before the reader; and thus our present notice might have been laid to the account of a vanity, which however gratified, is not the cause of it. The value of praise as well as rebuke does indeed depend upon the nature of the persons from whom it comes; and it is as difficult not to be delighted with panegyric from some, as it is easy to be indifferent to it, or even pained by it, from others. But when we confess our pleasure in this instance, we ean say with equal truth, that all our feelings and hopes being identified with the cause of what we think good and kind, our very self-love becomes identified with it; and we would consent to undergo the horrible moment of annihilation and oblivion the next instant, could we be assured that the world would be as happy as we were unremembered. And yet what a Yes! would that be!

But to get from under the imagination of this crush of our being, and emerge into the lightness and pleasurability of life, it was very hard of the Retrospective Review, that while it praised us, it should pick our intentional pockets of an extract we had long thought of making from an old poet. We allude to the poem called Music's Duel from Crashaw. Here the feelings expressed at the head of our paper come over us again. It has been said of fond students that they were "wedded to their books." We have even heard of ladies who have been jealous of an over-seductive duodecimo; as perhaps they might, if every literary husband or lover were like the collegian in Chaucer, who would rather have

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At his bed's head,
A twenty books, clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,dai
Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltry.

And yet we feel that we could very well like them too at the bed's head, without at all diminishing our regard for what should be at the bed's heart. We could sleep under them as under a bower of imaginations. We are one of those who like to have a book behind one's pillow, even though we know we shall not touch it. It is like having all our treasures at hand.

But if people are to be wedded to their books, it is hard that under our present moral dispensations, they are not to be allowed the usual exclusive privileges of marriage. A friend thinks no more of borrowing a book now-a-days, than a Roman did of borrowing a man's wife and what is worse, we are so far gone in our immoral notions on this subject, that we even lend it as easily as Cato did his spouse. Now what a happy thing ought it not to be to have exclusive possession of a book, one's Shakspeare for instance; for the finer the wedded work, the more anxious of course we should be, that it should give nobody happiness but ourselves. Think of the pleasure not only of being with it in general, of having by far the greater part of it's company, but of having it entirely to one's self; of always saying internally, "It is my property of seeing it well-dressed in "black or red," purely to please one's own eyes; of wondering how any fellow could be so impudent as to propose borrowing it for an evening; of being at once

proud of his admiration, and pretty certain that it was in vain; of the excitement nevertheless of being a little uneasy whenever we saw him approach it too nearly; of wishing that it could give him a cuff of the cheek with one of it's beautiful boards, for presuming to like it's beauties as well as ourselves; of liking other people's books, but not at all thinking it proper that they should like our's; of getting perhaps indifferent to it, and then comforting ourselves with the reflection that others are not so, though to no purpose; in short, of all the mixed transport and anxiety to which the exclusiveness of the book-wedded state would be liable; not to mention the impossibility of other people's having any literary offspring from our fair unique, and consequently of the danger of loving any compilations but our own. Really if we could burn all other copies of our originals, as the Roman Emperor once thought of destroying Homer, this system would be worth thinking of. If we had a good library, we should be in the situation of the Turks with their seraglios, which are a great improvement upon our petty exclusivenesses. Nobody could then touch our Shakspeare, our Spenser, our Chaucer, our Greek and Italian writers. People might say, "Those are the walls of the library!" and "sigh, and look, and sigh again ;" but they should never get in. No Retrospective rake should anticipate our privileges of quotation. Our Mary Woolstonecrafts and our Madame de Stacls, no one should know how finely they were lettered,-what soul there was in their disquisitions. We once had a glimpse of the feelings, which people would have e on these occasions. It was in the library of Trinity Côllege, Cambridge. The keeper of it was from home; and not being able to get a sight of the Manuscript of Milton's Comus, we were obliged to content ourselves with looking through a wire work, a kind of safe, towards the shelf on which it reposed. How we winked, and yearned, and imagined we saw a corner of the all-precious sheets, to no purpose! The feelings were not very pleasant, it is true; but then as long as they were confined to others, they would of course only add to our satisfaction.

But to come to our extract; for not being quite recovered yet from our late ill-health, we mean to avail ourselves of it still. It is remarkable, as the Reviewer has observed, for a wonderful power over the resources of our language." The original is in the Prolusions of Strada, where it is put into the mouth of the celebrated Castiglione, as an imitation of the style of Claudian. From all that we recollect of that florid poet, the imitation, to say the least of it, is quite as good as any thing in himself. Indeed, as a description of the niceties of a musical performance, we remember nothing in him that

can

come up it. But what will astonish the reader, in addition to the exquisite tact with which Strada is rendered by the translator, is his having trebled the whole description, and with an equal minuteness in his exuberance. We cannot stop to enter into the detail of the enjoyment, as we would; and indeed we should not know perhaps how to express our sense of it but by repeating 1 his masterly niceties about the "clear unwrinkled song," the “warbling doubt of

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dallying sweetness," the "ever-bubbling spring," the kindling of the bird's

"soft voice

"In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,"

the "quavering coyness" with which the musician "tastes the strings," the "surges of swoln rhapsodies," the "full-mouthed diapason swallowing all;" and in short, the whole "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of masterly playing, from it's lordly sweep over the full instrument to the "capering cheerfulness" of a guitar accompaniment. The man of letters will admire the power of language; and to the musician and other lovers of music we are sure we are affording a great treat. Numbers of them will never have found their sensations so well analyzed before. Part of the poetry, it is true, is in a false and overcharged taste; but in general the exuberance is as true as it is surprising, for the subject is exuberant and requires it.

of

We should observe, before the concert begins, that Castiglione is represented by Strada as having been present at this extraordinary duel himself; and however fabulous this may seem, there is a letter extant from Bartolomeo Ricci to Giambattista Pigna, cotemporaries of Tasso, in which he says, that Antoniano, a celebrated improvvisatore of those times, playing on the lute after a rural dinner which the writer had given to his friends, provoked a nightingale to contend with him in the same manner. Dr. Black, in his Life of Tasso, by way of note upon this letter, quotes a passage from Sir William Jones, strongly corroborating such stories: and indeed, when we know what parrots and other birds can do, especially in imitating and answering cach other, and hear the extravagant reports to which the powers the nightingale have given rise, such as the story of an actual dialogue in Buffon, we can easily imagine that the groundwork of the relation may not be a mere fable. "An intelligent Persian," says Sir William, "declared he had more than once been present, when a celebrated Lutanist, surnamed Bulbul (the nightingale), was playing to a large company in a grove near Schiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician; sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ectasy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode,"

MUSIC'S DUEL.

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,

Under protection of an oak, there sat

A sweet lute's-master: in whose gentle airs
He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighbouring wood;
(The sweet inhabitants of each glad tree,
Their muse, their syren, harmless syren she)
There stood she list'ning, and did entertain
The music's soft report: and mould the same

In her own murmurs, that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good:
The man perceiv'd his rival and her art,
Dispos'd to give the light-foot lady sport.
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
luforms it, in a sweet præludium

Of closer strains; and ere the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string,

Charg'd with a flying touch: and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions,

Quick volumes of wild notes; to let him know
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hands instinct then taught each string

A capring cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that; then quick returning skips
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, every where
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt,
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and saverely joint it
By short diminutives, that being rear'd
In controverting warbles evenly shar'd,
With her sweet self she wrangles. He amaz'd
That from so small a channel should be rais'd
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet; that tickled with rare art
The tattling strings (each breathing in his part)
Most kindly do fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdains the trebles grace;
The high-perch'd treble chirps at this, and chides,
Until his finger (moderator) hides

And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all
Hoarse, shrill, at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands: this lesson too
She gives him back; her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt

Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill
The pliant series of her slippery song ;

Then starts she suddenly into a throng

Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys float,

And roll themselves over her lubric throat

In panting murmurs, still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot, where, in ripen'd airs,
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

His honey-dropping tops, plow'd by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboureth

In that sweet soil, it seems a holy choir
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre,

Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweep-lipp'd atigel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then

Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,

To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their mattens sing:
(Most divine service) whose so early lay
Prevents the eye-lids of the blushing day!
There you might hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream, so long
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledg'd notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the way'd back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs; she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note,

Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat

Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravish'd: and so pour'd

Into loose ecstasies, that she is plac'd'

Above herself, music's enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mix'd a double stain

In the musician's face; yet once again

(Mistress) I come; now reach a strain, my lute, Above her mock, or be for ever mute.

But tune a song of victory to me;

As to thyself, sing thine own obsequy;
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness lastes the strings.
The sweet-lip'd sisters musically frighted,
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted.
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs

Of his own breath: which married to his lyre

Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self look higher. From this to that, from that to this he flies,

Feels music's pulse in all her arteries,

Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,

His fingers struggle with the vocal threads,
Following those little fills, he sinks into

A sea of Helicon; his hand does go

Those parts of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that wlrich pants in Hebe's cup.

The humourous strings expound his learned touch
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle
In shrill tongu'd accents, striving to be single.
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke
Give life to some new grace; thus doth h' invoke
Sweetness by all her names; thus, bravely thus
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)

The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Ileav'd on the surges of swoln rhapsodies,