This, as nearly as I have been able to render it in English spelling, was the way in which a French gentleman of really high culture was accustomed to read English poetry to himself. Is it surprising that he should have failed to appreciate the music of our musical verse? He did not, however, seem to be aware that there existed any obstacle to the accuracy of his decisions, but gave his opinion with a good deal of authority, which might have surprised me had I not so frequently heard Latin scholars do exactly the same thing. My French friend read "Claribel" in a ridiculous manner; but English scholars all read Latin poetry in a manner not less ridiculous. You laugh to hear "Claribel" read with a foreign pronunciation, and you see at once the absurdity of affecting to judge of it as poetry before the reader has learned to pronounce the sounds; but you do not laugh to hear Latin poetry read with a foreign pronunciation, and you do not perceive that we are all of us disqualified, by our profound ignorance of the pronunciation of the ancient Romans, for any competent criticism of their verse. In all poetry, in all oratory, in much of the best and most artistic prose-writing also, sound has a great influence upon sense: a great deal is conveyed by it, especially in the way of feeling. If we do not thoroughly know and practise the right pronunciation (and by the right pronunciation I mean that which the author himself _thought in_ whilst he wrote), we miss those delicate tones and cadences which are in literature like the modulations of the voice in speech. Nor can we properly appreciate the artistic choice of beautiful names for persons and places unless we know the sounds of them quite accurately, and have already in our minds the associations belonging to the sounds. Names which are selected with the greatest care by our English poets, and which hold their place like jewels on the finely-wrought texture of the verse, lose all their value when they are read with a vicious foreign pronunciation. So it must be with Latin poetry when read by an Englishman, and it is probable that we are really quite insensible to the delicate art of verbal selection as it was practised by the most consummate masters of antiquity. I know that scholars think that they hear the Roman music still; but this is one of the illusions of scholarship. In each country Latin scholars have adopted a conventional style of reading, and the sounds which are in conformity with that style seem to them to be musical, whilst other than the accepted sounds seem ridiculous, and grate harshly on the unaccustomed ear. The music which the Englishman hears, or imagines that he hears, in the language of ancient Rome, is certainly not the music which the Roman authors intended to note in words. It is as if my Frenchman, having read "Claribel" in his own way, had affirmed that he heard the music of the verse. If he heard music at all, it was not Tennyson's.