except perhaps in a few exclamations or interrogations, we
are at liberty to raise or sink our voice an octave or two at pleasure,
without altering the sense of the words. Hence, if either poetry or prose
be read in melodious tones of voice, as is done in recitativo, or in
chaunting, it must depend on the speaker, not on the writer: for though
words may be selected which are less harsh than others, that is, which
have fewer sudden stops or abrupt consonants amongst the vowels, or
with fewer sibilant letters, yet this does not constitute melody, which
consists of agreeable successions of notes referrable to the gamut; or
harmony, which consists of agreeable combinations of them. If the Chinese
language has many words of similar articulation, which yet signify
different ideas, when spoken in a higher or lower musical note, as some
travellers affirm, it must be capable of much finer effect, in respect to
the audible part of poetry, than any language we are acquainted with.

There is however another affinity, in which poetry and music more nearly
resemble each other than has generally been understood, and that is in
their measure or time. There are but two kinds of time acknowledged in
modern music, which are called _triple time_, and _common time_. The
former of these is divided by bars, each bar containing three crotchets,
or a proportional number of their subdivisions into quavers and
semiquavers. This kind of time is analogous to the measure of our heroic
or iambic verse. Thus the two following couplets are each of them divided
into five bars of _triple time_, each bar consisting of two crotchets and
two quavers; nor can they be divided into bars analogous to _common time_
without the bars interfering with some of the crotchets, so as to divide
them.

_3_ Soft-warbling beaks | in each bright blos | som move,
4 And vo | cal rosebuds thrill | the enchanted grove, |

In these lines there is a quaver and a crochet alternately in every bar,
except in the last, in which _the in_ make two semiquavers; the _e_ is
supposed by Grammarians to be cut off, which any one's ear will readily
determine not to be true.

_3_ Life buds or breathes | from Indus to | the poles,
4 And the | vast surface kind | les, as it rolls. |

In these lines there is a quaver and a crotchet alternately in the first
bar; a quaver, two crotchets, and a quaver, make the second bar. In the
third bar there is a quave