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the perfection of which it is capable as the poetry of music . The latter is yet in its infancy , kept and crippled there , by the affectations of fashion , the mean arts of trading masters , the theatrical monopoly , and the want of that popular taste which only a more rational and more extensive system of education can efficiently cultivate . How far the former had advanced in the poetry of antiquity , it is as impossible for us to ascertain as it is to call Homer from the dead to chaunt his own verses . There is melody , even yet , in our barbarian pronunciation of the Greek metres ; probably as like the original as the sharp tappings of a
drum to the soft , long breathings pf a flute ; but the tune itself is gone with the tongue that sang it , and the ear that heard , and the nerves that thrilled , and the eyes that glistened at it . We are left , by inference , to believe or not , as we may , that they who
could chisel the form of Apollo , knew also how to string his harp , and that their fingers touched it deftly . However that may be , in our own language the art of poetical melody has gradually ad-(vanced like any other art . The great masters may have boasted themselves to feed on thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers ; ' but the seeming spontaneity was only a facility
derived from their general power and excellence . It is the same as in music : Marielli will improvise passages of the most difficult execution—because the piano-forte , with all its capabilities . , is to her as a plaything ; but those vivid thoughts and feelings to which she makes the instrument give utterance , would lack their expression by less practised and skilful fingers . Only the
habitually laborious can efficiently extemporize . Great poets have become so , however rude the age in which they lived , by acquired mastery of the powers of language , as an instrument not only of sense but sound . The construction of their verse grows into a study , in which the elements and principles are traced , derived
from nature and the genius of a language , of the art of verbal harmony ; and by these the superior workman is taught , and the critic is guided , and the dull sense is quickened , and the finer organization is gratified and perfected , and yet more and more of this purer species of sensual enjoyment is ministered . No writer seems to have studied more , or , considering the quantity of his productions , has done so much , by means of this art , as the author of these poems . Some lines , for their soft and
easy flowing , others for their stately march , their dancing measure , or their luscious sweetness , might be culled from his writings , which have never been surpassed , and which it would be difficult to match . The verses which claim this kind of praise , in a high degree , abound in both volumes . We scarcely know whether to consider it as a defect that , in the pursuit of this object , he has recourse to several unusual artifices , such as the full pronunciation of the final ed , the elision of the w , when preceded by a consonant , and the occasional use of obsolete words .
Untitled Article
32 Tennyson ' s Poems .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/32/
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