This may be carried too far, as, even in these short poems, each idea changes the feeling. Reading all in one spirit does not mean a monotonous drift. Speakers often fail to make a point impressive from a misconception of unity. All is colored with one emotion; the great central emotion is anticipated, and there is no variation or movement of passion. The highest unity can be obtained only by sequence and opposition. Each idea must have its own character, and then it can be brought into true unity with others. Unity is not only the highest quality of art and the climax of artistic endeavor, it is also a test of right methods of procedure in art work, especially in vocal expression. Where the method aims to regulate the modulations of the voice by rules, then inconsistencies and lack of organic coherence begin to take the place of that sense of life which lies at the heart of every true product of art. But where vocal expression is studied as a manifestation of the processes of thinking; where the teacher is able to see and to show a student, not only the chief fault in the action of the body and the voice, but its ultimate cause in the action of the mind; and where he is able to awaken genuine thinking and assimilation, to inspire imaginative action and dramatic instinct, one of the first results to follow is the truer energy of the student's faculties and powers, and the higher and more natural unity of the complex elements of his expression. then Words, as a form of expression, are symbolic or conventional representatives of ideas; but while speaking words, the voice is modulated, consciously or unconsciously, and reveals that which words cannot express. The changes of pitch, inflections, and textures manifest the process of thinking, the speaker's aims, feelings, convictions, and degree of interest, and his many attitudes towards ideas or his hearers. To reveal these elliptic and emotional relations is the function of vocal expression. Thus it is subjective, complex, and spontaneous, and hence less subject to rule and conscious regulation than any other artistic action of the human being. It reveals the deepest processes of thinking, the degrees and modes of assimilating and realizing truth, and hence more definitely than any other art, it shows the sincerity and genuineness of the man, his real character, his real interest, when rightly used; but when it is taught in an objective way, as an art, in obedience to rules, when it is taught as Grammar is taught, and an endeavor made to acquire modulations of the voice as words are acquired, and to make all modulations conform to rules, then vocal expression may, in a sense, become a foreign language, and its use a means of developing unnaturalness and affectation. As vocal expression is the nearest to Nature of any artistic act, those qualities which are universally present in all Nature's processes, such as simplicity, ease, freedom, directness, repose, power, animation, and unity, are always found predominant. These qualities are the revelation of life, and must be developed by stimulating the life of the man, by awakening his powers to natural and intense activity, and by securing a sense of the passing of their activity into form or relation with other minds. If the thinking is genuine, if the assimilation is real, if the successive ideas and the feeling dominate the man at the instant he speaks, then expression is not a mere reproduction of memorized signs, a fossilized relic of what has been in the past, but the spontaneous life of the man bringing all the most delicate elements of expression into harmonious relationship to each other, to the speaker and to other minds. Voice and body are brought into unity, and even the elemental powers of being, thinking, feeling, and choosing; then vocal modulations become living and true, and expression a revelation of the thought and experience of the man. INDEX. Subjects of lessons are printed in CAPITALS; authors from whom selections are taken in Abraham and the Angel, 218. Acting, assimilation in, illustrated, 235; Action, not gesticulation, 239; relation to Actor contrasted with orator, 322-323. Agitation, from Wendell Phillips, 134. ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM, Stanza from Mary Amateur acting, danger in, 318. ANDERSON, ALEXANDER, Cuddle Doon, 275. ARISTOTLE, definition of art, 221; of poetry, ARNOLD, MATTHEW, Dover Beach, lines Art and Sorrow, from In Memoriam, 138. ASSIMILATION, DEVELOPMENT OF, AND HUMOR, 328; AND LANGUAGES, 333; con- Background, created by imagination, 82-87. Barbara Frietchie, Whittier, 232. Bassanio and Shylock, Shakespeare, 236. BROOKS, REV. PHILLIPS, from Withheld Com- Brookside, The, Lord Houghton, 122. BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, from Thanatop- Burlesque, peculiarities of, 286. CALVERLY, Gemini and Virgo, 332. CHANGES IN FEELING, 203-207. Character, Etymology of the word, 193; in CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IMAGI- CHENEY, Kitchen Clock, 227. Christabel, Coleridge, lines from, 94. COLLINS, WILLIAM, Coleridge on Spon- 27. Concord Hymn, Emerson, 42. Contemplation, necessity of, 31. CONTRAST, 209-213. Contrasts in movement, 310-311. Constance, Immolation of, Scott, 289. Comedy, nature and rendering, 284, 285; COOK, ELIZA, Churchyard Stile, 302. CRAIK, MRS., Now and Afterwards, 215. Cuddle Doon, Anderson, 275. Cushman, Charlotte, her reading, 326-327, Dangers in Dramatic Expression, 342. Day Dream, Tennyson, lines from, 132. DEMOSTHENES, sentence from, 141. DE QUINCY, THOMAS, Literature of knowl Destruction of the Carnatic, Burke, 140. Dialect, chiefly melody and rhythm, 273-4; THE EDUCATIONAL DOMETT, ALFRED, Christmas Hymn, 163. DRAMATIC INSTINCT, ELEMENTS OF, DRAMATIC EXPRESSION, FAULTS AND DAN- Dramatic Participation, illustrated, 253. untruthful, 345. Earnestness, nature of, 323. ELIOT, GEORGE, lines from, 28. ELLIOTT, EBENEZER, Plaint, lines from, 180. Elijah's Flight, and Vision, 264. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, The Concord Hymn, 42; lines from, 172, 173. Emotion, different in imaginative stimulus, Epic and ballad, 314; nature of, 119; dig Erl King, The, Goethe, 336-337. Eve of St. Agnes, Stanza from, Keats, 67. |