But gradually a change came over his performance. The saints and angels grew puzzled and restless, as the element of song, and even of intonation, progressively disappeared, until at last they found themselves listening with pain and indignation to mere naked, spoken verse. And what verse? Rime they were familiar with in their hymns, and liked. But soon even rime began to fade, and threatened to vanish[Pg 4] altogether. Metre too dissolved and degenerated from all regular recognisable form; and when finally Satan jerked out the latest jewel of American vers libre, he was greeted, as once before in Hell, with a dismal universal hiss, the sign of public scorn. The Muses had long ago fled down horror-stricken to Hades; and Satan, who always dislikes unpopularity, smiled, bowed, and retired. The choirmaster, Gabriel, tapped the desk with his baton, and a moment later the Heavenly Host was purging its offended ears with the strains of a noble Gregorian chant.

[Pg 3]

[Pg 4]

Now what lesson, if any, may we draw from this apologue? Were the angels right or wrong, or perhaps neither? Has the history of poetry been merely a deplorable tale of decadence, a progressive impoverishment and deterioration, through senility and second-childishness, towards an unlamented death in a bastard and[Pg 5] graceless prose? Or on the contrary has the gradual divorce of poetry from music and intoning meant its liberation for subtler and more rational, but no less truly poetic purposes? Before attempting to answer such questions, let us first look at the historical facts.

[Pg 5]

Homer, the fountain-head of Hellenic, and so of European poetry, though originally sung to the accompaniment of a lyre, was in later times intoned by professional rhapsodists, much as most Oriental poetry is intoned to this day. Greek lyrical poetry was of course always sung, whether chorally or by soloists. The dialogue of Greek plays was not sung, but was probably intoned, or at least declaimed in a highly conventional and rhythmical manner, which was perhaps not so very unlike the still-surviving tradition of the Japanese Nō play-actors. It is uncertain whether Horace intended his Odes to be read, or to be sung to the lyre: but Lucretius and Virgil undoubtedly[Pg 6] wrote their poems to be read. Virgil indeed gave public readings of his Eclogues. Probably, could we hear gramophone records of his performances, we should say that he was intoning rather than reading. However that may be, his example set a fashion that was disastrous for Latin poetry. His 

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