POETRY AND PROSE.
Poetry has been called " the native language of the human race." Certain it is that no nation has been discovered so brutish or so forlorn that it did not stimulate its emotions and cheer its hours of gloom with song of some kind. The Eskimos of the dark and frozen North are devoted lovers of singing and music. When one feels himself insulted by another, he does not seek some bloody revenge, but challenges him to a combat of song, where each sings satirical verses reflecting on the other, and they separate with their honor as well satisfied as two French editors who have met in a duel, the sword having drawn from one or the other some drops of blood.
Poetry appeals to the emotional, prose to the intellectual, nature; the former aims to stir the imagination, the latter to enrich the intellect. As one or the other is predominant in the spoken or written literature of a nation, its ambitions and actions are directed by cool calculation or by passion.
Poetry is intimately connected with the art of music. The chants of the humblest tribes are accompanied by some rude instruments which serve to beat time; and the latest analysis of the accents and feet of the lines of the ripest poets seems to demonstrate that they are in accord with the principles of musical notation (Sidney Lanier).
Rhyme in does not constitute a general feature of poetry. In most languages it is unknown, and in some it would be impossible or nearly so. It was unfamiliar to and disregarded by the masters of verse in classical Greece and Rome. The quantity of the vowels in their stately idioms was sufficient to their ears, although the medieval Latinists proved how readily that tongue lends itself to rhythmi cal effects. In modern times it has different principles in tongues of near relationship. The charming assonance of the Spanish cannot be imitated in other Romance dialects, still less in intractable English. The allitera tion which is agreeable in Anglo-Saxon is unbearable in modern French and distasteful beyond very moderate limits in English.
These and like peculiarities depend upon the structure of languages, and react directly or indirectly on the life of nations. We must be con tent with giving them a passing reference to indicate how worthy they of the attentive study of the ethnologist.