composition, so as to feel the sentiment conveyed in them, till familiarized to the form of conveyance: and that no ear—however delicately attuned by the great Master—can naturally enjoy the soul of melody that gushes from the throats of Italia’s songsters, because Art commingles the melting strains into harmonious passages, giving unity to multiplicity of sound; as it weaves into musical feet the inborn idea—the breathing thought of poesy. We should like to have all who say they can enjoy natural, but not artistic music, visit an aviary in the season of song; when some fifty vocal throats—pitched on as many keys—are striving to drown one another’s tones: we never hear such a discord “of sweet sounds” from Nature’s undrilled troupe, without thinking, if it were possible for Art to harmonize the warblers’ voices together, what a tide of affluent melody would overpower the senses! And would it be less Nature’s music than before?
The truth is, that such as hear only artificial tones from Italy’s born-songsters—made artists by study and practice—have not the ear for natural melody that they boast of; but one in sympathy with discordant sounds. So he that cannot recognise at once the native soul of poetry, in whatever form presented, has imagined himself an admirer of poetry, when only in love with certain forms of expression and musical cadences, while insensible to the spirit and power of the poetic thought they embody; and he is so constituted in mind as never to acquire any true appreciation of at least one form of the beautiful. We noticed recently in a periodical paper a Sonnet introduced by the following paragraph:
“We have an utter, relentless, unmitigated dislike, aversion, horror, for those fourteen-lined effusions, called Sonnets. They remind us of a child struggling to walk in swaddling clothes. They are puny ideas on stilts. They have a central thought, which, like the centre of gravity, is never seen. The poor thing flounders about like a man running tied up in a sack. It is a puzzle for children of a larger growth. Like a glass thread, one wonders how it is spun, or how the apple got into the dumplings!”
Nor is the above the expression of an uncommon sentiment regarding Sonnets. Now, no lover of the Sonnet will affirm that
