[Sidenote: _Simple terms confounded._]

It is not alone a knowledge of the constituent factors of a symphony,
or the difference between a sonata and a suite, a march and a mazurka,
that is rare. Unless you chance to be listening to the conversation of
musicians (in which term I wish to include amateurs who are what the
word amateur implies, and whose knowledge stands in some respectable
relation to their love), you will find, so frequently that I have not
the heart to attempt an estimate of the proportion, that the most
common words in the terminology of the art are misapplied. Such
familiar things as harmony and melody, time and tune, are continually
confounded. Let us call a distinguished witness into the box; the
instance is not new, but it will serve. What does Tennyson mean when
he says:

"All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune?"

[Sidenote: _Tune and time._]

Unless the dancers who wearied Maud were provided with even a more
extraordinary instrumental outfit than the Old Lady of Banbury Cross,
how could they have danced "in tune?"

[Sidenote: _Blunders of poets and essayists._]

Musical study of a sort being almost as general as study of the "three
Rs," it must be said that the gross forms of ignorance are utterly