melody and harmony to which we have been habituated from our earliest years. Of all mufical airs, none are more truly affecting than those which were anciently adapted to the popular ballards of particular countries, fuch as Switzerland and Scotland.

They come o'er the ear, like the fweet fouth
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour-

They show in the greatest degree the power of the affociation of ideas. They can awaken the lively emotions of tenderness and melancholy pleasure in every fufceptible mind: but their effect is felt in the highest degree by the natives of thofe countries, when far diftant from home. As foon as the Swifs foldier hears the Ranz des Vaches fung in a foreign land, the tranfporting founds inftantly present to his mind all the attachments, the employments, and the scenery which endear his native country to him his heart is melted with the recollection, he weeps with emotion, and his defire to return home produces a deep despondency, which nothing but the fight of his beloved objects can effectually

Our cots upon the mountain's fide x
O when with Ifabel fo gay,
Our hamlet's joy and pride,
Shall I dance the roundelay,
Beneath the fhade of poplar high,
To the flute's foft melody.

H.

O when fhall I return to fee
All the objects dear to me?
My father, my mother,
My fifter, my brother:
My pretty lambs,

Highly frifking round their dams:
And my shepherdefs fo gay,
Far more frolicsome than they.
O when shall I return to fee,

All the objects dear to me ? a

The dignity of the art is beft difplayed when the efforts of its great mafters are directed to facred

mufic. How delightful are the anthems of Kent, Boyce, and Hayes, when fung by fome of the best chorifters, whom St. James's Chapel, and the Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, can boaft:and how transporting are the airs of Handel when warbled from the lips of a Mara and a Billington. They difengage our minds from the common objects of life, lull our paffions to repofe, and remind us of the pleasure enjoyed by our first parents when liftening to the mufic of the angels in the garden of Eden.

How often from the steep

Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or refponfive each to others note,
Singing their great Creator? oft in bands

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With heavenly touch of inftrumental founds
In full harmonic number join'd, their fongs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven.

In a good concert of inftrumental mufic, the different parts are fo combined and justly adapted, as to produce very great pleasure. The various notes are fo ingeniously blended, there is fuch an happy union of the loud and the soft tones, of ftringed and of wind inftruments, of vocal and inftrumental power, that the ear is filled, not overwhelmed; tranfported, not diftracted. Not only the ear, indeed, enjoys a very great fenfual, but

b Paradife Loft, book 4.

T 2

the

the mind experiences a confiderable intellectual gratification.

The prevailing fashion of the prefent times is by no means favourable to the union of the best efforts of Poetry with the nobleft productions of Mufic. Handel indeed gave new charms to the lyric mufe of Dryden, and Arne compofed the opera of Artaxerxes in the moft delightful ftyle. But the found and the fenfe, far from poffeffing uniform fpirit, are in more recent productions, efpecially in feveral Italian operas, a heavy burthen upon the exertions of each other. The most infipid airs not "married to immortal verfe," but united to unmeaning words, and their alliance is forced and unnatural. Nothing indeed can be more tirefome or abfurd than the continued Recitative of an Opera. It has neither the charm of finging, nor the plain expreffion of converfation. "What can be more contrary to nature than the finging a whole piece from beginning to end, as if the perfons reprefented were ridiculously matched, and had agreed to fettle in mufic both the moft common and most important affairs of life. Is it to be imagined that a mafter calls his fervant, or fends him on an errand finging; that one friend imparts a fecret to another finging; that men deliberate in council, and that orders in the field of battle are given finging; and that men are melodioufly killed with fwords and darts? This is the downright way to lofe the life of reprefentation, which without doubt is preferable to that of har

mony;

mony; for harmony ought to be no more than a bare attendant, and the great mafters of the stage have introduced it as pleafing, not as neceffary, after they have performed all that relates to the fubject and difcourfe. Nevertheless, our thoughts run more upon the performers than the hero in the opera, and Viganoni and Morelli are feldom out of our minds. The mind not being able to conceive a hero that fings, runs to the actor or the actress; and there is no queftion but that in our most fashionable operas, Banti, or Bolla, or whoever happens to be the principal finger, is a hundred times more thought of than Zenobia, or Dido."

In our most fashionable concerts, inftrumental performance is, in many inftances, carried to fuch a degree of refinement, that one fenfe is gratified at the expence of another; fince it is converted into an amusement for the eye, rather than a delight to the ear, or a folace to the mind. The brilliant execution of an eminent performer, difplayed in fome hafty and light compofition, is regarded as an excellence of the firft value. The

i "Thefe remarks of St. Evremond relate to the mufical Tragedy of the Italians. With respect to the mufical Comedy or Burletta, it affords an additional proof how little mufic as fuch, is able to fupport itself. In the tragic opera, it borrows aid from the tumidity of the Poetry; in the comic, from the powers of ridicule, to which mufic has not the leaft relation." Hawkins on Mufic, p. 74. Preface.

k

Migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana.