pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold
that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something
remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony--

_thoughts that move
Harmonious numbers,_

or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the
dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent
melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a
process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first
contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if
Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering
emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I
should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought,
unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same
time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is
inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint,
both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two
melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and
therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses
Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a
_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme.

We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to
reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the
outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie"
in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a
sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy,
Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of