Merrie England in the Olden Time. George Daniel
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Название: Merrie England in the Olden Time
Автор: George Daniel
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066389666
isbn:
Noverre might lay you ten to one his heels against your
schools!
And a dancing, &c.
Old Homer sung of gods and kings in most heroic strains,
Yet scarce could get, we have been told, a dinner for his
pains.
And a dancing, &c.
Poor Milton wrote the most sublime, 'gainst Satan, Death, and
Vice,
But very few would quit a dance to purchase Paradise.
And a dancing, &c.
The soldier risks health, life, and limbs, his fortune to
advance,
While Pique and Vestris fortunes make by one night's single
dance.
And a dancing, &c.
'Tis all in vain to sigh and grieve, or idly spend our
breath,
Some millions now, and those unborn, must join the dance of
death.
And a dancing, &c.
Yet while we live let's merry be, and make of care a jest,
Since we are taught what is, is right; and what is right is
best!
And a dancing, &c.
Sweetly singeth the tea-kettle; merrily danceth the parched pea on the fire-shovel! Even grim Death has his dance.”
“And music, Eugenio, in which I know you are an enthusiast. The Italians have a proverb,
'Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.' The soul is said to be music.
'But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'
“Haydn used to say that without melody the most learned and singular combinations are but unmeaning, empty sound. What but the simplicity and tenderness of the Scotch and Irish airs constitutes their charm? This great composer was so extravagantly fond of Scotch, Irish, and Welsh melodies, that he harmonised many of them, and had them hung up in frames in his room. We remember to have heard somewhere of an officer in a Highland regiment, who was sent with a handful of brave soldiers to a penal settlement in charge of a number of convicts; the Highlanders grew sick at heart; the touching strains of 'Lochaber nae mair.' heard far from home, made them so melancholy, that the officer in command forbade its being played by the band.
So, likewise, with the national melody, the 'Rans-des-Vaches' among the Swiss mountaineers. When sold by their despotic chiefs, and torn from their dearest connexions, suicide and desertion were so frequent when this melody was played, that orders were issued in all their regiments, prohibiting any one from playing an air of that kind on pain of death. La maladie du pays—that sickening after home! But Handel's music has received more lasting and general applause than that of any other composer. By Boyce and Battishall his memory was adored; Mozart was enthusiastic in his praise; Haydn could not listen (who can?) to his glorious Messiah * without weeping; and Beethoven has been heard to declare, that were he ever to come to England he should uncover his head, and kneel down at his tomb!
* Bishop Ken says,
“Sweet music with blest poesy began,
Congenial both to angels and to Man,
Song was the native language to rehearse
The elevations of the soul in verse:
And through succeeding ages, all along,
Saints praised the Godhead in devoted song.”
And he adds in plain prose, that the Garden of Eden was no
stranger to “singing and the voice of melody.” Jubal was the
“father of those who handled the harp and organ.” Long-
before the institution of the Jewish church, God received
praise both by the human voice and the “loud timbrel and
when that church was in her highest prosperity, King David
seems to have been the composer of her psalmody—both poetry
and music. He occupied the orchestra of the temple, and
accounted it a holy privilege “to play before the Lord” upon
“the harp with a solemn sound.” Luther said, “I verily think
that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music.”
And what a glorious specimen of this divine art is his
transcendant “Hymn!” breathing the most awful grandeur, the
deepest pathos, the most majestic adoration! The Puritans—
devils and Puritans hate music—are piously economical in
their devotions, and eschew the principle “not to give unto
the Lord that which costs us nothing!” Their gift is
snuffled through the “vocal nose”—“O most sweet voices!”
“Blessings on the memory of the bard, * and 'Palms eternal flourish round his urn,' who first struck his lyre to celebrate the wooden walls of unconquered and unconquerable Merrie England! If earth hide him,
'May angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by his reliques made
if ocean cover him, calm be the green wave on its surface! May his spirit find rest where souls are blessed, and his body be shrined in the holiest cave of the deep and silent sea!”
* A few old amateurs of music and mirth may possibly
remember Collins's Evening Brush, that rubbed off the rust
of dull care from the generation of 1790. His bill comprised
“Actors of the old school and actors of the new; tragedy
tailors, and butchers in heroics; bell-wethers in buskins,
wooden actors, petticoat caricatures, lullaby jinglers,
bogglers and blunderers, buffoons in blank-verse, &c. &c.”
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