The Andover Review; A Religious and Theological Monthly Volume 10 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... "I have never been so palpably convinced as in my present occupation how closely substance and form are connected." And Lewis himself makes the distinction between prose and poetry solely on the ground of form. There must be something in the thought requiring the metrical form; otherwise it is not poetry. Try the experiment of turning a piece of impassioned poetry into the form of prose, and while you may retain the thought in all its logical connections, and also the imagery, you find that something has slipped through your fingers in the process. The vital element refuses to be thus transferred. There is no transmigration of the spirit. You can only restore its power by restoring the form which embodied it. It is not too much to say that there is only one form of words in which a given thought can be perfectly expressed. After Plato's death the words of the first line of his "Republic" were found in his study variously disposed in seven different ways. To find the one form is characteristic of the great masters of expression, who are in the truest sense great discoverers. It is in harmony with the principle here enunciated--the principle that the inward life must always control the outward expression--that the Latin Hymn attained its final form. Not that its final form is by any means perfect, but that so far as it is a departure from the original model, the development is due to the pressure outward of the spirit which animates the hymn itself. The direction and extent of this development may be clearly seen by comparing a pagan hymn of the classical period with one of the later hymns of the church. Here, for example, is a stanza from the " Carmen Seculare" of Horace: --Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui Promis et celas aliusque et idem...