Chapter V: Part I: Studies in Vocal Interpretation (2)

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He
who aims for perfectness in a trifle is trying to do that trifle
holily. The _trier_ wears the halo, and therefore, the halo grows
as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspiration
to do perfectly,--is it not religion practicalized? If we use the
name of God, is this not God's presence becoming actor in us? No
need, then, of being "great" to share that aspiration and that
presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and
its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as
well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live
splendidly! That is the royal truth that we need to believe,--you
and I who have no "mission," and no great sphere to move in. The
universe is not quite complete without _my_ work well done. Have
you ever read George Eliot's poem called "Stradivarius"?
Stradivarius was the famous old violin-maker, whose violins, nearly
two centuries old, are almost worth their weight in gold to-day.
Says Stradivarius in the poem:

"If my hand slacked,
I should rob God,--since He is the fullest good,--
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
_He_ could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio."

That is just as true of us as of our greatest brothers. What, stand
with slackened hands and fallen heart before the littleness of your
service! Too little, is it, to be perfect in it? Would you, then,
if you were Master, risk a greater treasure in the hands of such a
man? Oh, there is no man, no woman, so small that they cannot make
their life great by high endeavor; no sick crippled child on its
bed that cannot fill a niche of service _that_ way in the world.
This is the beginning of all gospels,--that the kingdom of heaven
is at hand just where _we_ are. It is just as near us as our work is,
for the gate of heaven for each soul lies in the endeavor to do
that work perfectly.

But to bend this talk back to the word with which we started: will
this striving for perfection in the little thing give "culture"?
Have you ever watched such striving in operation? Have you never
met humble men and women who read little, who knew little, yet who
had a certain fascination as of fineness lurking about them? Know
them, and you are likely to find them persons who have put so much
thought and honesty and conscientious trying into their common
work--it may be sweeping rooms, or planing boards, or painting
walls--have put their ideals so long, so constantly, so lovingly
into that common work of theirs, that finally these qualities have
come to permeate not their work only, but so much of their being
that they are fine-fibred within, even if on the outside the rough
bark clings. Without being schooled, they are apt to instinctively
detect a sham,--one test of culture. Without haunting the
drawing-rooms, they are likely to have manners of quaint grace and
graciousness,--another test of culture. Without the
singing-lessons, their tones are apt to be gentle,--another test of
culture. Without knowing anything about Art, so called, they know
and love the best in _one_ thing,--are artists in their own little
specialty of work. They make good company, these men and
women,--why? Because, not having been able to realize their Ideal,
they have idealized their Real, and thus in the depths of their
nature have won true "culture."

You know all beatitudes are based on something hard to do or to be.
"Blessed are the meek": is it easy to be meek? "Blessed are the
pure in heart": is that so very easy? "Blessed are they who mourn."
"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst--who _starve_--after
righteousness." So this new beatitude by its hardness only falls
into line with all the rest. A third time and heartily I say
it,--"Blessed be Drudgery!" For thrice it blesses us: it gives us
the fundamental qualities of manhood and womanhood; it gives us
success in the thing we have to do; and it makes us, if we choose,
artists,--artists within, whatever our outward work may be.
_Blessed be Drudgery_,--the secret of all culture!

And now, as a final step in this preliminary study, a step which shall again give practice in both forms of expression, you are to choose from your vital interests one concerning which you hold intense convictions. First you are to set forth these convictions in the strongest piece of persuasive prose you can command: this is work for your study. Second, you are to summon all your vocal resources, and, with the one idea of persuading us of the truth of your convictions, make to us for them a direct appeal: this work is for the class-room. So shall we have combined the preliminary study in vocal expression of _direct appeal_ with the preliminary study in verbal expression of _persuasion_.

FIRST STUDY

TO ESTABLISH VITALITY IN THINKING

Among the axioms of our subject-matter already formulated stands this one: reading aloud is thinking aloud. If reading aloud is thinking aloud the quality of the reading will depend, of course, upon the quality of the thinking. But while clear thinking does not assure lucid reading (since there are other elements in the problem), the converse is true, that good reading implies clear thinking. For it is impossible to read convincingly unless one is thinking vitally, which brings us to the object of this study: _To Establish Vitality in Thinking._

Do you know what it means to think vitally in reading? It means a concentration of your mind upon the thought before you until you, yourself, seem to be thinking that thought for the first time,--until you seem to be bringing forth a thought of your own conception instead of rethinking the conception of another's mind. Is this a familiar experience? It must become one if you are to become a true interpreter. For the true interpreter is first of all the keen thinker.

We do not say of the great actor, after a performance of Hamlet, "He played Hamlet wonderfully!" We say, rather, "He was Hamlet." The great actor creates the part he plays each time he plays it. He creates the part by living the part. Even in the same way the great interpreter creates the thought he voices through a concentration of mind which appropriates the thought and makes it his own to voice.

We have said that the greatest need of the human heart is for self-expression. To satisfy the heart that act of expression must be a creative act. True interpretation is creative expression. The fundamental step toward creative expression is complete possession of the thought to be expressed. Complete possession depends upon your power to concentrate your mind upon a thought until it is your own. The first step in interpretation is to establish vitality in thinking.

The new arithmetic trains the mind to see the relation behind the mathematical statement of the relation. The child who "says his tables" to-day is not repeating by rote words and figures, he is realizing vital relations, he is developing a sense of proportion, he is learning to think vitally. The old method in arithmetic left the statement "two times one is two" a cold mathematical fact; the new method makes it a key to living relations. One in the "tables" of the child in mathematics to-day stands for a definite object, and the statement "two times one is two" is an interesting and significant fact. The statement through imaginative thinking, which is vital thinking, may be invested with personal significance and become a personally interesting fact. Try it! Say your "tables of one" up to ten times one is ten, _thinking vitally_, which means getting behind the statement of the relation to the relation itself, behind the sign to the thing signified. Let your "one" stand each time for something you desire--as a small boy might desire pieces of candy, or a miser "pieces of eight"; now think vitally in this way and say, "Ten times one is ten!" What has happened to the mathematical fact? It has become a living expression!

This might be called _interpreting_ our mathematics. Why not? That is the surest way to master them! It is the surest way to mastery of any subject, of any art, of Life itself. It is the only real way. But we have leaped from the part to the whole, from the study of a detail to an application of the law governing the whole subject. Back we must go to our special point. If we can turn the statement of a cold mathematical fact into the expression of a living vital relation by thinking vitally, so investing the fact with personal significance and making it our own, what can we not do with the more easily appropriated thought which poets and philosophers and play-writers have given us, and with which rests our especial concern as interpreters? Let us see what we can do! But first there is one other point to be considered in this question of _vital thinking_. We have spoken of one aspect of the process of the mind in thinking,--the _concentration_ upon an idea until it is one's own. But there is the passing of the mind from idea to idea to be noted. This phase the psychologists name "transition." This alternate concentration and transition constitutes the "pulsing of the mind" in reading, which Doctor Curry discusses so vitally in his _Lessons in Vocal Expression_. Now transition is an inevitable result of concentration and follows it as naturally as expiration follows inspiration. This being true, we need only note, in our study of the process of the mind in reading aloud, the question of transition, letting it follow naturally the fundamental act of concentration which is our chief concern. If the intense concentration is accomplished the clean transition will follow. In choosing material which shall require for adequate interpretation this intense concentration of the mind, we find our source, of course, to be the literature of thought rather than the literature of feeling. The literary form which seems to furnish the best examples for our purpose at this point is the essay where the appeal is, primarily, at least, an intellectual appeal. For my own suggestive analysis and for our preliminary study in vital thinking I have chosen paragraphs from Emerson's essays because Emerson's almost every paragraph is an essay in miniature. The story is told of the gentle seer that once in the midst of a lecture he dropped all the pages of his manuscript over the front of the pulpit. The incident disturbed his auditors greatly until they saw Mr. Emerson gather up the leaves and without any effort at rearrangement in the old order begin to read as though nothing had happened. Every sentence was almost equally pertinent to the main theme, and suffered not from a new juxtaposition. So in printing extracts from this source we feel no sense of incompleteness.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

Let us read this passage from Emerson's _Experience_:

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of
the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It
is not the part of men, but of fanatics--or of mathematicians, if
you will--to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not
worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in
want or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us
husband them. Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as
five minutes in the next millennium. Let us be poised, and wise,
and our own, to-day. I settle myself ever the firmer in the creed
that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad
justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our
actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as
the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole
pleasure for us.

If you do not think your way through this paragraph clearly, concisely, logically, intensely, when you read it aloud your voice will betray you. In what way? Your tone will lack resonance, your speech will lack precision, your pitch will be monotonous, your touch will be uncertain, your inflections will be indefinite. Your reading will be unconvincing, because it will fail in lucidity and variety. In approaching this passage let us study first the question of proper emphasis. What is emphasis? The dictionaries tell us that, in delivery, it is a special stress of the voice on a given word. But we must use it in a broader sense than this. To emphasize a word is not merely to put a special stress of the voice upon that word. Such an attack might only make the word conspicuous and so defeat the aim of true emphasis. True emphasis is the art of voicing the words in a phrase so that they shall assume a right relation to one another and, so related, best suggest the thought of which they are the symbols. I do not emphasize one word in a phrase and not the others. I simply vary my stress upon each word, in order to gain the proper perspective for the whole sentence. Just so, in a picture, I make one object stand out, and others fall into the background, by drawing or painting them in proper relation to one another. I may use any or all of the "elements of vocal expression" to give that proper relation of values to the words in a single phrase. I may pause, change my pitch, vary my inflection, and alter my tone-color, in order to give a single word its full value. Let us try experiments in emphasis with some isolated sentences before analyzing the longer passage. Here is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's beautifully wrought periods:

"Every man has a sane spot somewhere."

Let us vary, vocally, the relative values of the words in this sentence, and study the effect upon the character of the thought. Let us look upon the statement as a theme for discussion. With a pause before the second word, "man," a lift of the voice on that word, a whimsical turn of the tone, and a significant inflection, we may convert an innocent statement of fact into an incendiary question for debate on the comparative sanity of the sexes. A plea for endless faith and charity becomes a back-handed criticism of women. Now let us read the sentence, giving it its true meaning. "Every man has a sane spot somewhere." Let your voice make of the statement a plea, by dwelling a bit on the first word and again on the last word. Hyphenate the first two words (they really stand for one idea). Compound also the words "sane" and "spot." Lift them as a single word above the rest of the sentence. Now put "somewhere" a little higher still above the level of the rest of the sentence. So, only, have we the true import of this group of words:

some

where.

sane-spot

Every-

man has a

Analyze the rest of these sentences from Stevenson in the same way, and experiment with them vocally.

That is never a bad wind that blows where we want to go.

For truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of
the enemy.

Some strand of our own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.

Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out
or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not
to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.

The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions
of me, all different from each other and from us; there's no royal
road, we just have to sclamber and tumble.

Now, once more, and this time with detailed analysis, let us study the passage from _Experience_. Let us first consider for a moment some of the words which make this passage powerful: _finish_, _journey's-end_, _good hours_, _wisdom_, _fanatics_, _mathematicians_, _sprawling-in-want_, _sitting-high_, _firmer_, _poised_, _postpone_, _justice_, _humble_, _odious_, _mystic_, _pleasure_. When spoken with a keen sense of its inherent meaning, with full appreciation of its form, and with delight in molding it, how efficient each one of these words becomes! When shall we, as a people, learn reverence for the words which make up our language--reverence that shall make us ashamed to mangle words, offering as our excuse that we are "Westerners" or "Southerners" or from New York or New England or Indiana. The clear-cut thought calls for the clean-cut speech. Let us say these words over and over until they assume full value. And now we pass from words to groups of words. The mind and the tone must move progressively through the first three phrases which make up this first sentence: "To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom." The phrases must be held together by an almost imperceptible suspension and upward reach of the voice at the end of each group of words, and yet each phrase must be allowed to be momentarily complete. Read the sentence, making each phrase a conclusion, and then again letting each phrase look forward to the next. Each phrase is really a substantive, looking forward to its predicate through a second substantive which is a little more vital than the first, and again through a third substantive which is a little more vital than either of the other two. Bring this out in reading the sentence. The next sentence depends for its significance upon your contrasting inflections of the three words "men," "fanatics," and "mathematicians"; and again upon your sympathetic inflection of "sprawling-in-want" and "sitting-high." "It is not the part of men, but of fanatics--or of mathematicians, if you will--to say that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want or sitting high." In your utterance of these words can you make "men" MEN, and "fanatics" _fanatics_, and consign "mathematicians" to the cold corner of human affairs designed for them? Can you so inflect "sprawling in want" and "sitting high" as to suggest a swamp and a mountain-top, or a frog and an angel? Let your voice leap from the swamp to the mountain-top. Let it climb. Now comes the swift, concise, admonitory sentence: "Since our office is with moments, let us husband them." Pause before you speak the word "husband," and _husband_ it. "Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium." Make "five minutes of to-day" one word, and accent the last syllable, thus: five-minutes-of-_to-day_. Let the tone retard and take its time on the last seven words. Now poise your tone for the next sentence. "Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day." The paragraph closes with a more complex statement of the theme. Let your voice search out the meaning. Let it settle down into the conclusion, and utter it convincingly. Give a definite touch to the words which I shall put in italics. "I settle myself ever _firmer_ in the _creed_ that we should not _postpone_ and _refer_ and _wish_, but do _broad-justice_ where we _are_, by _whomsoever_ we deal with, accepting our _actual_ companions and circumstances, however _humble_ or _odious_, as the _mystic officials_ to whom the _universe_ has dedicated its _whole pleasure_ for _us_."

Analyze vocally the following paragraph:

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that
he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that
though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing
corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of
ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in
him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he
can do, nor does he know until he has tried.... What I must do is
all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally
arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole
distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder
because you will always find those who think they know what is your
duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after
the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own;
but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.--_Self-Reliance._

SELECTIONS FOR INTERPRETATION

By choosing as further material for vocal interpretation selections which shall also be good examples for examination as to their literary construction, we shall serve the double purpose of adapting our studies in vocal interpretation to the uses of English composition.

The following selections are to be: first, read aloud (in class); second, examined as to their literary construction (in class); third, analyzed and reported upon as specimens of exposition and argumentation (in the study).

Exposition is an explanation, a setting forth, or an expounding. It
is an attempt to render something plain, an effort to convey to the
reader a train of thought which represents the conclusions of the
writer upon a subject. The writer, it is at once evident, must be
acquainted with the subject with which he deals. He is presuming to
teach, and must be in a position which justifies him in so doing.
He is prepared to write an exposition only when he is able, in
regard to the topic in hand, to take frankly and unreservedly the
attitude of a teacher.

A teacher must have many good gifts and graces; and whoever else
may fail to be well acquainted with a given lesson, he must have
mastered it thoroughly. To teach he must first know. Whoever has
taught understands how completely different is the attitude of the
teacher from that of the pupil. While the pupil is hardly expected
to be able to do more than reasonably well to understand the
subject in hand, the teacher must be able to explain, to justify,
to make clear relations, and to impart the whole matter. The pupil
is excused with a sort of hearsay knowledge, but the teacher must
have a vital experience of what he teaches. Especially must he be
able to comprehend and to represent a subject as a whole. He is
responsible for the student's being able in turn to co-ordinate
facts and theories so as to produce unity; and it is therefore
essential that he himself have power to hold and to make clear a
continuous train of thought.

The teacher, moreover, must have over his mind discipline so firm
that he is not dependent upon moods. He must cover the wide
difference between the train of thought which springs spontaneously
in the mind and that which is laboriously worked out as a logical
sequence of ideas relating to a subject forced upon the attention.
The pupil may, to a certain extent, indulge the vagaries of his
inclination, but the teacher must respond to the need of the
moment. He must have trained his mind to give an intelligent
judgment upon any matter presented to it. He is not equipped for
instructing--nor is any individual ready for life--until he can
command the resources of his inner self to the utmost. The trained
person is one who can take a subject which may not at the outset
especially appeal to him, which is full of complications, which is
not in itself, perhaps, attractive, and can insist with himself
that his mind shall master it thoroughly. He is able so to expend
his whole mental strength, if need be, upon any necessary topic
that the subject shall be examined, acquired, assimilated, and then
shall be so organized, so illumined, and so presented that others
shall be instructed. The mind of the teacher, in a word, is so
disciplined that it will work when it is ordered.

The ideal state of mind for him who wishes to communicate knowledge
is that of being absolute master of all its resources. Many who
possess no inconsiderable powers of thought are practically unable
to command the best powers of their intelligence. They depend upon
the whim of the moment, upon some outward pressure or inward
impulse, to arouse their intellect. They fail to reflect that while
any ordinary intellect naturally forms some opinion upon any
subject which interests it, only the trained mind is able to judge
clearly and lucidly of an indifferent or uninteresting matter. In
this mastery of thought lies the difference between the sterile and
the productive mind. Only one brain in a thousand has not the
disposition to shirk work if it is allowed, and every student has
moments when his intelligence seems almost to act like a spoiled
child that hates to get up when called on a cold morning. To
establish the power of the will over the intellect is the object of
education, and the ability to exercise this power is what is meant
by the proper use of the word "cultivation."

The mental process of the cultivated thinker when considering any
subject is likely to be: first, to become sure of his terms; then,
clearly to set before his mind the facts and conditions; and,
lastly, to make the possible and resulting deductions and
conclusions. This gives a hint, and indeed practically affords a
rule for the writer of exposition.

An exposition, broadly speaking, may be said to consist of three
steps which nearly correspond to the three steps of mental
activity just set down: the Definition, the Statement, and the
Inference.

Definition is making clear to self or to the reader what is under
discussion.

Statement is the setting forth of whatever is to be said of the
facts, conditions, relations, and so on, which it is the object of
the exposition to make clear.

Inference is the conclusion or conclusions drawn.

These three parts will seldom be found as formal divisions in any
ordinary exposition, but in some sort they are always present; and
the writer must at least have them clear in his mind if he hopes to
render his work well ordered, comprehensive, and symmetrical.
Together they are woven as the strands which give a firmness of
texture to the whole.

To illustrate the bearing of this analysis on the composition of an
exposition, we may imagine that a student has been required to
write a theme on "The Influence of College Life." He has first to
concern himself with definition. He must decide what he means by
college life as a molding influence; whether its intellectual, its
social, its moral aspects, or all these. He must consider, too,
whether he is to deal with the effect upon specific characters or
upon types; whether upon boys during the time they are in college
or as a training for after life; whether at a special institution
or as the result of any college. If he limits himself to one phase
of influence, he must in the same way decide fully in what sense
he intends to treat that phase. If he is to consider the social
effect of college life, for instance, he has to define for himself
the sense in which he will use the word "social." Is it to mean
simply formal society, adaptation to the more conventional and
exclusive forms of human intercourse, or to imply all that renders
a man more self-poised, more flexible, and more adaptable in any
relations with his fellows? If, on the other hand, it is the
intellectual influence of college life which is to be studied, the
first step is to decide what is to be considered for this purpose
the range of the term "intellectual"; whether it is to be taken to
mean the mere acquirement of information; whether it has relation
to acquirement or to modification of mental conditions; whether it
means change in the mind in the way of development or of
modification; whether it shall be applied to an alteration in the
student's attitude toward knowledge or toward life in general. All
this is in the line of definition, and it is naturally connected
with the statement of whatever facts bear upon the topic under
discussion.

Statement has largely to do with fact. Theory belongs rather to
whatever inference is part of an exposition. In the statement will
come the observations of the writer; whatever he knows of general
conditions at college, or such individual examples as bear upon the
question in hand. From these he will inevitably draw some
conclusions, and the value of the exposition will depend upon the
reasonableness and convincingness of these inferences, as these
will, in turn, depend upon the clearness of the writer's original
knowledge in regard to his intentions and the logic of his
statements.

Composition, it should be remembered, is the art of communicating
to others what is in the mind of the writer. To write without
having the subject abundantly in mind is to invite the reader to a
Barmecide feast of empty dishes. The necessity of insisting upon
such particulars as those just given of the process of making an
exposition arises from the stubborn idea of the untrained student
that writing is something done with paper and ink. It is, on the
contrary, something which is done with brains; it is less putting
things on paper than it is thinking things out in the mind.

Before leaving the illustration of a theme on the influence of
college life we may glance a moment more at the difficulty, even
with so simple a subject, of attaining perfect clarity of thinking.
One of the first things which must be determined is the essential
difference of life in a college from ordinary existence. If the
subject be given out to a class of students half the themes handed
in will begin with a remark upon the great change which comes to a
boy who finds himself for the first time freed from the restraints
of home. The moment this idea is presented to the mind it is to be
looked at, not as something with which to fill so much paper, but
as a stepping-stone toward ideas beyond. It is necessary, for
instance, to determine the distinctions between freedom at college
and freedom elsewhere; to decide wherein lie the differences in
the conditions which surround a boy in a university and one who
escapes from the restrictions of home by going away to live in a
city or in a country village, on shipboard or in the army. To be of
value, every thought in an exposition must have been tested by a
comparison with allied ideas as wide and as exhaustive as the
thinker is equal to making.

To learn to think is, after all, the prime essential in
exposition-writing, and the beginning of thought is the realization
of what is already known. The student who patiently examines his
views on the subject of which he is to write, who determines to
discover exactly how much he knows and what is the relative
importance of each of his opinions, is likely soon to come to find
that he is considering the theme chosen not only deeply, but with
tangible results. The value of any exposition, to sum the matter up
in a word, rests primarily and chiefly on the thoroughness of the
thought which produces it.--ARLO BATES.[3]

[3] This selection from Prof. Arlo Bates's _Talks on Writing
English_ is printed by permission of the author and his publishers,
Houghton Mifflin Company.

The _Idylls of the King_ has been called a quasi-epic. Departing
from the conventional epic form by its lack of a closely continuous
narrative, it has yet that lofty manner and underlying unity of
design which leads us to class it with the epics, at least, in the
essentials. It consists of a series of chivalric legends, taken
chiefly from the _Morte d'Arthur_ of Sir Thomas Malory, grouped so
as to exhibit the establishment, the greatness, and the downfall of
an ideal kingdom of righteousness among men. "The Coming of
Arthur," the ideal ruler, shows us the setting up of this kingdom.
Before this was disorder, great tracts of wilderness,

Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less.

Arthur slays the beast and fells the forest, and the old order
changes to give place to new. Then the song of Arthur's knights
rises, a majestic chorus of triumph:

Clang battle-axe and clash brand. Let the king reign.

In "Gareth and Lynette" the newly established kingdom is seen doing
its work among men. Arthur, enthroned in his great hall, dispenses
impartial justice. The knights

Ride abroad redressing human wrongs.

The allegory shows us, in Gareth's contests with the knights "that
have no law nor King," the contest of the soul with the temptations
that at different periods of life successively attack it:

The war of Time against the soul of man.

Then follow the "Idylls," which trace the entrance and growth of an
element of sin and discord, which, spreading, pulls down into ruin
that "fellowship of noble knights," "which are an image of the
mighty world." The purity of the ideal kingdom is fouled, almost at
its source, by the guilty love of Lancelot and the Queen. Among
some the contagion spreads; while others, in an extremity of
protest, start in quest of the Holy Grail, leaving the duty at hand
for mystical visions. Man cannot bring down heaven to earth; he
cannot sanctify the mass of men by his own rapturous anticipations;
he cannot safely neglect the preliminary stages of progress
appointed for the race; he "may not wander from the allotted field
before his work be done."

So by impurity and by impatience the rift in the kingdom widens,
and in "The Last Tournament," in the stillness before the impending
doom, we hear the shrill voice of Dagonet railing at the King, who
thinks himself as God, that he can make

Honey from hornet-combs
And men from beasts.

In "Guinevere," unequaled elsewhere in the "Idylls" in pure poetry,
the blow falls; at length, in the concluding poem, Arthur passes to
the isle of Avilion, and once more

The old order changeth, yielding place to new.

Tennyson himself tells us that in this, his longest poem, he has
meant to shadow "sense at war with soul," the struggle in the
individual and in the race, between that body which links us with
the brute and the soul which makes us part of a spiritual order.
But the mastery of the higher over the lower is only obtained
through many seeming failures. Wounded and defeated, the King
exclaims:

For I, being simple, thought to work His will,
And have but stricken with the sword in vain;
And all whereon I lean'd, in wife and friend,
Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm
_Reels back into the beast_, and is no more.

But he also half perceives the truth which it is the poet's purpose
to suggest to us. It is short-sighted to expect the immediate
sanctification of the race; if we are disheartened, striving to
"work His will," it is because "we see not the close." It is
impossible that Arthur's work should end in failure--departing, he
declares, "I pass, but shall not die," and when his grievous wound
is healed, he will return. The _Idylls of the King_ is thus the
epic of evolution in application to the progress of human society.
In it the teachings of "In Memoriam" assume a narrative form.

Move upward, working out the beast,

may be taken as a brief statement of its theme: and we read in it
the belief in the tendency upward and an assurance of ultimate
triumph:

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God hath made the pile complete.

--PANCOAST.[4]

[4] Reprinted by permission from Pancoast's _Introduction to English Literature_. Copyright, 1907, by Henry Holt and Company.

As an interlude study which shall look back to the step we have just taken, and forward to the one we are about to take, let us test our growth in _vitality in thinking_ and our need of _intelligence in feeling_, by voicing the following selections from didactic poetry. This form affords the best exercise in both activities because it makes a double appeal, and so a double demand upon the interpreter--an appeal through form to emotion, through aim to intelligence, and through message and atmosphere to both. I have chosen examples of this form in which the beauty and fascination of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, and the didactic nature of the thought do not seem to overbalance each other. If either should predominate you must, by your interpretation, strike the balance. In reading Robert Browning's _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ (from which I shall quote but a few verses) you must carry to your auditor the full import of the philosophy, but in doing so you must not lose the beauty of the verse in which the poet has set it.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

* * * * *

Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive and hold cheap the strain,
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

* * * * *

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account:
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

* * * * *

--BROWNING.

FORBEARANCE

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
And loved so well a high behavior,
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?
O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky;--
He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;--
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth":--
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;--
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

--EMERSON.

As a final step in this study which has for its aim an increase in your power to _think vitally_ you are to choose from the "great heap of your knowledge" a subject about which you have sufficient understanding and enthusiasm to justify your discussion of it, and with this as a topic you are "to unmuzzle your wisdom" in the form of _exposition_ or _argumentation_.

SECOND STUDY

TO ESTABLISH INTELLIGENCE IN FEELING

Art is in bondage in this country: its internal polity to the temperamental ideal; its external polity to the commercial ideal. Business and social life are in the same bondage. In music, in drama, in letters, in society, and in trade we permit personality to exploit itself for commercial purposes. The result is either chaotic or calculated expression on every side. When temperament seeks restraint in technique, and policy, whether business or social, seeks freedom in service, then shall we have that balanced expression in art, in society, and in trade which should proceed from the American personality and distinguish American life.

It may seem a far cry from a comment upon American life to the subject of this second study--_intelligence in feeling_. Carry the idea of balanced expression from the introduction to the body of this exposition and the transition is not difficult to make.

"Wonderful technique, but no heart in her singing!" "Tremendous temperament, but no technique!" "She moves me profoundly, but oh, what a method!" "Her instrument is flawless, but she leaves me absolutely unmoved." Have you ever heard such comment, or made such comment, or been the subject of like comment? Diagnosis of the case, whether it be yours or another's, should be the same--lack of poise in expression, producing the undesirable effect upon the auditor of no emotion at all, or of unintelligent emotion. To determine just what we mean by intelligent emotion is our first problem for this study.

An experience I had in visiting a class in interpretation in a well-known school of oratory some years ago will illustrate the point. The selection for interpretation was the prelude to the first part of _The Vision of Sir Launfal_.

"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays; ..."

The work was well under way when I entered the class-room. My entrance did not disturb the expression on the face of the student who was "up before" the class. A Malvolio smile was never more deliciously indelible. I thought at first my request to see some work in interpretation had been mistaken and I had been ushered into a class in facial gymnastics. Then I concluded that Mr. Lowell's poem was being employed as text for an exercise in smiling. Finally the awful truth came upon me that this teacher of interpretation was seriously attempting to secure from her pupils an expression which should suggest the spirit of the June day by asking them to assume the outward sign of joy known as smiling. The result was a ghastly series of facial contortions, which left at least one auditor's day as bleak as the bleakest December. No intelligent feeling can be induced in interpreter or auditor by assuming the outward sign of an inward emotion. Some of you are recalling Mr. James's _talk to students_, on the reflex theory of emotion, and are being confused at this point. Let us stop and straighten out the confusion. Mr. James says:

"Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

"Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear."

The application of this principle to the reading of these lines would seem to justify the method the teacher was pursuing. A smile is acceptedly the indication of happy emotion, the outward symbol of inward rejoicing or joy. The June day is full of joyful emotion,--the joy of awakening life. Applying Mr. James's theory, a legitimate way to induce the inward emotion would seem to be to assume the outward sign. But wait a moment. Let us look to our premises. Mr. Lanier, who sings of Nature with joyful understanding, cries in _Sunrise_:

"Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree
That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know
From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?
They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
Reason's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies
Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?"

Here is a great master of verbal expression whose inward joy finds its outward symbol not in a smile but in a tear. So you and I may respond to Mr. Lowell's "high tide of the year" with smiles or with tears, with bowed head and closed eyes, or with eyes wide and head raised to meet the returning flood of life.

The effect upon me of the beauty of this day as Mr. Lowell has painted it, my personal emotional response is interesting psychology, but is not my concern as an interpreter. My own emotion and its personal response belong to my preparatory interpretative efforts in the study; but when the interpretation is ready for the audience-room, the emotion must be assimilated into the interpretative act and appear only as part of the illumination of the bit of life I am presenting.

The object of all great art, whether creative or interpretative, is not to exploit the personality of the artist, but to disclose at some point the personality of the very God himself, which is life. The revelation not of personal emotion but of universal life is the legitimate aim of all artistic effort.

Emotional response will accompany every vital mental conception. Abandonment to that response is a legitimate and necessary part of full comprehension. But such abandonment, as I have said, belongs to our preparation for expression. Such abandonment must not be taken out of the study on to the stage. No temperamental expression along any line is fit for the public until it is controlled by technique, the technique which has been worked out by the masters of every art, not excluding the art of living.

It is not the effect of June upon you I want from your interpretation, it is the spirit of June itself. You must let me have my own emotion. Your emotional response was the result of your mental concept; mine, to be intelligent, must find the same impulse. If you impose your own emotion upon me mine will be merely an unintelligent reflection of yours. Taking as our ideal of the interpreter, the absolutely pure medium, bars out every manifestation which calls attention to the interpreter, and so interferes with the direct message.

"The natural form of expression which literature takes when it passes beyond the normal powers of prose, is lyric poetry. When your feelings rise beyond a certain degree of stress you need the stronger beat and vibration of verse; to express the highest joy or the deepest grief poetry is your natural instrument." Again corroborated in our choice of direction in study by Mr. Gardiner, let us turn for "material" in the establishment of _intelligence in emotion_, to the most intensive type of the literature of feeling,--lyric poetry.

"Every now and then a man will come who will reduce to words--as Mr. Ruskin has done--some impression of vivid pleasure which has never been reduced to words before. It is only the great master who makes these advances; by studying his works you may perhaps come somewhere near the mark that he has set." This further word from the same paragraph should influence us to pause with Mr. Ruskin's poetry in prose form for a brief study on our way to the lyrics of Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats, a song from Shakespeare, and some few from the rare, more modern lyricists. I shall trust you to this by-path under the guidance of _The Forms of Prose Literature_, where you will find passages from such masters of prose as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Stevenson--passages of surpassing lyric beauty which shall furnish models for your correlated study in Description.

SUGGESTIVE ANALYSIS

I have chosen for suggestive analysis of the lyric, Shelley's ode _To a Skylark_. I shall analyze in detail only the first five stanzas:

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.