Journeys Through Bookland Volume X Part 39

The essay shows more of the author's self than any other form of literature. It is apt to be sincere, to be the deliberate expression of the writer's own views formulated with the desire to convince another.

In the purely literary type this last characteristic is not so strikingly prominent, though it appears rather under the surface. In no form of literature is the artistic element more manifest. The prose writer makes of his essay what the poet does of his lyric--the most finished and beautiful expression of his thought. The thought is the writer's chief concern, but upon his manner of expressing it depend the force and value of his work. Accordingly he gives to his style his most careful attention and fits and polishes it with all his skill. The result is that in the essay are to be found the best examples of prose style. While the essay frequently appeals to our humorous sense and sometimes arouses our sympathy by its pathetic touches, yet no such opportunity is offered for emotional effect as that given by the novel or the drama.

The essay is written to be read, the _oration_ to be heard; the essay is to please, to entertain, perhaps to instruct, sometimes to convince; the oration is to arouse the feelings, to carry conviction, to stir the public to action. It is a formal production, addressed directly to its hearers; it is in form or meaning in the second person. Even when descriptive or eulogistic, it is a direct address. The orator says, "These are my opinions and my reasons for so thinking. Will you not accept my view and act accordingly?"

The oration naturally divides itself into three sections. There is an _introduction_, in which the speaker clears the way, opens the question and lays down the principles he proposes to advocate, or indicates the course of his argument. The _body_ follows. Here the principles are elucidated, the arguments advanced and properly established or the descriptions elaborated and finished. The last section is the _conclusion_, which may consist of a brief review or summary of the inferences drawn, or of a plea for belief and for action in accordance with the principles of the speaker.

Before the art of printing was invented, public opinion was molded almost entirely by public speaking, and for a great many years afterward the orator was the greatest of leaders. By the magic of his eloquence he changed the views of men and inspired them to deeds of valor. The fiery orations of a Demosthenes, of a Cicero; the thrilling words of a Peter the Hermit or a Savonarola; the unanswerable arguments of a Burke or a Webster, have more than once turned the course of history.

But when the newspaper first found its way into the hands of thinking men the power of the orator felt the influence of its silent opponent and began to wane. Today, it is not often that mult.i.tudes are swayed by a single voice. The debates and stump-speeches of a political campaign change but few votes. The preacher no longer depends wholly upon the convincing power of his rhetoric to make his converts. The representatives of a people in a parliament or a congress speak that their words may be heard through the newspapers by their const.i.tuents more than with the expectation that their speech will carry a measure through the House they are addressing.

Yet we will listen with pleasure to a fervid speaker whose earnestness of manner carries the conviction of his sincerity, and even against our will we are moved by elegant sentences and pleasing tones. The orator will continue to be a power, though in a different way. Conditions have changed, and the ponderous periods and elaborate figures that characterized the orators of cla.s.sic epochs are giving place to the plain, lucid diction and the simple, true-hearted tones of the modern speaker.

The drama is objective, the author keeping himself out of sight as much as possible. His characters appear, speak their parts and vanish with no explanatory words from him except the occasional stage direction limited to the fewest possible words. There is no description, except when the actors give an account of something that does not occur upon the stage.

There is little of narration, except to explain what does not appear upon the scene or to give clearness to the action. Argument is not infrequent, though it is usually in the form of a moving appeal to the emotions rather than to the reason. The play often leads to exposition, and many dramas are written with the evident intent of teaching a deep and forceful lesson.

The drama shows man in action and develops his character before the reader, but it is by acts and speech and not by direct description from the author. It deals with all human interests and frequently supernatural manifestations are introduced and become important factors in the plot, particularly when they are believed in by the people who appear in the drama. But in general it is a study of life and character.

Primarily the drama is to be heard, not read, and consequently its style is usually clear and its meaning easily apprehended, but the complexity of its incidents and the intricacies of its plot make it difficult to follow. The rapidity of its action, the necessity of gathering the meaning from a single hearing, and the intensity of feeling aroused would all unite to confuse the hearer were it not for the skill of the actor and the appropriateness of the stage settings. By the aid of these, understanding is in most cases not difficult. The changing scenery, the dress of the actors, their movements, the tones of their voices, and the expression of their faces all aid the hearer. But the interpretation then becomes that of the actor, so that the listener is once removed from the author. Moreover, to the actor everything is subservient to dramatic effect, and the study of an Oth.e.l.lo descends into an effort to excite an audience rather than to portray correctly the s.h.i.+fting pa.s.sions of the jealous Moor. The poet's creation is adapted to the actor's use by the omission of scenes, changes of scenes, and additions of scenes, by such verbal alterations and phrasal transpositions that one does not see Shakespeare's Shylock demanding his pound of flesh but watches Irving's Shylock whetting his savage knife; Hamlet is lost in Booth, and Juliet weeps in the tears of Mary Anderson.

But the pleasure a person derives from listening to their thrilling utterances is as distinct from that which comes to the appreciative reader as the pleasures of the palate differ from those of the eye. To the reader everything is his own. He carries his own theater with him.

The scenery he must himself construct and he may alter it at will; the costumes and personal appearance of the characters are the creations of his own mind; his thunder has no metallic sound and his lightning always flashes. He may bring his favorites back with many an encore and may show his disapproval with hisses that would drown the gallery. He may linger over the pa.s.sages he loves and find new encouragement in his defeats and ever fresh joys for his hours of gloom. He is never hurried: the lights never go out, the curtain is never rung down.

_Poetry_

The reality of poetry is its beauty, its power of inspiration, its truth. Its beauty lies in its choice of words, in its figures of speech, in its music and in its sentiment. Any definition that is not purely formal is hard to give. Professor Shairp defined the soul of poetry when he wrote: "Whenever the soul comes vividly in contact with any fact, truth, or existence, which it realizes and takes home to itself with more than common intensity, out of that meeting of the soul and its object there arises a thrill of joy, a glow of emotion; and the expression of that _glow_, that _thrill_, is poetry."

_The Structure of Poetry_

The form and structure of poetry should be studied, but not to so great an extent as to blind the eye or deaden the appreciation of its beauty and sentiment. Brown, who wrote the beautiful story _Rab and His Friends_, has said, "It is with poetry as with flowers and fruits. We would all rather have them and taste them than talk about them. It is a good thing to know about a lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archaeology, even its anatomy and organic radicals; but it is a better thing to look at the flowers themselves and to consider how they grow."

If one reads poetry aloud he soon becomes sensible of a certain rhythm or regular recurrence of accented syllables that gives a measured movement to the lines. It is a recognition of this rhythm that makes a child read in a "sing-song" tone, as natural a thing as it is to sing.

If we hear constantly repeated at frequent and regular intervals any noise, there is a tendency to group these separate sounds and measure them off regularly. The clock ticks with always the same force and with the same s.p.a.ce of time between the ticks, yet we hear _tick_-tack, _tick_-tack; we can prove the difference to be in our ear, for it requires but little effort to hear tick-_tack_ or _tack_-tick, _tack_-tick. The ticking has not varied in the least.

The poet takes advantage of this rhythmical tendency of nature and by using accented syllables at regular intervals compels us to recognize the swing of his lines. When he reduces this to a system he has established the _meter_ of his production. The poetical accents sometimes fall on unaccented syllables and sometimes on monosyllabic words that are not emphatic, but usually the metrical accent of any given word corresponds to its logical accent. The accentuation of a syllable tends to lengthen the time used in the p.r.o.nunciation of that syllable, and so we call it long, although the sound of its vowel may be short. Short syllables are those which are unaccented, even though the vowel has the long sound.

Verse appeals to the ear by its melodious combinations of sounds and also by the regular recurrence of similar sounds in _rhymes_. These usually occur at the ends of verses. In order that a rhyme may be perfect the two rhyming syllables must both be accented, the vowel sound and the consonants following must be identical, and the sounds preceding the vowel must be different. For example, _fate_ and _late_ rhyme; _fat_ and _late_ do not; _fate_ and _lame_ do not; _debate_ rhymes with _relate_, but not with _prelate_. Double rhymes occur frequently, as in the words _bowlders, shoulders_.

Take this stanza from Hood's _Song of the s.h.i.+rt_:

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags Plying her needle and thread-- St.i.tch! St.i.tch! St.i.tch!

In poverty, hunger and dirt; And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "song of the s.h.i.+rt."

Here the first and third lines are unrhymed, the second and fourth, the fifth and seventh, and the sixth and eighth lines rhyme alternately in couplets. If the beginnings of the verses are noticed it will be seen that the indentations of the lines correspond with the rhymes.

Rhymes are not always used in poetry. Most of Shakespeare's plays are written in _blank verse_, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter, called _heroic verse_. _Hiawatha_ and _Evangeline_ are not rhymed, the former being trochaic tetrameter and the latter largely dactylic hexameter.

Frequently appeal is made to the ear by a similarity of sound at the beginning of words. This is known as _alliteration_. In early English poems this was of prime importance and subject to rigid rules, but more recently it has been used without rule, subject merely to the author's will. This is seen to a marked degree in many writers. Here are several lines taken from Poe's _The Bells_:

What a world of _m_erriment their _m_elody foretells, What a _t_ale of _t_error now their _t_urbulency _t_ells.

In a mad expostulation with the dea_f_ and _f_rantic _f_ire.

In many cases alliteration is very skilfully handled, as where Whittier uses the liquid consonants to make more smooth and harmonious to the ear the line that tells the friendliness of the brooklet whose murmurings could not be heard in winter, but--

"The music of whose _li_quid _li_p Had been to us companions.h.i.+p"

during the long summer days.

The number of verses in a stanza varies from two to an indefinite number. When there are two verses the stanza is called a couplet; a three line stanza is called a tercet; a four line stanza, a quatrain.

The five line stanza is not common, but six is a frequent number.

_Kinds of Poetry_

Poems may be cla.s.sified as epic, lyric and dramatic.

The word _epic_ is by some writers restricted in its application, but it is preferred here to use it in a broad sense to include various forms of narrative poetry, and to use the term greater, or heroic, epic to designate the smaller cla.s.s of narratives which the older writers knew as epics. Thomas Arnold's definition of the greater epic is: "The subject of the Epic Poem must be some one, great, complex action. The princ.i.p.al personages must belong to the high places of the world, and must be grand and elevated in their ideas and in their bearing. The measure must be of sonorous dignity, befitting the subject. The action is carried on by a mixture of narrative, dialogue, and soliloquy.

Briefly to express its main characteristics, the epic treats of one great complex action, in grand style, and with fullness of detail."

Under such a definition there can be but few really great epics in any language. Comparatively few poets have cared to undertake so great a task and many of those who have been willing to make the attempt have failed conspicuously in the execution. But most of the great languages of the world have each one surpa.s.sing epic which has held the interest of its readers and established an immortality for itself. Homer gave the Greeks the grandeur of his _Iliad_; Virgil charms the Latin race and every cultivated people since with the elegance of his _Aeneid_; Dante with Virgil for his model and Beatrice as an inspiration wrote in Italian the _Divina Commedia_, in which he described with all-powerful pen the condition of the dead in the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise; and our Milton after years of preparation, from the dark realm of his own blindness, produced the sublime measures of _Paradise Lost_. These are the Greater Epics, greater by far than anything else written by man.

With them this course does not concern itself to any great extent.

The term lesser epic includes the numerous forms of narrative poems from the old-time ballad to the modern story-telling poem. The epic is essentially different from the lyric. While in the latter the personality of the author is always apparent, and properly so, in the epic the intrusion of the poet's self is usually a defect. The lyric is subjective, the epic objective. To tell a story effectively and well is the prime motive, to tell it beautifully and in a way to excite the imagination and move the feelings of the reader is the contributory poetic impulse. Of the lesser epics groups might be set apart. The ballad is the oldest form. It was originally the production of wandering minstrels or glee-men and was not reduced to writing and kept in permanent form. Being pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth there naturally came to be great variations in its form, and even the incidents were modified to suit the taste of the singer. After poetry came to be a study of the cultured and refined, the minstrel's power declined, though he was a welcome guest at the feasts of the wealthy, where his song added to the gayety of the occasion or gave dignity to the host as his deeds were sung by the hireling bard. In the sixteenth century these singers disappeared from view in the blaze of the Elizabethan Age.

The highest type of literary expression is poetry, and the most perfect creation of poetic imagination is the lyric. Technically a lyric is a song, a short poem that can be set to music. But this must be interpreted in a wide sense, for though all the songs that are sung are lyrics, the greater number of lyrics were never intended to be fitted to the closer requirements of vocal harmony. They deal with all subjects and have few requirements of form, though form is an essential element and a matter of great importance, for to the perfection of form much of the intense effect of the lyric is due. Like the essay the lyric is a subjective composition; it is confessedly the expression of the poet's personal emotion and his own experiences. His mind, his soul, speak to us; he does not interpret the thoughts and feelings of another. The lyric is usually contemplative and full of the choicest results of the poet's meditations. It influences action indirectly through direct appeals to the emotions.

Songs form a cla.s.s of lyrics as varied in content as the possible subjects in life. One might consider them as sacred and secular and under the former recognize the psalms, which our poets have many times rendered into metrical form, not infrequently detracting from the sublimity of the originals. "The Lord is my Shepherd" needs no change, no remodeling from the biblical version to make it a true lyric, but that it may be sung to the tunes of our churches it has more than once been paraphrased.

Hymns are religious songs expressing devout reverence for the deity, displaying confidence and faith in the goodness of G.o.d, breathing a prayer for help in hours of difficulty and distress, or for consolation in the hour of affliction. Our literature is full of these n.o.ble poems, and their lofty sentiments, clothed in beautiful words sung to the thrilling music of other inspired composers, have been potent factors in culture and refinement.

Secular songs are written upon nearly every conceivable topic of human interest and are more numerous than any other form of literature, but so many of them are inferior in composition and so dependent upon the jingle of the tunes to which they are sung that their life is little longer than the time consumed in their production. But a large number are conceived in the true spirit of art and are as worthy of immortality as anything we read.

There are comic songs that sparkle with wit and whose music laughs with the hearer; sentimental and love songs whose sensuous cadences intensify the pa.s.sion of their words; convivial songs where toasts are drunk to the accompaniment of the clinking gla.s.ses; and patriotic songs that roll with the ringing cheers of thousands and the tramp of armed men.

There are still three large cla.s.ses of lyrics each distinct in itself, though, as we see if we try to draw the lines closely, shading off into one another. Usually these are in the nature of a direct address to some person, place, or thing, and are distinguished one from another by the nature of the subject or the rules of form. All are in a greater or less degree complimentary to the thing addressed and show interest, respect, admiration or love. The ode and elegy have most in common, although the latter is a tribute to the dead. The sonnet partakes deeply of the nature of the others, but is set off by very arbitrary limitations of form.

There are no rules governing the form of the ode; the poet is at liberty to select whatever form seems best adapted to his purpose. The length of the stanza, the meter, the rhyme, may be as varied as his fancy dictates, but the ode is an address direct and personal, an address with praise for its object. The subject may be a flower, a piece of pottery, a person, a bird or a nation, but some definite inciting object is necessary. The ode is subjective in that the poet expresses his own feeling of admiration or reverence. Often there is an acknowledgment of a benefit conferred, a lesson learned, or affection returned. From these conditions, namely, the liberty of form, the direct and powerful inspiration, the sincere desire to return a favor, a poet might naturally be expected to produce his choicest work, and so he has done.

A mournful song, in stately measure, praising the dead for his virtues, full of the grief that remains with the living, believing in the happiness of the departed and hoping for a blessed reunion in the hereafter: this is the typical _elegy_. On the one side it shades off into the ode, some poems being susceptible of cla.s.sification in both groups; on the other it may take the form of sonnets, many of which answer every requirement of the dirge. Many poems are therefore elegiacal that are not strictly elegies. A rigid cla.s.sification is never necessary, but an a.s.sociation of these beautiful pieces, all thoroughly impregnated with the personal grief of the author, gives to each a greater power, a more thrilling significance. They arise from the deepest emotion and so are the offspring of divinest inspiration; love is in the heart of the writer and so the flight of song is best sustained; they are intended to show to the world respect and admiration for the one whose virtues they celebrate and so they are refined and polished to the last degree. Where grief, love and a hope to give earthly immortality to the object of his affection move the poet, we expect the finest efforts of his genius. These elegies include some of the grandest, the most perfect productions of poetic skill.

When man sees his loved one laid away forever, he naturally longs to preserve the memory of the departed to succeeding generations, to erect some permanent memorial. Funereal monuments are characteristic of every race and have proved the most enduring records of the past. The inscriptions upon these tombs are early records of the elegiac spirit.

The epitaph is elegy in miniature. "To define an epitaph is useless; everyone knows it is an inscription on a tomb. An _epitaph_ is indeed commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished by a stone but by our friends," says Dr. Johnson.

This epitaph was written by Robert Wilde in the seventeenth century:

Here lies a piece of Christ; a star in dust; A vein of gold; a china dish that must Be used in heaven, when G.o.d shall feast the just.