hat they really did
was to teach the chorus the proper declamation and stage
action. It is well known that at the Dionysian Festival
it was to the poet as "chorus master" that the prize was
awarded, so entirely were the arts identified one with the
other. That declamation may often reach the power of music,
it is hardly necessary to say. Among modern poets, let any
one, for instance, look at Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur" for
an example of this kind of music; the mere sound of the words
completes the picture. For instance, when Arthur is dying and
gives his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere with the command
to throw it into the mere, the latter twice fails to do so,
and returns to Arthur telling him that all he saw was

"The water lapping on the crag
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

But when at last he throws it, the magic sword

"Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn.
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur."

Again, when Sir Bedivere, carrying the dying king, stumbles
up over the icy rocks to the shore, his armour clashing
and clanking, the verse uses all the clangour of cr--ck, the
slipping s's too, and the vowel _a_ is used in all its changes;
when the shore is finally reached, the verse suddenly turns
into smoothness, the long _o_'s giving the same feeling of
breadth and calm that modern music would attempt if it treated
the same subject.

Here are the lines:

Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare, black cliff clang'd round him as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels.
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake
And the long glories of the winter moon.

When we think of the earlier Greek plays, we must imagine
the music of the words themselves, the cadenced voices of
the protagonist or solitary performer, and the chorus, the
latter keeping up a rhythmic motion with the words. This,
I am convinced, was the extent of Greek music, so far as that
which was ascribed to the older poets is concerned.

Instrumental music was another thing, and although we possess
no authentic examples of it, we know what its scales consisted
of and what instruments were in use. It would be interesting
to pass in review the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles