VULGAR SONGS
[VULGAR SONGS]
“As for the common people, they have songs of their own, which conform as far as possible to classical models, but are much mixed with colloquialisms, and are accordingly despised by all well-bred persons. The ditties sung by singing-girls to the twanging of the guitar belong to this class.”—B. H. Chamberlain.
Poetry is the most meretricious of arts. Among its adherents are more unconscious snobs than in any of the classes distinguished and damned by Thackeray. This is because extrinsic ornament, the use of words to dazzle or conceal, like jewels or cosmetics, has more effect on most readers than intrinsic beauty, be it depth of feeling or exactitude of thought. Poets are to be excused, and often applauded, for pandering to our eyes and ears instead of ministering to our souls. It is better to admire a mean thought or paltry emotion, draped in exquisite folds of melody and colour, than to deplore a fine theme, marred by vile and clumsy treatment, just as a plain woman, dressed to satisfy the most critical arbiter of elegance, is more pleasing to contemplate than a bank-holiday belle, however comely, in discordant frock and feathers. Now, a beautiful woman beautifully robed is as rare as a poem of which the sense is æsthetically equal to the form; hence, words being cheaper than ideas and pretty things more plentiful than pretty features, we delight in second-rate women and in second-rate poetry, for want of first-rate, until, the taste being corrupted, we are inclined to endorse Théophile Gautier’s canon, La perfection de la forme c’est la vertu. The farther we follow this misleading maxim, the farther we leave behind us that most vital poetry, life itself. Often this fact is not perceived, for secondary art has generated secondary emotion: we derive pleasure from allusion rather than illusion, from sleight of wit rather than strength of spirit. Tennyson tells an Arthurian story, or wishes to, and his listeners are so charmed by the irrelevant embroidery of sound and simile that they do not perceive that what they obediently consider a naïf barbarian, the hero, is really a Broad Church country-parson in fancy dress. Mr. Swinburne writes an Athenian play, or intends to, and his readers are so ravished by the splendour of intrusive rhetoric that they are in no mood to distinguish between archaic piety and nineteenth-century free-thought. Thus the modern crowns his Muse with paper roses, cleverly manufactured, while the true flower blushes undisturbed or fades in humbler keeping.
Fortunately it happens from time to time that the caprice of fashion lights upon a real rose, which is at once admired not only by the connoisseurs, but by the uncultivated crowd, which has never been taught to appreciate paper roses. Only it is to be observed that the former class retain their reputation by denying the name of rose to the new flower: it is a cowslip, a daisy—nothing more. Having ceased to be meretricious, the kind of verse I mean has ceased to be poetry, in the opinion of these judges; on the contrary, they insist that, in their eyes, by discarding the frippery of language, which they rate so highly, the author of it is no poet, but a vulgar writer. And so, in the highest sense of the word, he is. He has touched the heart of the vulgar; he has found a common factor, which will “go” successfully “into” any assemblage of figures. Take, for instance, three capital instances of vulgar songs, which, as it seems to me, comply with the conditions demanded of poetry, that it shall communicate at once a vivid picture and a direct emotion. When Mr. Albert Chevalier sings—
“We’ve been together naow for forty year,