te by reason of this
commercialisation of Art. At the best of times the average lyric author
has a difficult and somewhat heart-breaking task to dispose of his
wares, and we need not further harrow his artistic soul by suggestions
of literary impotence.

It must, however, be admitted that on the whole there is an
extraordinary poverty and bareness of idea and inspiration in the
general run of songs: neither Nature nor Love are themes that can ever
be finally exhausted while human nature remains as it is, but the
treatment can be so stereotyped that it eventually wears threadbare. It
is possible to become thoroughly weary of roses and gardens, and gardens
of roses, gardens without roses, and gardens where we hope there will be
roses. It is such a pity, too, that there are so few rhymes to "love."
Yet even in dissatisfaction there exists the element of progress: if we
are bored with the present style we shall demand something better, and
the demand will create the supply. But to swing from bareness and
boredom to the other extreme of abstruseness and complexity is no
remedy: in these latter qualities there exists no special compensating
virtue. Listening to a song as it is sung is very different to reading
the verse at leisure. The sense of the song must be caught as it flies,
the verse can be read and re-read if necessary, until its meaning be
clear. It is no progress, therefore, to worship the turgid and obscure,
whether in words or music, or both. We may pretend that we appreciate
things because we cannot understand them, but that is only a concession
to convention and a convenient way of smothering artistic conscience.

Of late an outcry has arisen, on the part of wise men in exalted
station, about "beastly tunes," but surely if a tune can attain
sufficient popularity to earn the picturesque adjectives of the
academic, there must be some element in it which has escaped the
attention of its detractors. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, which
played for some lengthy period in London a little while back, showed
that popular music might yet be extremely clever and artistic in scope
and performance. There were high-brow musicians who would not even go to
listen to such, but preferred to condemn it unheard: the loss was
emphatically that of the high-brows. Humour abounded in this little band
of performers on such a strange array of instruments, and it appeared as
if the players enjoyed their work no less, at any rate, tha