[413] See Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 44 ff. Compare the passage in which Lessing (Laokoön, Chap. XII) is discussing the felling of Mars by Minerva by means of a huge stone. The overthrown god, according to Homer, "covered seven acres." "It is impossible," says Lessing, "that the painter could give this extraordinary size to the god; but if he does not give it him, then Mars does not lie upon the ground like the Homeric Mars, but like a common warrior."

[414] This is the explanation of the fact that good music often floats a poor poem, while the best of poems has never been able to float poor music.

[415] We may, of course, get it from a programme note, but this in turn must have been derived from some experience of the opera, either on the stage or in the printed score.

[416] A correspondent of the Musical Times objected to this statement, alleging that the so-called Passion chorale is really the tune of the Communion chorale Herzlich tut mich verlangen, which is used for a variety of other hymns, including the O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden. "The result is," he said, "that to the German mind it conveys no particular association, just because it is so frequently used and at the most varied occasions." As a matter of fact, it is precisely to "the German mind" that it does convey the Passion association I suggested, as is shown by the remarks of such writers as Spitta (Life of Bach, Eng. trans., ii. 579), Schweitzer (J. S. Bach, le musicien-poète, p. 281), Arnold Schering (Bachs Textbehandlung, p. 19), and Wolfrum (Johann Sebastian Bach, ii. 14, 15).

[417] Nor, I should think I scarcely need add, do I imagine that opera will die out in the near future, though some critics of the original article naïvely attributed this view to me!

[418] Mr. Rutland Boughton has already made a very suggestive beginning on this line.