excellence which they were able to supply. In the great divergence of existing verdicts we saw a plain hint, confirmed in other ways, that some element which played an important part in the formation of the judgments was ignored in the expositions; and that the very allowance that might apparently be made for it, in a vague phrase such as 'laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth,' betokened neglect of the enormous power and variety of its influence. The moral was that, if there is so much in our poetical convictions and preferences which we must accept without explaining, we should be chary of attaching too absolute a value to our own orders of merit, and of measuring poetical achievements by any 'reasonable' considerations.

A discussion of the nature of this magical or non-reasonable element led on to its bearings on varieties of taste, and so on varieties of judgments and of comparative estimates of poets and poems. We found, too, that the same neglect of it which so swells the controversial and ephemeral part of criticisms is at the root of various rather unreal views as to the position and future of Poetry in the modern world; and that critics often ignore the actual position of poetical productions in the minds of

men, even while loosely appealing to the world's verdict. Passing on to more general questions of appreciation of Poetry, we found that the canon of 'popularity' or 'the general verdict' must be treated at once with respect and with caution. For if popularity in its fullest sense seems to be the best, and indeed the only, conceivable objective standard of excellence, we have also to recognise that the appeal to it cannot be made very definite at any particular date, and that no census would be delicate enough to measure the depth as well as the width of poetical influences; and, above all, that that extreme acuteness of pleasure, which is at the root of any one's irresistible impulse to claim the general verdict for this or that poet, is to be regarded as more or less idiosyncratic-not, of course, in the sense that he is alone in it, but that the perhaps large class who share it are still confronted with other large classes, whose experience of the same feeling lies in different directions.

It is hard to enforce points like these without conveying an impression of factious opposition; but I have not said a word that detracts from the substantial value of the critical writings to which I have mainly referred. What I have urged leaves the

positive sphere of reasoning and expository criticism absolutely unchanged; indeed in considering the standard of popularity, taken in the deeper Utilitarian sense, the essential importance of the poet's choice of subject, and of his relation to the very points on which reasoning and expository critics can find most to say, was insisted on with an urgency to which some of those critics would themselves demur. Nothing has been opposed, except the habit of backing favourites and passing universal judgments—and even this only in excess. Let the champions continue from time to time to enter the lists and have their tilts; man is a combative animal, and poetical polemics may amuse even where they do not instruct. But the recognition, in principle, that things seen, even by other people, go for more than things not seen, even by oneself, and, in practice, that energy is more profitably spent in struggling towards the other people's standpoints than in defending one's own, would tend, I believe, to a most salutary increase in the sum of happiness derived from appreciation of Poetry.

251

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC.1

MR. JAMES SULLY, in a generous review of The Power of Sound published in Mind, vol. vi, put forward certain objections in so clear and compact a form as to invite reply. And though I can

1 Some apology is perhaps needed for including in a collection of Essays what is in form merely a reply to criticisms of a previous book. A good deal of what is here said might, no doubt, have found a more appropriate place in a second edition of the work itself: might, but for one sufficient reason-the practical certainty, namely, that the work itself will never reach a second edition. Though expressly addressed to the 'naïve layman,' demanding no preliminary knowledge of even the simplest technicalities, and largely devoted to a vindication of the essentially popular character of the art which is its subject, its bulk got it at once stamped as 'ponderous,' and it has been supposed to be an esoteric treatise, comprehensible only to experts. After seven years, an impression of this sort is not likely to get corrected. But so strange a thing is authorship that even the failure of a book does not preclude the desire that its positions should be made as intelligible as possible; and it is as tending possibly to make some points clearer that these brief supplementary remarks are reprinted, with some notice of foreign criticism which has appeared since they were first published. Though necessarily much compressed, they are so written as to be understood without consultation of the 'ponderous' tome to which they refer.

scarcely hope here to make any positive addition to my side of the case, or to be more convincing in a brief paper than in a long book, there may be some advantage in embracing the views attacked in a succinct statement, and pointing out where and how (as it appears to me) the attack leaves the gist and strength of my arguments untouched.

Mr. Sully's main difference from me lies in his refusing to recognise the unique and independent character which I attribute to what I have called 'the musical faculty,' and the consequent impossibility of obtaining ultimate or even approximate explanations of its actions and verdicts, and of the more distinctive sort of musical impressions; 'the hopelessness' (to quote my preface) ' of penetrating Music in detail, and of obtaining, whether in objective facts of structure or in fancied analogies and interpretations, any standpoint external to the actual inward impression, from which to judge it' -from which to measure and account for its presentation in any particular case of a characteristic pleasure-giving quality. The faculty to which I refer the perception of this quality Mr. Sully regards as an 'unnecessary deus ex machina,' brought in to cut the knot of an æsthetic problem admittedly complex and difficult, but likely (he thinks) to