rhythm is almost entirely dispensed with and there is more freedom of movement. Sensuousness is generally an essential. Bacon, Milton, Emerson, O. W. Holmes, Jean Paul Richter, and others, shine by its light. There are yet other methods. One man describes striking events with a brilliancy which allows of our easily picturing the scenes; another throws a vivid light upon the inner life of others. One succeeds in delineating the passions; another charms us by his mosaic-like methods; another attracts us by his wit; while yet another employs every one of these methods in turn. Except in occasional passages, no attempt is made in prose to carry us away æsthetically, and some derived interest, therefore, is needed to make the reading tolerable; nor do we ever find in prose the intensity of delight which poetry produces. When prose reaches its highest level it becomes, as we should expect, prose-poetry. Then the rules of poetry, except those of metre, have to be obeyed, though even here there is not that complete enchantment which supervenes on reading an exquisitely wrought piece of verse. As a compensation, however, a larger quantity of prose-poetry may be produced, and we can read more at a time without becoming surfeited; still when the writing is highly charged with imagery, it is difficult to read quickly or much at a time. So varied are the methods of appeal that it is not easy to enumerate them. We can only say that in each case the style and matter must be such as will yield sufficient food for the attention, and that the details must be combined in systems which are neither too easy nor too difficult of comprehension. Books, consequently, will interest us æsthetically in precisely the proportion in which they satisfy the objective test. Compositions which are obscure and disconnected appeal to us as little in prose as in poetry. A small vocabulary, an absence of delicacy and discrimination, lack of similes or the use of trite or poor ones, a flitting to and fro from subject to subject, triviality, and similar failings, are signs that æsthetically the work will displease us.

There is no very clear distinction between poetry and prose; at least the historic tendency has been to minimise existing differences. The cruder Elizabethan form of play, for instance, was rhymed throughout; and it was considered a great improvement when the rhyme, as an essential, was dropped. After that we encounter metrical plays where, as a rule, every line constitutes a sentence and every sentence a line, the line being decasyllabic. However, as we approach the Elizabethan drama in its ripest condition, we note a tendency to suppress the jingle, to add an eleventh syllable, and to avoid sentences which end with the line or are equal in length to a line. In short, all but the rhythm has been swept away. Add to this that a good reader presses the sense and largely suppresses the metre, and all we have left is smooth reading, not so much musical as not unmusical. Similarly, with a good reader ordinary lyric poetry loses perhaps all its qualities, except that of not being unmusical. Hence it becomes a pertinent question whether the good reader's interpretation should not be adopted by the poet, rhyme and arrangement in lines being avoided. We can go still farther. It is not uncommon in lyric poetry to ignore very considerably the length of line as well as the arrangement of accents. At this point good prose begins. Here, too, what is unmusical is considered bad composi tion; and a certain swing is always demanded. The only remaining difference, then, is that in poetry metre is in general distinctly traceable, while in prose this is not the

case. Nevertheless, to balance this, it is commonly agreed not to regard as poetry that which lacks distinction. In the same way we might contend that where art is absent, prose ceases to be present, i.e., there exists doggerel prose as well as doggerel poetry. Brilliancy, fancy, imagination, weight, depth, clearness, subtlety, comprehensiveness, music, mark good prose. Some writers of the seventeenth century, like Bacon and Milton, and a host of writers of the eighteenth, like Addison, Hume and Gibbon, supply us with good examples of the nature of studied prose. To-day the art of prose is almost dead. Occasional fine sentences or passages are embedded in tracts of unattractive soil. It is as if the painter presented us with a daub wherein by careful search we are able to detect a few good points. Not so with Milton, Hume, Gibbon, and their fellows, for what these men lay before us is a true art product in which every part aims at perfection. Perhaps we may compare ordinary writing to necessaries, prose to comforts and poetry to luxuries, ignoring any subtle partition.

If this psychological interpretation of style be accepted, it will be seen that what has been said concerning visual beauty holds good to the utmost detail of lingual beauty. As, through social endeavour, the intellect and the emotions increase in keenness and depth, so the obviously formal in language is gradually displaced by a style rich, full, brilliant, subtle and varied. Hence the measure of the superior style is solely the social development of the attention at any period, the method employed being otherwise indifferent. Jean Paul conquers by his brilliancy; Victor Hugo by his warmth; Emerson by his depth; Carlyle by his insight; Scott by his historic background; Thackeray by his minute descriptions; Dickens by his kindly humour; George Eliot by her sympathies ; and Björnson by his subtle touches. As long as the attention is held by the manner of exposition, so long is the style to be commended.

In connection with style, the student may be referred to Hume's essays Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, and Of the Standard of Taste; to Herbert Spencer's essay on The Philosophy of Style in the second volume of his Essays; and to Mr. Frederic Harrison's Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates, 1899. See also Guyau, L'Esthétique du Vers Moderne, 1884.

A study of the orator's art will show the essential need in oratory of systematised variety, precisely as in written prose or poetry, perhaps even more so.

244.-MUSIC, ETC.

It need scarcely be insisted upon that music, to be agreeable, must, equally with poetry, have regard to the nature of the attention mechanism. If we attend a concert as reporters, our attention is perhaps sustained, in the absence of habit, by some reward. Still, when no secondary interest compels us to follow the music, the mechanism itself must be gratified, or else our thoughts wander. Music, then, should offer a variety of detail, and should consist of a system the comprehension of which requires gentle exertion. It will not be difficult to show that, broadly speaking, this is the case. The music of savages, in its simplicity and lack of system, approaches very nearly to noise. Then comes the lyrical music which alone attracts the uneducated: a song, now serious, now fanciful and now light charms their ear, or a few threads are woven into some unpretentious pattern. Lastly, come the sonatas, such as those of Beethoven. Here the variety and complexity are such that the musically untrained endeavour in vain to follow and enjoy the performance.

There is neither space nor is there a need to elaborate the matter further. What was said in sec. 236 with reference to outlines, holds good here in every respect. No doubt, there are peculiarities; but they do not affect

the pillars of our theory. Such and such should be the demands of music to conform with our definition, and such they prove to be. Had we found sonatas appreciated by savages and not by civilised mankind, or songs taking the place of sonatas as we become more at home musically, the startling facts would have demanded an explanation. As it is, data and doctrine harmonise.

Gurney, in his monumental work, The Power of Sound, 1880, has a passage which goes to establish our position. He says: "The use of 'subjects' in music is a perpetual feature, and becomes most prominent in large and complex pieces, to which it is the great means of imparting organic unity" (p. 98). As I am a stranger to musical theory, I shall not enter into matters musical. I have frequently listened to music with the attention fixed on the separate sounds. I notice that while some instruments sound much more agreeably than others, there appears to me no relation between the agreeableness of a sound and the agreeableness of the system of sounds which forms the melody. The mere tones of the violin appear to me human in expressiveness; but certainly not specially agreeable. The preference shown for this instrument is due to the nice gradations of sound which it is capable of, thus enabling it to satisfy the attention ideally. Still, a single instrument gives us only shades of one tone or colour, while an orchestra supplies us with variety of colour as well as of shade, and hence an instrument would be ideal if it yielded both shades and colours. However, the chief delight of music seems certainly derived from the structure of a piece rather than from the series of single sounds of which it is composed. Ruskin (Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1897, p. 271) speaks of Architecture as "not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves, as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours." As to the elements of music, see Helmholtz, Tonempfindungen, 1877, and Gurney, Power of Sound, 1880. [Consider the notable differences in sound quality between piano, violin, organ, flute and the human voice.]

What is here said as to the organic nature of beauty in sounds is apparently contradicted by the music of birds. Not even the nightingale, the thrush or the skylark satisfies much our definition of the beautiful, though organic combination of sounds and variety of detail are most developed with those birds. We must, therefore, class the songs of birds as intermediate between beautiful things and such sights as a flaming fire or a fall of snow; and we must assume that environment and pleasant associations largely account for the attractiveness of the songs of birds. In that case the beauty would reside in a whole of which the special song forms a part only.

Lastly. Wherever the word BEAUTIFUL is legitimately applied, the same foundation facts will be discerned. A beautiful sentiment, a beautiful character, a beautiful bon mot, a beautiful deed, a beautiful life, a beautiful thought, a beautiful moral, a beautiful arrangement, a beautiful movement, imply, one and all, that the object thus spoken of is contemplated by us because it has those characteristics, now well known to the student, which, of themselves, occupy the attention. Further illustration is superfluous, as this definition covers each and every instance without exception. [Test by rules in sec. 136.]

245. THE COMIC.

The recognition of the beautiful arises out of an incidence in the attention machinery the primary purpose of which is to satisfy the needs of the organism, while interest in the beautiful is principally needed to fill the interstices between the serious moments of life. The Comic, teleologically speaking, occupies the same position. It is one other means to prevent

brooding and aimless or difficult reflection. It, like the beautiful, offers.

an ideal outlet for the attention. by strenuous work and thought. office which it fills. [Test.]

It, too, slips into the crevices left open

It, too, has no justification except the

In defining our subject, we assert that the Comic implies a humiliating situation where the sense of malice is aroused so far as it satisfies and mechanically occupies the attention. [Examine this definition.]

The various known forms which the Comic assumes well illustrate this. The popular "tall stories" from America are almost of a uniform character. Thus, to indicate the speed of transatlantic trains, we are told that a man was. leaning out of the window to bid good-bye to some one, when he discovered that he was hailing one of the porters at the next station. In: America, exaggeration is the prevalent mode of provoking laughter. Irish stories have a different trend. Under the guise of reason an utterly inadequate explanation is proffered. Thus a man insists that the rifle is his ; that, in fact, it had been in his possession ever since it was a pistol. Americanisms and Irishisms are pretty nearly always true to the type they represent. In Shakespeare's plays we find two methods prominent. One of these runs through the majority of the plays, and is a mode of repartee, connected with euphuism. There is in it an interminable doggedness on both sides to construe a remark in a sense not intended by the speaker, or else to draw unsuspected conclusions from the words. In Hamlet, in Love's Labour's Lost, in As You Like It, in Much Ado About Nothing, and, indeed, in most of Shakespeare's attempts at humour, from his first to his last play, this is almost the only class of wit resorted to. The other method in Shakespeare's works, one fairly general in literature and life, is to make a man use words which he does not understand, as with the constable in Measure for Measure, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the hostess in Henry IV, the mob in Henry VI, or the gravediggers in Hamlet. There is a closely allied sub-division where a man is muddle-headed, as in the case of the characters just mentioned, and rambles in his thought. Repartee allows, of course, of wide expansion, and is not necessarily verbal or trifling. It is often absolutely crushing, and when that is the case, and the argument is continued on the same level, the highest results are obtained. Caricature attains the same end of pleasing us, by bringing out in striking relief certain abnormalities. Farce of every type produces the same effect, and is caricature in action. At the same time we must recognise that sheer stupidity does not lead to fun any more than to malice. Thus, if the Irishman had insisted that the rifle was his because he once was a boy, we should merely suspect his sanity. So a child trying to jest in imitation of his superiors, fails completely in its object. Some traceable relations must always be present in the Comic, and the mixture of the reasonable and the unreasonable, or the dignified and the undignified, is in each instance implied. The situation must be a likely situation, the things said or done being such as normal persons in seriousness occasionally say or do. Thus

American and Irish humour reflect sober national characteristics, while the humour in Shakespeare has equally its basis in reality. The most absurd "bull" must, therefore, be a possible slip by a sober individual. [Take jest after jest in comic papers and analyse each, neglecting your general memory.] Those who are not morally refined laugh at one who makes a stupid remark. [Observe.] They rejoice over the misfortunes of those who are not their friends; and they are glad to see their enemies disconcerted, hurt or defeated. When some one is disappointed, it is to them an occasion for mirth, and they are gratified by the plight in which their adversaries find themselves. This attitude belongs to the serious business of life. In humour proper, on the contrary, we have malice without its sting. [Is this universally true?] We still laugh at a stupid remark, at our neighbour's misfortunes, at his disappointment, or his defeat in argument, while we never laugh at their contraries, a wise remark, or a neighbour's good fortune. [Test this.] We do not laugh at a person; we laugh with him; nor do we rejoice over any notable mishap or where our mirth would hurt. [Test this.] Nevertheless, the malice is not gone. [Is this so?] It still forms the basis of humour; but the stress is transferred from malice to amusement. We train ourselves to the uttermost in detecting unfavourable points, and delight in our discoveries. We spend some of our time inventing good things and retailing them. True humour is distinguished from jubilant malice, as the shadow is from the substance. With this shadow we play.

In the Comic, as such, there is no contemplation. must burst upon us, and from an unexpected quarter.

*

[Test.] The wit We must be taken A

by surprise; for, in proportion as fun develops, so does it fall flat. bon mot should be well told. The attention must be enlisted, the explosion judiciously led up to, and the point unveiled at the psychological moment while its nature is still unsuspected. All humour is explosive, and what is not explosive is not humour. [Test.] Hence the beautiful, which invariably depends on contemplation and is never explosive, is widely separated from the humorous. [Question this.] Contemplation sometimes leads to humour; but never embodies it. Again, the pleasant mood into which we are thrown by the ludicrous, is mechanically sustained by the momentum produced by the act of explosion. It is not the discovery of characteristics, which impels us to continue amused, but the momentum or the vis a tergo alone. Only when the incongruity strikes us like a sledge-hammer-and this may happen repeatedly with the same story—are we amused, and no oftener.

We see clearly that the Comic occupies the attention without requiring a considerable strain, and that it prevents the tedium of aimless rambling as well as the fatigue of effort. Indeed, within limits, it imparts a glow of freshness to the human system on account of its very violence. It is for

* In normal reasoning there are no startling developments, while in the most brilliant reasoning everything is still closely connected. Not so in far-fetched reasoning where the apparent agreement is utterly outweighed by the obvious disagreement, and where the development, therefore, naturally takes us by surprise.