lyrics first took shape in his mind. The idea of casting a music ode into narrative or dramatic form was itself a new and happy one. The materials for the story of Alexander probably came harder and were only gradually pieced together in Dryden's imagination. It had been a commonplace among classical, post-classical, and Renaissance writers that ancient Greek music, especially "the lost symphonies," had strangely affected the spirits of men; Pythagoras had cured distempers and passions by the application of appropriate harmonies. Longinus had written (xxxiv): “Do not we observe that the sound of wind-instruments moves the souls of those that hear them, throws them into an ecstasy, and hurries them sometimes into a kind of fury?” Athenæus had cited Clitarchus as authority for the statement that Thais was the cause of the burning of the palace in Persepolis. Suidas, quoted by John Playford in his Skill of Musick, had related that Timotheus moved Alexander to arms. "But the story of Ericus musician," added Playford, "passes all, who had given forth, that by his musick he could drive men into what affections he listed; being required by Bonus King of Denmark to put his skill in practice, he with his harp or polycord lyra expressed such effectual melody and harmony in the variety of changes in several keyes, and in such excellent Fugg's and sprightly ayres, that his auditors began first to be moved with some strange passions, but ending his excellent voluntary with some choice fancy upon this Phrygian mood, the king's passions were altered, and excited to that height, that he fell upon his most trusty friends which were near him, and slew some of them with his fist for lack of another weapon; which our musician perceiving, ended with the sober Dorick; the King came to himself, and much lamented what he had done." Burton, after Cardan the mathematician, had said in the Anatomy of Melancholy that "Timotheus the musician compelled Alexander to skip up and down and leave his dinner." Cowley's thirty-second note to the first book of the Davideis, a veritable discourse on the powers of harmony, had contained the remark: "Timotheus by Musick enflamed and appeased Alexander to what degrees he pleased." Tom D'Urfey's ode for St. Cecilia's Day in 1691 had run merrily on through change after change of tempo, somewhat in the manner which Dryden was to employ: And first the trumpet's part Inflames the hero's heart; And now he thinks he's in the field, And now he makes the foe to yield, The battle done, all loud alarms do cease, Hark, how the charming flutes conclude the peace. . . The notes so soft, so sweet the air, The soul of love must sure be there, That mine in rapture charms, and drives away despair. In Motteux's Gentleman's Journal for January, ugh 1691-2 was written: "That admirable musician, who could raise a noble fury in Alexander, and lay it as easily, and make him put on the Hero, or the Lover, when he pleased, is too great an Instance of the power of Music to be forgotten." And only three months before Dryden was writing to his sons at Rome, Jeremy Collier, who is seldom thought to have been a benefactor of Restoration poets, had published in the second part of his Essays upon Several Moral Subjects an essay Of Musick wherein it was told how "Timotheus, a Grecian, was so great a Master, that he could make a man storm and swagger like a Tempest, and then, by altering the Notes, and the Time, he would take him down again, and sweeten his humour in a trice. One time, when Alexander was at Dinner, this Man played him a Phrygian Air: the Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance, and puts himself into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no sooner sounded by the Change of Harmony, but his Arms were Grounded, and his Fire extinct; and he sate down as orderly as if he had come from one of Aristotle's Lectures." Such were the scraps that lay at Dryden's hand in September of 1697. "I am glad to hear from all hands," he wrote to Tonson in December, "that my Ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry, by all the town: I thought so myself when I writ it; but being old I mistrusted my own judgment." It is a question whether Absalom and Achitophel and the Oldham are not better poetry than Alexander's Feast, which perhaps is only immortal ragtime. Some of the cadences are disap pointing; lines 128, 139, 140, and 145 puzzle and lower the voice of the reader. Yet few poems of equal length anywhere have been brought to a finish. on so consistently proud a level and in such bounding spirits. Here is brilliant panorama; here are responsive, ringing cadences; here is good-nature on the grand scale. And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain. 2 The enormous vitality of this ode not only has insured its own long life; for a century it inspired ambitious imitators and nameless parodists. John Wilkes in 17741 and the Prince of Wales in 1795 found themselves hoisted in mockery to the highest throne that pamphleteers could conceive, the imperial throne of Philip's warlike son. 1 W -s's Feast, or Dryden Travesti: A Mock Pindaric Inscribed to His Most Incorruptible Highness Prince Patriotism. London. 1774. Marriage Ode Royal After the Manner of Dryden. 1795. VII THE NARRATIVE POET That the greatest of all poems have been narrative does not prove that the highest function of poetry is to tell a story. It may merely have happened to be in connection with accounts of human actions that poets could perform to the best advantage. The conquest which prose fiction has made in the world of story since the day of Dryden may or may not signify that poetry is beaten; whether the withdrawal by poets into special corners where they cultivate fine static temperaments rather than copious narrative sympathies denotes that the poetry of the future will not be important like the poetry of the past, only time will tell. Certain it is that the idea of narration in verse is often now discredited. At any time in the seventeenth century this would have been heresy. Among theorists at least, occasional, journalistic, or lyrical verse was seldom if ever taken seriously; the epic was undisputed king. Yet out of the quantities of narrative verse which that age produced little had much or any meaning. The decay of the heroic tradition was already well-nigh complete. Even Milton's triumph, to modern secular minds, is one chiefly of style and mood; his supreme moments are moments of gorgeous reminiscence, when in his imagination the regions and the |