Even
the work of Mr. Pater, who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of
English prose now creating amongst us, is often far more like a piece of
mosaic than a passage in music, and seems, here and there, to lack the
true rhythmical life of words and the fine freedom and richness of effect
that such rhythmical life produces. We, in fact, have made writing a
definite mode of composition, and have treated it as a form of elaborate
design. The Greeks, upon the other hand, regarded writing simply as a
method of chronicling. Their test was always the spoken word in its
musical and metrical relations. The voice was the medium, and the ear
the critic. I have sometimes thought that the story of Homer's blindness
might be really an artistic myth, created in critical days, and serving
to remind us, not merely that the great poet is always a seer, seeing
less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the soul,
but that he is a true singer also, building his song out of music,
repeating each line over and over again to himself till he has caught the
secret of its melody, chaunting in darkness the words that are winged
with light.
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