But his gratitude to his young friend Lady Mary Bennet, who covered the walls of his Rectory with the sweet products of her pencil, is only too palpably sincere. It may perhaps be imputed to him for æsthetic virtue that he considered the national monuments in St. Paul's, with the sole exception of Dr. Johnson's, "a disgusting heap of trash." It is less satisfactory that he found the Prince Regent's "suite of golden rooms" at Carlton House "extremely magnificent."
To music he was more sympathetic, but even here his sympathies had their limitations. Music in the minor key made him melancholy, and had to be discontinued when he was in residence at St. Paul's;[162] and this was not his only musical prejudice.--
"Nothing can be more disgusting than an oratorio. How absurd to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about the Israelites in the Red Sea!"
"Yesterday I heard Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tamburini. The opera, by Bellini, _I Puritani_, was dreadfully tiresome, and unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last opera I shall ever go to."
"_Semiramis_ would be to me pure misery. I love music very little. I hate acting. I have the worst opinion of Semiramis herself, and the whole thing seems to me so childish and so foolish that I cannot abide it. Moreover, it would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St. Paul's to go to the opera; and, where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet."
After a Musical Festival at York he writes to Lady Holland:--
"I did not go once. Music for such a length of time (unless under sentence of a jury) I will not submit to. What pleasure is there in pleasure, if quantity is not attended to, as well as quality? I know nothing more agreeable than a dinner at Holland House; but it must not begin at ten in the morning, and last till six. I should be incapable for the last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's[163] attack upon the Church."
Yet, in spite of these limitations, he took lessons on the piano, and often warbled in the domestic circle. In 1843 he writes--"I am learning to sing some of Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great perfection," His daughter says, with filial piety, that, when he had once learnt a song, he sang it very correctly, and, "having a really fine voice, often _encored himself_." A lady who visited him at Combe Florey corroborates this account, saying that after dinner he said to his wife, "I crave for Music, Mrs. Smith. Music! Music!" and sang, "with his rich sweet voice, _A Few Gay Soarings Yet_." In old age he said;--