’s references, pp. 22 ff., and notes, pp. 184 ff. For a modern study of this development of artistic forms of the refrain, see the third chapter of the third part of Jeanroy’s excellent _Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age_, Paris, 1889.

Footnote 612:

Ebert, _Lit. d. Mittelalters_, II. 63 f., 64 note.

Footnote 613:

See lxi, lxii. The Hymen cry, taken from the Greek, was there a lending of communal wedding songs: see Smythe, _Greek Melic Poets_, p. 496. More artistic refrains are the

Currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi,

of Catullus, lxiv. 323 ff., and the recurrent lines in Spenser’s _Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamium_, which, of course, are on the same artistic plane with that marriage-song of Peleus and Thetis.

Footnote 614:

Walter Pater’s pleasant account of the making of this song (_Marius the Epicurean_, p. 73) is not improbable, in spirit at least; and it must be borne in mind that this was the metre of marching songs of Roman soldiers and other popular verse. See Du Meril, _Poésies Populaires Latines_, Paris, 1843, pp. 106-117, including the _Pervigilium Veneris_.

Footnote 615:

Bujeaud, “Refrains des Chansons Populaires,” in _Le Courier Littéraire_, 25 Mai, 1877, pp. 256 ff. For reference to this article, the present writer is indebted to Boynton’s dissertation, named and quoted below.

Footnote 616:

“Le Refrain dans la Littérature du Moyen Age,” in _Revue des Traditions Populaires_, III. 1 ff.; 82 ff.

Footnote 617:

J. Darmesteter, _Chants Pop. des Afghans_, Paris, 1888-1890, p. cxcvi, calls the strophe “abstraction faite du refrain,”—a more excellent way than these theorists take with their “little poem stuck in the cracks of a big poem,” and such clever nonsense.

Footnote 618:

“Der Kehrreim in der mhd. Dichtung,” _Jahresber. d. Königl. Gymnas. zu Paderborn_, 1890.

Footnote 619:

_Neuhochdeutsche Metrik_, p. 392. See R. M. Meyer, below.

Footnote 620:

_Zeitschr. f. vergleich. Lit._, I. 34 ff.; _Euphorion, Zeitschr. f. Litteraturgesch._, V. (1898), 1 ff. He points out that nobody heeded his view of the case, but that the works of Grosse, Groos, and Bücher all brought confirmation to it.

Footnote 621:

All early accounts of dances among savages, South Sea islanders, and the like, assert this priority of chorus over refrain. There are no spectators, no audience, or “public”; all sing and all dance. See Wallaschek in his first chapter, and Yrjö Hirn, _Förstudier till en Konstfilosofi_, Helsingfors, 1896, p. 148.

Footnote 622:

Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 111 f., notes that this sort of repetition is found in old Etruscan prayers as well as in the liturgy of the Roman church.

Footnote 623:

By Wordsworth, work quoted; see, too, F. D. Allen, _Remnants of Early Latin_, p. 74, with interesting remarks on the fragments of the _Carmina Saliaria_, the _axamenta_.

Footnote 624:

Kögel, _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 31, 34 f., points out the close resemblance of the conditions and circumstances of this hymn with those of the old German hymns, of which we have no example; he therefore infers for the latter the same repeated cries to the god, and finds confirmation for this inference in the dancing, the repetitions and the cries of a Gothic Christmas play, written in Latin, in Greek characters, but with a Gothic original peeping through. Müller’s attempt to restore this Latin-Gothic hymn is highly interesting.

Footnote 625:

Westphal, _Allgem. Metrik_, p. 37.

Footnote 626:

Also dramatic poetry, as in Job; for example, the refrain in the speeches of the messengers who tell Job of his calamity, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” See Moulton’s arrangement in his edition of Job, pp. 10 f.

Footnote 627:

For these refrains see Driver, _Introd. to the Lit. of the Old Test._, p. 366 (original ed., p. 344). They are sometimes exactly repeated, sometimes varied. For the poetry due to the Hebrews in general, see Renan, _Mélanges_, p. 12.

Footnote 628:

2 Sam. vi, 14 f.

Footnote 629:

Lowth, _de sacra Poesi Hebr._, ed. Rosenmüller, p. 205, citing “Nehem. xii, 24, 31, 38, 40, et titulum Ps. lxxxviii.” D. H. Müller, _Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form_, Vienna, 1896, I. 246 f.,—a somewhat discredited work with regard to the theory of Hellenic and Hebrew relations, but seemingly sound in these facts. Budde, _Religion of Israel to the Exile_, pp. 97, 100. The “prophets” who came to England from the Cevennes make another modern instance; and there are many more in the great development of religious enthusiasm in the seventeenth century.

Footnote 630:

Exod. xv. 1. 20 f. Clearly the whole tribe: see above, p. 186.

Footnote 631:

1 Sam., xviii. 1 ff. Lowth says of the _one to another_: “hoc est, alternis choris carmen amoebaeum canebant; alteris enim praecinentibus ‘Percussit Saulus millia sua,’ alterae subjiciebant ‘et David suas myriadas.’” Perhaps. _Amant alterna Camenæ._ But it was rude amœbean, then, a tumultuous chorus, just as in the Fescennine songs of old Italy, and in the songs of Roman soldiers, a roughly divided pair of choruses sang alternately: see Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 149. On the choral nature of old Hebrew poetry see this whole passage in Lowth, pp. 205 f.

Footnote 632:

In the year 446. The story is often quoted from Priscus, 188, 189.

Footnote 633:

Böckel, work quoted, p. cviii.

Footnote 634:

“Ex qua victoria carmen publicum juxta rusticitatem per omnium ora ita canentium, feminaeque choros inde plaudendo componebant.” Mabillon, _Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti_, Venetis, 1733, II. 590. This clapping of hands as one dances and sings is often found in communal records, and is common among savages, negroes, and the like. Among tribes on the White Nile, where no musical instruments were to be had, girls clapped their hands to the song and dance: Wallaschek, p. 87, and also cf. p. 102, the account of women seen by Captain Cook to snap their fingers in marking time for their song. The practice is common elsewhere; for Polynesia generally, see Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropol._, VI. 78 f. Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of it, I. 9:—

Castalidumque choros vario modulamine plausit Carminibus, cannis, pollice, voce, pede;

while a dance to this hand-clapping is represented on an Assyrian monument: see Herrig’s _Archiv_, XXIV. 168, quoted by Böckel in the introduction to his Hessian ballads.—That actual songs were made by these women is clear; see the passage from Guillaume de Dôle, quoted by Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 309:—

que firent puceles de France a l’ormel devant Tremilli on l’en a maint bon plet basti.

Footnote 635:

London, 1811, p. 420. See also Ritson, _Scottish Song_, I. xxvi, f.

Maydens of Englande, sore may you mourne For your lemmans ye have lost at Bannockisburne! _With heve a lowe._ What, weeneth the King of England So soone to have won Scotland! _With rumbylowe._

This refrain, as will be seen, is a kind of water-chorus.

Footnote 636:

_Bruce_, ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S., p. 399.

Footnote 637:

_Brut_, ed. Madden, 9538 f.

Footnote 638:

A notable exception is K. O. Müller, who studied early Greek song in connection with early Greek life, an example—as Posnett notes in some excellent remarks, _Compar. Lit._, p. 104—which subsequent historians have neglected to their own harm.

Footnote 639:

Smythe, _Melic Poets_, p. 490.

Footnote 640:

For reference to the older literature of this subject, see Blankenburg, _Litterar. Zusätze_, I. 235 ff.

Footnote 641:

Déor’s song, of course, is divided into strophes or stanzas by means of this refrain.

Footnote 642:

See above, p. 86, on the dispute between Sievers and Möller, and their agreement regarding this change from song to recitation.

Footnote 643:

_Altgerm. Poesie_, pp. 341, 345.

Footnote 644:

_De Antiquissima Germanorum Poesi Chorica_ ... Kiel, 1847. “Antiquissimum enim omnium poesis genus haud dubie illud est, quod choricum dicitur.” See p. 5: “Carmina vero haec sacra ... ex communi populorum usu, _non a rhapsodis recitata neque a singulis, sed semper a choro sive pluribus simul et cantata et acta sunt_.”

Footnote 645:

The best recent summary is that of Kögel in the first volume of his _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.

Footnote 646:

See p. 6 of Müllenhoff: “Actionum autem choricarum triplex est genus: pompa, saltatio, ludus; quorum et simplicissimum est pompa et quasi primitivum.” He treats only the first of these three; but a valuable paper on the sword-dance (“Ueber den Schwerttanz,” in the _Festgabe für G. Homeyer_, 1871), the essay _De Carmine Wessofontano_, and many hints in his introduction to the _Sagen, Märchen u. Lieder d. Herzogth. Schleswig-Holstein u. Lauenburg_, 1845, make up the omission.

Footnote 647:

Kögel, work quoted, p. 18. See his references, p. 17, for these refrains and songs of war.

Footnote 648:

Well meant but ludicrous compilations, designed to offer songs of solace and cheer to all sorts of labourers, and to drive out the idle rimes which they are wont to sing, are cleverly noted in Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s _Unsere Volksthümlichen Lieder_, Leipzig, 3d ed., 1869; the specimens he gives in his introduction are highly amusing, and are taken from Becker’s _Mildheimisches Lieder-Buch_, 1799, which provides special songs for the butcher, the chimney-sweep, the scissors-grinder, and all the rest. See Hoffmann, pp. vii ff.

Footnote 649:

A Lithuanian mill-song: see Bücher, p. 39. See also Porthan, work quoted above, p. 198. He gives a pretty little song of a Finnish woman who calls for her absent husband in no recondite terms, ending:—

Liki, liki, linduiseni, Kuki, kuki, kuldaiseni!—

that is, “prope, prope, deliciae meae; juxta, juxta, corculum meum.”

Footnote 650:

“Agrestum quendam concentum edere solent ... hocque verbum ad cantilenae similitudinem repetunt.” Pistorius, _Polon. Hist. Corp._, I. 46, quoted by Bezzenberger, _Zeitsch. f. vgl. Lit._, N. F., I. 269.

Footnote 651:

Smythe, _Greek Melic Poets_, pp. 160, 510 f.—Bücher, p. 38, notes that this song, like many a lost refrain of the same kind, disregards the rules of classical metre, and follows the movement of the millstone.—Pennant (_Second Tour in Scotland_), Pinkerton, III. 314, compares the singing at the mill of the island women with Aristophanes’ _Clouds_, Act V. scene 11.

Footnote 652:

_Pros. Edda_, ed. Wilken, “Skáldskaparmál,” xliii. pp. 123-134; cf. 4:—

sungu ok slungu snúðga steini ...

Footnote 653:

Böckel, work quoted, lxiii f., where there are other references of the sort. So in pounding wheat, women in North Africa sang a national song in chorus, always pounding in time with the music, Wallaschek, p. 220.

Footnote 654:

Bücher, p. 60, is emphatic on this point, that the refrain is to be regarded as the oldest part of all songs of labour.

Footnote 655: