You recollect, too, what Lord Byron has so pathetically sung:--
"My soul is dark--oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear, And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
"If in this heart a hope be dear, That sound shall charm it forth again; If in these eyes there lurk a tear, 'T will flow, and cease to burn my brain.
"But bid the strain be wild and deep, Nor let thy notes of joy be first, I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, Or else this heavy heart will burst.
"For it hath been by sorrow nursed, And ached in sleepless sorrow long; And now 't is doomed to know the worst, And break at once, or yield to song."
All, however, do not agree with Byron and Shakespeare. Charles Lamb says:--
"Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites.--For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut."
Witty essayist, your "Free Thoughts," like many other of your clever writings, are erroneous. In all ages, and even by the least enlightened of mankind, the efficacy of music has been acknowledged, and considered as a genuine and natural source of delight. Now it awakens the latent courage in the breast of the soldier, and now administers to the pensive sorrow of the weeping mother. At one moment it inspires the soul with sublime and hallowed awe, and at the next gives life to unbounded mirth. It is suited to stimulate the feeling of devotion, and to increase the boisterous pleasures of a village harvest-home. Wearied with the oppression of the noon-day sun, and exhausted with labour, the husbandman sits beneath the shade of his native oak, and sings the songs he heard in infancy. The man of business, the man of letters, and the statesman, wearied with the exertion of mind and burden of care, seek relief round the family hearth, and forget awhile ambition and fears under the influence of music. And the dejected emigrant sings the songs of fatherland, whilst recollections, sad but sweet, arise and disappear.
