1111. Max Müller’s “disease of language” as source of myth is absurd; the myth does not wait for the misunderstanding of a metaphor, but begins with the metaphor and lives with its life,—both being, of course, unconscious at the start.
1112. A child who saw a flash of lightning once said, “God is winking at me”; and the phrase was seized upon as a fine illustration of primitive myth-making. But the child had been presented, by the whole process of human culture and thought, with at least two-thirds of this “myth,”—the idea of God, of a distinct, supreme personality, and the reference to God of whatever goes on in the sky.
1113. See E. H. Meyer, Indogerm. Mythen, Berlin, 1883, I. 87.
1114. In the reaction from ideas of a golden age one must not go too far, and “call names” which now mean vice, degeneration, rottenness. It is possible that even earliest myth touched here and there a chord of poetry as we now know poetry, and appealed to that constant element which belongs to our humanity and not to our history.
1115. Or, of course, a tradition; so Prometheus and the origin of fire may account for the stealing of fire from some neighbouring tribe. See Gruppe, Griechische Culte and Mythen, p. 206.
1117. Comparetti, Kalewala, pp. 154 f., in his excellent remarks on popular myth and popular poetry, has left his analysis incomplete by leaving throng-poetry quite out of the account.
1118. Grimm’s chapter on gender in the third volume of his Grammar remains the masterpiece of investigation in this subject; but his theory has been attacked by Brugmann. See, too, President Wheeler, “Origin of Grammatical Gender,” Journal Germanic Philology, II. 528 ff. Grimm defines gender, III. 346, “eine in der phantasie der menschlichen Sprache entsprungene ausdehnung des natürlichen auf alle und jede gegenstände.”
1119. Ibid., III. 354.
1120. Grimm says the Englishman calls “she” whatever is dear to him—the sailor his ship, the miller his mill; III. 546.
1121. Reflexions Critiques, ed. 1770, I. 298. “La Poësie du style fait la plus grande différence qui soit entre les vers et la prose.... Les images et les figures doivent être encore plus fréquentes dans la plupart des genres de la Poësie, que dans les discours oratoires.... C’est donc la Poësie du style qui fait le Poëte, plutôt que la rime et la césure.... Cette Partie de la Poësie la plus importante.” See also p. 312, in § xxxv.
1122. Essay on Poetry with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Cook, p. 11.
1123. Some representative definitions of this sort are collected and quoted by Dr. Gertrude Buck in an interesting paper, The Metaphor: a Study on the Psychology of Rhetoric, being No. 5 of the “Contributions to Rhetorical Theory,” edited by Professor Scott, Ann Arbor,—no date, but about 1899,—p. 40.
1124. Poetik, p. 87 f. See also p. 83. On p. 262 he opens, however, a dangerous door for the interests of this theory.
1125. Altgermanische Poesie, p. 20.
1126. Modern writers on æsthetics make the same error: so Biese, “Das Metaphorische in der dichterischen Phantasie,” Zst. f. vgl. Lit., N. F. II. 320, makes the primitive process from simile to metaphor.
1127. On pp. 90 ff.
1128. St. Evremond thinks them distracting; in any case he will banish such things from drama. Œuvres Meslées, London, Tonson, 1709, III. 72 f., in an essay, “Sur les poëmes des Anciens.”
1130. It is the case with later reaches of poetry. Chaucer, for example, offers very few figures or metaphors as compared with later poets; “no other author in our tongue,” says Professor Lounsbury, Stud., III. 441, “has clung so persistently to the language of common life.”
1131. The Anglo-Saxon Metaphor, Halle, 1881. The theory of the metaphor there advanced was due to the study of poetical material alone, and had no help from psychology. The latter, however, is quite favourable to the theory of poetic evolution as stated in the text. See the quotations from Taine and others in the essay of Dr. Buck. The false conclusions of Heinzel in regard to simile and metaphor are of little moment compared with the general value of the essay which contains them: Ueber den Stil der altgermanischen Poesie, Strassburg, Q. F., 1875, a stimulating piece of work.
1132. Modern Language Notes, I. 83.
1133. Logically Gerber is right, Die Sprache als Kunst, I. 256, in putting interjections at one end of the linguistic process and metaphor at the other; but chronologically, historically, genetically, the assumption fails to hold.
1134. The subject is too wide for further treatment, and can be regarded here only in its relations to the beginnings of poetry. See, however, for the early stages of a metaphor, J. Grimm’s essay on “Die Fünf Sinne,” Kleinere Schriften, VII. 193 ff.; and F. Bechtel, Ueber die Bezeichnungen der sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen in den indogerm Sprachen, Weimar, 1879, where he shows how the idea of “bright” underlies so many of our words,—“glad,” for instance, which even in Anglo-Saxon meant “gleaming.” See, too, in this book the confusion, or flexibility, of words for the “bright” and the “loud,” seeing and hearing; also J. Grimm, “Die Wörter des Leuchtens und Brennens,” Kl. Schr., VIII. 263 ff.
1135. Allegory, now a huge projection of metaphor from the style into the subject-matter, is a consistent series of personifications not unlike the later stages of myth; in fact, late myth is allegory.
1136. On the tendency of rhythm and music to suggest images and stir the powers of language, see the wild but interesting words of Nietzsche, Geburt d. Tragödie, p. 48.
1138. Joshua Poole, English Parnassus, London, 1677, like Italians just before him, and like Vinesauf and others of earlier time, has an array of kennings whence the poet may pick and choose. Abel, for example (pp. 221 ff.), you may call “death’s first fruit,” or “death’s handsel.” Then there are “forms of invocating Muses” (p. 630), followed, alas, by “forms of concluding letters”—in prose.
1139. “The language of the age,” wrote Gray to West, April, 1742, “is never the language of poetry.”
1140. Kennings often read like riddles: so in Finnish, “contents of Wainamoinen’s milk-bowl,”—the sunshine. See, moreover, Scherer, Geschichte d. deutsch. Lit., pp. 7, 15; and R. M. Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, p. 160.
1141. In this sketch of differentiation in poetic style only outlines are essayed. The subject is uncommonly attractive, and a book on the history of metaphor would be welcomed by all students of style. Nothing has been said here of symbolic metaphor from animals and the like. See Brinkmann’s study of “Thierbilder in der Sprache,” Die Metaphern, Bd. I. Bonn, 1878. His researches in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, should be extended to half civilized and savage conditions, and should take a historical and genetic range. Of course, the æsthetic side of this whole subject is treated in Gerber’s well known book, quoted several times on preceding pages, Die Sprache als Kunst.
1142. It is noteworthy that Aristotle excludes improvisation from poetry; and in modern times Gerber (Die Sprache als Kunst) finds this rude kind of verse so opposed to his definition of poetry (“die Kunst des Gedankens,” ibid., I. 50; “enthusiasm plus deliberation,” I. 77), that he too rules it out, and says it belongs simply to “the art of language.” It is not well to drag such a ball-and-chain by way of definition when one is dealing with primitive poetry.
1143. See above, p. 215. There is a lively if exaggerated account of the rhapsode in Blackwell’s Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, pp. 104 ff. Limits already transgressed forbid the author to add any material on the minstrel in his relations to the making of poetry. See a brief account, with a few references, in Old English Ballads, pp. 310 ff. Further, see Piper, Spielmannsdichtung (Vol. 2 of the Deutsche National-Litteratur); Scherer, Gesch. d. deutsch. Dichtung im 11 u. 12 Jhrh. (Quellen. u. Forschungen, XII.); Wilmanns, Walther v. d. Vogelweide, especially pp. 39 ff.; the general account in Axel Olrik’s Middelalderens Vandrende Spillemaend (Opuscula Philologica), Copenhagen, 1887; Freymond, Jongleurs und Menestrels, Halle, 1883 (for the Romance side of the question); and portions of many other works, such as Jusserand, Théatre en Angleterre, p. 23, note; F. Vogt, Salman und Morolf, pp. cxxiii f.; notes here and there on Widsith and Déor, the earliest types of English minstrel; and so on.
1144. There were pedants before paper, however, in the days of great mnemonic feats. See Max Müller, in the Nineteenth Century, November, 1899, pp. 798 ff.
1145. This evolution of the solitary and deliberate poet has been outlined in Chap. IV.
1146. Burckhardt, Ren., I. 172. See also p. 250.
1147. Della Storia e della Ragione d’ogni Poesia, Vol. I., Bologna, 1739, pp. 155 ff.
1148. “Tutta volta bisogna ancor confessare, che questo fu il primo genere di Poesia, che fosse al Mondo.” There is a long account of improvisation in Crescimbeni, L’Istoria della Volgar Poesia, Venice, 1731 (written in 1697), pp. 219 ff. An old and very interesting gradus ad Parnassum is Ruscelli, Del Modo di Comporre in Versi nella Lingua Italiana, Venice, 1582 (a new edition), “nel quale va compreso un pieno ordinatissimo Rimario,” and there are directions for using the voice both for prose and for verse. The seventh chapter is on the “stanze d’ottava Rima,” and treats of improvisation, mentioning even an infant phenomenon in this art (“essendo ancor fanciullo ... non arrivava ai sedici anni”), who made verses off-hand on any subject which was given to him.
1149. From two books, one Italian, Saggi di Poesie parte dette all’ improvviso e parte scritte dal Cavaliere Perfetti patrizio Sanese ed insigne Poeta estemporaneo coronato di laurea in Campidoglio ... dal Dottor Domenico Cianfogni, 2 vols., Florence, 1748 (Vol. II. has the account of the crowning); and a Latin pamphlet of 56 pp., Josephi Mariani Parthenii S. J. de Vita et Studiis Bernadini Perfetti Senensis Poetae Laureati, Rome, 1771. They are interesting in many ways.
1150. Latin, xix.
1151. The pious father tells elsewhere of mitigating contrivances: “Frigida inter canendum uti solebat, ad fauces nimirum recreandas et ad nimium fervorem, quo incendebatur, restringuendum!”
1152. Along with Perfetti’s moribund art of individual improvisation dies as well the improvised flyting, even in its more complicated and artistic phases. Through sundry references made above (pp. 208, note, 325, 416 f.) in regard to the interlaced stanzas of ballad and song. I have come into a bit of unintentional and quite explicable confusion. These serranas were called artificial, and yet were cited in the proof of communal origins. Artistic and even artificial these serranas undoubtedly become; and yet so does the refrain. They are very common; as Professor Lang points out in his Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal, Halle, 1894, pp. xlvii, lxiii, they make “die Norm des altportugiesischen Kunstgedichtes,” and are found alike in songs of love and in the various kinds of flyting. Here, in the public song-duel, one crosses into communal territory; and the serranas go back to that rivalry of variation based upon a refrain or a repeated traditional verse.
1154. I regret that all references to Bücher’s Arbeit und Rhythmus have been made from the first edition, and not from the second, which came to my hands after the foregoing chapters were printed. In bulk the book has more than doubled, increase lying mainly in new songs and refrains of labour, particularly of Bittarbeit and Frohnarbeit. Neither this new edition, however, nor the new edition of Bücher’s Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft (see my note above, p. 107) changes materially his theory as quoted in defence of communal poetry. Not so much the priority of play is conceded as the early lack of a definite boundary between play and work. Again, references have been made above to Yrjö Hirn’s book, Förstudier till en Konstfilosofi; this material, and much more of the sort, are now to be found in the same author’s Origins of Art, London and New York, 1900. Possibly some modification, due to the chapter on “Erotic Art,” should be made in the statements of ethnologists with regard to the lack of this motive in savage poetry.
1155. The science of poetry has had its share of wild theories meant to establish “laws” of progress. See Tarde, Les Lois Sociales, pp. 24 ff. But the play of collective and individual forces is too evident, too reasonable, to be classed with Vico’s Ricorsi and with Plato’s or Bacon’s cycles.
1156. In Chapters III and VII.
1157. See the brilliant description of this epoch in the opening chapter of Pellissier’s Mouvement Littéraire au XIXᵉ Siècle, 5th ed., Paris, 1898.
1158. Notably Bücher, Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft,² Tübingen, 1898, “Der Urzustand.”
1159. See Professor Keasbey, International Monthly, April, 1900: “The Institution of Society.”
1160. Arbeit u. Rhythmus, 2nd ed., p. 340.
1161. In dances, of course, as well. To references scattered through the preceding pages, add Mommsen on the Camenae, Hist. Rome, trans. Dickson, 2d ed. London, 1864, I. 240.
1163. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand ...
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE, COMPLETE WORKS. With a New Portrait.
“This latest edition of his works, which as a book is every way what a complete, compact edition should be, and contains the only portrait we have ever seen which does his genius justice.”—N. Y. Mail and Express.
ROBERT BROWNING’S POETICAL WORKS.
Edited by Augustine Birrell. In two volumes.
“An edition which in every point of excellence will satisfy the most fastidious taste.”—Scotsman.
COLERIDGE’S COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS.
Edited, with Introduction, by J. Dykes Campbell.
MATTHEW ARNOLD’S POETICAL WORKS.
“Contains some of the wisest and most melodious verse that this age has produced.”—Athenæum.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY’S POETICAL WORKS.
Edited by Professor Dowden. With Portrait.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS.
With an Introduction by John Morley, and Portrait.
“Mr. Morley has seldom written anything fresher or more vigorous than the essay on Wordsworth which he has prefixed to Macmillan’s new and admirable one-volume edition of the poet—the only complete edition.”—Spectator.
“The finest of all tributes to the memory of Wordsworth is a complete edition of his poetical works, printed in one volume, and sold at a few shillings. It runs to near a thousand pages, and is all that it need be in type and clearness of arrangement. It stands midway between the éditions de luxe and the cheap typographical renderings of other classics of the English school. In a good binding it would do perfectly well for the library of a millionaire; in serviceable cloth it would make almost a library in itself for the student of humble means. It has a good bibliography of all the poet’s writings, a catalogue of biographies, an index of first lines and a complete list of the poems in the order of their production year by year. Above all, it has an introduction from the pen of Mr. John Morley.”—Daily News.
SHAKESPEARE’S COMPLETE WORKS.
Edited by W. G. Clark, M.A., and W. Aldis Wright, M.A. With Glossary. New Edition.
MORTE D’ARTHUR.
Sir Thomas Malory’s Book of King Arthur, and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table. The Edition of Caxton, revised for modern use. With an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, by Sir Edward Strachey. New Edition.
ROBERT BURNS’ COMPLETE WORKS.
The Poems, Songs, and Letters. Edited, with Glossarial Index, and Biographical Memoir, by Alexander Smith. New Edition.
SIR WALTER SCOTT’S POETICAL WORKS.
With Biographical and Critical Essay by Francis Turner Palgrave. New Edition.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH’S MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.
With Biographical Introduction by Professor Masson. New Edition.
EDMUND SPENSER’S COMPLETE WORKS.
Edited with Glossary by R. Morris, and Memoir by J. W. Hales. New Edition.
ALEXANDER POPE’S POETICAL WORKS.
Edited, with Notes and Introductory Memoir, by Professor Ward. New Edition.
JOHN DRYDEN’S POETICAL WORKS.
Edited, with a Revised Text and Notes, by W. D. Christie, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. New Edition.
COWPER’S POETICAL WORKS.
Edited, with Notes and Biographical Introduction, by Rev. W. Benham, B.D. New Edition.
MILTON’S POETICAL WORKS.
With Introductions by Professor Masson.
Transcriber's Notes
In addition to a few minor typographical errors which have been silently corrected, the following changes were made:
Missing footnote anchor added on page 158.
Missing page numbers added to the entry “Lithuania, songs of,” in the index.