Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a
little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of
superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art.
This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for
harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment
upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that
excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest
music of AEschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all,
only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the
harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus
and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing
memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint
in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should
seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I
think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp,
B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the
opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O,
E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone
counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light.
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