Marginalia, Part I [pp. 217-222]

218 Marginalia. [APRIL,
I concluded, at length, to put extensive faith
in the acumen and imagination of the reader:this as a general rule. But, in some instances,
where even faith would not remove mountains,
there seemed no safer plan than so to re-model the
note as to convey at least the ghost of a conception as to what it was all about. Where, for
such conception, the text itself was absolutely
necessary, I could quote it; where the title of
the book commented upon was indispensable, I
could name it. In short, like a novel-hero dilemma'd, I made up my mind "to be guided by
circumstances," in default of more satisfactory
rules of conduct.
As for the multitudinous opinion expressed in
the subjoined farrago-as for my present assent
to all, or dissent from any portion of it-as to
the possibility of my having, in some instances,
altered my mind-or as to the impossibility of
my not having altered it often-these are points
upon which I say nothing, because upon these
there can be nothing cleverly said. It may be
as well to observe, however, that just as the goodness of your true pun is in the direct ratio of
its intolerability, so is nonsense the essential
sense of the Marginal Note.
I do not believe that the whole world of Poetry can produce a more intensely energetic passage, of equal length, than the following, from
Mrs. Browning's "Drama of Exile." The picturesque vigor of the lines italicized is much
more than Homeric:
On a mountain peak
Half sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine, at that hour
A Lion couched, part raised upon his pa;ws
With his calm massive face turned full on mine
And his mane listening. When the ended curge
Left silence in the world, right suddenly
He sprang up rampant, and stood straight and stiff,
As if the new reality of Death
Were dashedagainst his eyes, and roared so fierce (Such thick carniverous passion in his throat
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
To distant silence-that the forest beasts,
One after one, did mutter a response
In savage and in sorrowful complaint
Which trailed along the gorges.
There are few cases in which mere popularity
should be considered a proper test of merit; but
the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the
few. In speaking of song-writing, I mean, of
course, the composition of brief poems with an
eye to their adaptation for music in the vulgar
sense. In this ultimate destination of the song
proper, lies its essence-its genius. It is the strict
reference to music-it is the dependence upon
modulated expression-which gives to this branch
of letters a character altogether unique, and separates it, in great measure and in a manner not
sufficiently considered, from ordinary literature;
rendering it independent of merely ordinary proprieties; allowing it, and in fact demanding for
it, a wide latitude of Law; absolutely insisting
upon a certain wild license and indefinitivenessan indefinitivenless recognized by every musician
who is not a mere fiddler, as an important point
in the philosophy of his science-as the soul, indeed, of the sensations derivable from its practice-sensations which bewilder while they enthral-and which would not so enthral if they did
not so bewilder.
The sentiments deducible from the conception
of sweet sound simply, are out of the reach of
analysis-although referable, possibly, in their
last result, to that merely mathematical recognition of equality which seems to be the root of all
Beauty. Our impressions of harmony and melody in conjunction, are more readily analyzed;
but one thing is certain-that the sentimental
pleasure derivable from music, is nearly in the
ratio of its indefinitiveness. Give to music any
undue decision-imbue it with any very determinate tone-and you deprive it, at once, of its ethereal, its ideal, and, I sincerely believe, of its intrinsic and essential character. You dispel its
dream-like luxury:-you dissolve the atmosphere
of the mystic in which its whole nature is bound
up:-you exhaust it of its breath of faery. It
then becomes a tangible and easily appreciable
thing-a conception of the earth, earthy. It will
not, to be sure, lose all its power to please, but
all that I consider the distinctiveness of that power. And to the over-cultivated talent, or to the
unimaginative apprehension, this deprivation of
its most delicate nare will be, not unfrequently, a
recommendation. A determinateness of expression is sought-and sometimes by composers who
should know better-is sought as a beauty, rather than rejected as a blemish. Thus we have,
even from high authorities, attempts at absolute
imitation in musical sounds. Who can forget, or
cease to regret, the many errors of this kind into
which some great minds have fallen, simply
through over-estimating the triumphs of skill.
Who can help lamenting the Battles of Pragues?
What man of taste is not ready to laugh, or to
weep, over their "guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbusses and thunder?" " Vocal music," says
L'Abbate Gravina, "ought to imitate the natural
language of the human feelings and passions,
rather than the warblings of Canary birds, which
our singers, now-a-days, affect so vastly to mimic
with their quaverings and boasted cadences."
This is true only so far as the "rither" is con
218
Marginal~ia.
[APRIL,