UNPUBLISHED LETTERS.
MUSIC.
To the Editor of The Times, London.
Sir,—Whilst admitting the all-importance and the austere role of circumstance weighted with interest, and fused to an all-volatile point sufficient to write to you concerning, and always entering, freed from schism, the moot point, I beg leave to advance the suggestion that (with correct apposition of sentiment, already said) the moment has arrived for an improvement to be effected in the Hymnal, in the public offices of St. Paul's Cathedral employed.
For the furtherance of this important item of diocesan and divine service, "Hymns, Ancient and Modern," be it well known, has stood the crucial test of a number of years; while its mechanical characteristics have been demonstrated all the way along the metronome number of decades it has served to mollify and assuage the griefs and passions, and inspire the consciences of congregations using it habitually as a vade mecum.
While believing in the sedate grandeur of its stereotyped orthodoxy, I powerfully plead, and in a tone of restraint, this prerogative: that the edition of hymns known as "The Hymnary," should upon examination be found to contain more agreeable, versatile value and fecundity of literary nutrition: honourably and scholastically capable of out-classing the rival for whose displacement I plead; and competent at once to put yet better light with wholesomer sustenance and rarer spiritual food into the minds of its privileged students.
The ideas and principles conceived by the once editors and publishers of the volume whose richly bestraught merits I champion, and whose solemn rights I plead, (in the year 1871), was to place in society at once, all electrified, au prémier coup canonized (armed at all points), a work which should at a moment be complete in law; self-contained and academically referable to the stringent junctures of an ecclesiastical, a national, and a polyphonetic tribunal: a work which should loyally attract the acclaim of co-existing literary hymnals, and ever would, it was reverently hoped—a sentiment which I, for one, favourably concur in—remain, the key-symbol of the Reformed, Anglican faith, with its near, true, and ever new ally—a note as high, silvery and jurisprudential; purified domestic co-partnership!
To further substantiate and enhance my devoutly expressed remarks, I confidently state that the compilation of "Hymns Ancient and Modern" was not originally in fact the outcome of an individual movement, or yet of a moment. At periods diverse, and at stages various, it matured its conditional purpose by repeated acts of regeneration and reform, by keeping generally within the radius of a stereotyped policy of pruning and paring; which consolidated by degrees and swept it on to the confines and the platform of its national respectability.
Be it even tacitly acknowledged, in surveying the genesis of Hymnology that the function of revision has once been, a fact, applied to the "Hymns Ancient and Modern" since the appearance of "The Hymnary," in my estimation under a less searching eye than that which all impartially discriminated and directed, at one and at one time only, the laying together and the consolidating of the "particles predelix" of this frankincense offering of the National Church; a work of classic intent and æsthetic outcome. Personal labour designed it purposely for the hearts of men, but not for their faces; a character which, Christian-like, it inseparably wears, like French martial music.
Herein exemplified to noble British hearts is a bulwark that at once completely puts to rout no inconsiderable amount of the mildew mould of "Hymns Ancient and Modern," while never so much as tarnishing or jeopardizing the aroma of its native asceticism.
Interested bibliophiles may peruse pleasantly the trenchant remarks launched by the editors, (of the work upheld) literary and musical; and examine for their predilection by turning its pages the analytical merit of its composer's names; all serious-minded men; capable lamp-bearers in the wide arcana of classic music.
Stoical people do not know the wealth of chaste language stored up within the covers of "The Hymnary." A rare musician-poet is needed to resolve its pulpy flavour and discipline to the polemics of common life; whilst one, a connoisseur, would readily congratulate the sanguine, sensible, and all-seeing management, as regards to authors of words, indices of composers, indices of metres, metronome marks, which heralds and places it, in respect of completeness, ahead of all contemporaneous editions.
J. ATWOOD.SLATER,
Medallist & Premium Holder of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
4, Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol,
Epiphany, 1903.
LITERATURE.
To the Editor of THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE.
March, 1903.
Sir,—Touched by a virtuous sense that a noble writer has passed from the central and celestial sphere of his vocation, and discharging the offices of respect voluntarily admitted as a literary admirer, with sympathy in a bruised state of liquefaction, I maintain that the season for uttering a few words is clearly at hand, and should be turned to the advantage of retrospect.
Being bred of a generation which has read, with a spirit attuned to the pleasant influences of an Academic and a Saracenic art, the writings of John Henry Shorthouse, and ever discovering them to contain philosophic importance and pyschologic expression decidedly above the astuteness and ability of average writers; and having usually in them remarked wisdom, council and knowledge reminiscent of the inspired logicial writers and divines of the law-given Testaments; in point of enquiry, I am summarily induced to champion the belief that the psychologic, emphatic style adopted by the writer, with the success in high quarters attendant the disposal of his works, has not, convincingness being the indicator, been reached, nor surpassed. The Warwickshire alchemist invariably throws across his scenes and to the centre, a glare, a strong ray, which burns to the water-line the barque of Agnosticism. This is tacitly recognised, concurrently and alternately traced in the selection of the phrases, and in the subtle or dramatic sense of the scene photographed; the second inspiration springing into immediate co-operation, linking to the first the thought by a magnetised hyphen, causes his symbolistic pictures to thrive gloriously, rapturously; the first touch of sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly lit, although never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly system by our revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme passes of imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is naïvely introduced and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to glow in the crucible of memory's recesses. Specious instances of irony playing the manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence, fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas, in rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another. Connection, an element of robust mesmeric cohesion with this prized author being the adamantine hyphen, the articulating link, which compacts the roll. John Henry Shorthouse, the templar, the confessor of music, was, and concurrently, the apologist of philosophic light. Engaged to a powerful mechanism of romantic dogma, the nett article of its creed; the neochromatic acoustic regalia of stage eloquence, the key, or longest recurrent note; the van or middle the next, the sinuous lever of stage discipline. After all, concurrently may it not, be said that this colour instinct aspect of cosmically conceived romanticism is never wilfully vulgarized. For its incomparable, iconographical purpose it exists, and is as intrinsically useful and serviceable to the scheme as the figures which admirably illustrate the pictures of Hogarth and Holman Hunt. When introduced, music is rarely intended to edge itself into the important place of "first study." This in alchemy or personification being occupied by the circumstantial cruxes of life, philosophic morality, vested usually in courtly attire; I would not say abstract attire, for the clean-cut character it bears is too strictly defined (for the sake of that Artist's art) for such an impression to be born, or even to lurk by sentiment, there beneath.
The mould employed at all times is minutely fashioned, as a sculptor would, by investing his model with a code of spirituality, inspired with fire, which epicureanly endows fleeting emotion with a voice, and vitality lends also to distant-reaching invisible ends: hinting that the picturesque alchemy of music is potential too in reaching and touching the lower chords of animal passion, where movement is rapid and light redundant. The breast of the thoughtful writer heaved ever to animal instincts without measure in extolling the complex phases of court, ecclesiastic, and domestic oligarchy. Statesmanship and subjunction rise and peacefully sink together, and in his magnetic touch, are made to harmoniously coalesce in the political balance. Shorthouse the author, a believer in, a champion was of two-fold or dual cosmos: his colour sense being susceptible to and wrought upon in singular consular consistence with the effulgent dogmas of its creed, and in alliance with the spirit of the cinque cento Italian Renaissance Schools of Painting and Architecture. Practically speaking, he conceived a train of adept ideas, at times fanciful, and at times morbid, transforming them adroitly by adept excursions of cross-lit introspection, accentuation, and by dint of manual caress, as the first of players upon stringed instruments.
Music, I would apologetically infer, being the middle, the rallying feature, of Mr. J.H. Shorthouse's verbose apology. If fictionizing in prose, he writes with brief orange-hued flashes of liquid ether; each of short, all but, brief span. Characteristically, he belongs to the same school and unapproachable law as the French organist-composer, C.M. Widor: stringent, petulant observance of free uncurbed metronome time, allied to picturesque handling; punctuality of tidal consort rigidly regarding, when each, the one to the other, linked; less a care, by virtuous intuition displaying for lyric measure. The writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne more forcibly and piquantly evince cylindrical flow, and strike at the object lesson with less artificial, cadavre, fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper and tempo is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic certainty and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be or not. For freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never manifesting anxiety of freeing himself in prose from its insidious and arbitrary restraint, I attribute his tragical, subtle, gentle power of "connection," liaison; feeling for time; planetary time, be it lunar time, sometimes unmistakably, solar time; disallowing, by potency of sentimental touch, a sense of rupture, to linger. A noble stream by mute comparison, pursuing its course unwavering; interrupted but now and again, to the vast expansive ocean of shapeliness, of unity.
J. ATWOOD.SLATER,
Premium Holder & Medallist of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol.