THE WHISPERING GALLERY

BY ROSSITER JOHNSON

Some truths may be proclaimed upon the housetop;
Others may be spoken by the fireside;

Still others must be whispered in the ear of a friend.

NE day the conversation turned to the subject of songs, and the difficulty of writing a good song, which has been remarked so often, was alluded to as a matter of course.

"It has been said, as if it could not be disputed," said Mrs. Trenfield, "that this arises from the fact that a good song can come into existence only when an occasion gives rise to it and inspires the poet. But I doubt it. I think the song waits, not for the occasion, but for the genius. Why should that be different in this respect from any other work of art? Take novels, for example. All the material for Scott's stories existed before Scott was born; and the same is true of the works of Dickens. So also you may say of Byron's poems-with the exception of the personal element, though that is pretty large in his case. So also of nearly all the work of Irving and Hawthorne. Lowell, I think, is the only one among the most eminent American writers, whose genius happened to coincide with a great occasion and produce immortal work that appeared to spring from the occasion."

How about Mrs. Stowe?" said I.

be

"Surely!" she answered. "I must include her masterpiece, of course." "But," said Elacott, "this is only an a priori argument, after all. It may true of the novel, and not true of the song. Both are works of art; but from their very different natures one is necessarily the work of deliberation and elaboration, while the other may be the spontaneous growth of an hour."

"Very true!" said Mrs. Trenfield. "I need not have mentioned the novels at all. But I am prepared to maintain my argument on its home ground, so to speak; for I have been looking over a good many songs with this idea in mind."

"May I ask," said Elacott, "whether you considered them only as poems, or as songs complete."

"A good poem may not be a good song, even when it is set to music," said Mrs. Trenfield; and some that are held to be fairly good songs are not much as poetry. I considered them in the light of all requirements of a song."

"And how many did you find?"

"Guess.”

Miss Ravaline guessed a thousand. I guessed five hundred. Elacott guessed forty, which made the ladies wonder, but I thought I knew why he placed the number so low.

"I found about three hundred," said Mrs. Trenfield; "and I venture to say that the number of those which have been produced by occasions is hardly so great as

the number of occasions that would be expected to produce songs but have not produced them."

"As I think of it," said I, "some of the songs that have been produced by occasions, and have become famous because of the occasion, or of some circumstance other than the musical or poetical merit, are really very poor affairs. Take the 'Starspangled Banner,' for instance. It is clumsy as a poem, and not very singable, but it is kept alive simply by the spirit of patriotism. I think our national song has not yet been written."

"I agree with you," said Mrs. Tren field.

"And the national song of England

is superior to it only in the music. The words are contemptible."

At this declaration we all expressed surprise.

"Well, just look at them coolly," said she. "Suppose you were an editor and these words were offered to you as a poem-would you accept it? The first stanza begins:

'God save our gracious King (or Queen)!

Long live our noble King!

God save the King!'

Nothing, so far, but three expressions, all very much alike, of a very commonplace prayer, and not even a new epithet of any kind to relieve it. Any teacher correcting it as a composition would strike out two of the three lines as tautological. Then we have:—

Send him victorious,

Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,-

God save the King!'

Send him where, pray? Is he in exile, and do they want him sent home? That might apply to one king, but how can it apply to all and be suitable for a national song? In the next stanza the Lord is called upon to scatter the King's enemies. How should that apply in the case of a sovereign (like the present one) who is supposed to have no enemies? And then we come upon the remarkable poetic lines::

'Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks;

On thee our hopes we fix.'

It must be said, however, that these ridiculous lines contain the only correct triple rhyme in the song."

"But, surely," said Elacott, "there must be some better stanzas in that song, though I do not remember them. In fact, while I supposed it to be a great song, I have not been familiar with anything in it except the refrain."

"It has but one other stanza," said Mrs. Trenfield, "and this is it:—.

Thy choicest gifts in store
On him be pleased to pour,
Long may he reign!

May he defend our laws,
And ever give us cause

To sing with heart and voice

God save the King!'"

"There is nothing ridiculous in that," said Elacott, "and neither is there any poetry. It is simply rhymed platitude-not quite correctly rhymed, at that."

"Of all the political and martial songs that belong to our country," Mrs. Trenfield continued, "I am inclined to think the John Brown song is the greatest, if not the only great one. The thought of the opening stanza is so original and striking, and the swing of the tune is so powerful, that it matters little what the other stanzas are. Some of them are ridiculous enough, to be sure. Henry Howard Brownell tried to reform the song by turning it into correct poetry, just as Albert Pike tried to do the same thing for Dixie.' Brownell and Pike were both poets, but neither succeeded in effecting any reform in the popular versions. I suppose when a song has the power almost to sing itself no one can stop it long enough to change its verbal garments." "You are probably right as to those songs," said I, "but have you not overlooked 'My Maryland '?"

“Instead of overlooking it," said she, "I studied it. I can understand why it was popular at the time it was written, but I fail to see why it should endure, and I do not believe it will endure. It has hardly a stanza that will stand scrutiny. Almost every assertion in it either was untrue from ti. first, or has been reversed by subsequent events. In the first stanza the talk about despots and torches is bosh of course, and the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore' was simply the blood of a riotous mob, at least one of whom was righteously shot by the Mayor himself. In another stanza there is talk about baffled minions,' who, whether they were minions. or not, at least proved that they could not be baffled. And one would think the author would like to blot out the last stanza; for, in the first place, his assertion 'she 'll come! she'll come!' proved to be altogether erroneous, as not even the song was powerful enough to make Maryland go where the poet wanted her to; and if he lets the preceding line stand, history compels him to admit that the valor of his champions was conquered by mere scum.' I should think he would rather strike out the line."

"Your criticisms are apparently just," said Elacott; "but I suppose the song obtained its life, not so much from the sentiments as from the tune and the happy formula of the stanza."

"But neither of those is original," said Mrs. Trenfield. "The tune is simply that of the college song 'Lauriger,' and the form of stanza is copied from Mangari's 'Karamanian Exile.""

"You seem inclined to deal in destructive criticism to-day," said I. “I should like to hear you talk of songs that you like."

"If I do that," said she, "I fear I must go to other fields than the martial and political. I see you smile, and I know you are thinking 'Ha! sentimental songs are the only ones for her.' That is partly true, but not altogether. Every song ought to have sentiment of some kind. A song without sentiment is like a rose without odor. But there are different kinds of sentiment. For one kind of sentiment, I think Moore's 'Oft in the stilly night' is absolutely perfect. For another kind, the Mary of Argyle of Jeffereys. For another, Burns's Ae fond kiss.' For another, Hoffman's 'Sparkling and bright. For another, Mackay's Good time coming.' And for perhaps the homeliest sentiment, There's nae luck about the house.""

"Have you not forgotten Home, sweet home '?" said I.

6

"I did not forget it," she answered. "It has sentiment, good sentiment, true sentiment, and thereby hangs its life. For it has almost nothing else that a song should have. With the exception of the refrain, the lines are about what a school-girl would write who was required to produce a rhymed composition; and it is almost impossible to prevent the tune from dragging."

"May I suggest," said I, " that 'The Bay of Dublin' presents a sentiment different from any that you have indicated? I suppose the persons are very few to whose minds some definite picture would not be called up by the lines:

'There's no one here knows how fair that place is,

And no one cares how dear it is to me.'

Though to be sure the sentiment comes pretty close to that of 'Home, sweet home.' And did you not abandon the martial field a little hastily? It appears to me that Scott produced two that have strong claims to perfection. I mean Bonnie Dundee' and 'Hail to the Chief.""

Mrs. Trenfield admitted that she had overlooked them.

"And what about Tennyson's 'Bugle song'?" said Elacott.

"It is a pretty lyric," said she, "but at the risk of being called heretical I must say that I do not rate it highly as a song. It has description, but hardly sentiment. I would rather instance his cradle-song Soft and low' as a specimen of perfection."

"Field's Little Boy Blue' has been set to music," said Elacott; "and when I heard it sung it struck me as simply exquisite. Does it not present still another kind of sentiment?"

"True," said Mrs. Trenfield, "but it is so exquisite as to be painful. I should think a parent who had lost a child would find it very difficult to listen to it. There are some things that are too sacred even for song."

"That reminds me," said Miss Ravaline, "that now and then some one ventures to suggest that not all our sacred songs are what they should be. I have even heard it asserted that there are not in reality one hundred good hymns, though every hymnal contains at least five hundred hymns."

"That is my opinion," said Elacott; "but I have attributed it rather to my peculiar tastes than to anything that critics generally would condemn. For instance, I suppose Watts would be called the great hymn-writer; yet there is hardly one of his hymns that it is any pleasure to me to sing, and they certainly are not poetry."

"I fear my tastes in that line are quite as peculiar as yours," said Mrs. Trenfield. "There are some hymns by much better poets than Watts which are almost repulsive to me. Take, for instance, that one of Cowper's which begins with the line:

There is a fountain filled with blood.'

In what poem that was not a hymn-and therefore held almost exempt from criticism -would such a figure be tolerated? I think I may say I do not like any hymn that is a plain statement of any theological doctrine, though I may firmly believe in the doctrine itself. The purely devotional hymns are the only ones that I really enjoy. I like Sir Robert Grant's litany, and his hymn When gathering clouds around I view,' and