IMITATION LIMITATION. 223 of strumming schoolroom associations, as having a moral as well as a dramatic meaning; and she utters a wish that every great musician would leave to the world his definition of a storm. In one of his moral philosophy lectures, "On the Beautiful," Sydney Smith follows Beattie and Alison in showing that music can express only classes of feeling,-melancholy, for example,—but not any particular instance or action of melancholy. Thus the tune of "Lochaber no more" expresses the pathetic in general; language only can tell us that it is that particular instance of the pathetic, where a poor soldier takes leave of his native land, etc. Hearing an air to which we know no words, can inspire only general emotion. What if the Pastorale of Corelli may have been intended to imitate the song of angels hovering above the fields of Bethlehem, and gradually soaring up to heaven? It is impossible, the lecturer maintained, that the music itself can convey any such impression-it can convey only the feelings of solemnity, of rapture, of enthusiasm; imagination must do the rest. D XII. Uncertainty of Sound. I Cor. xiv. 7, 8. EXCEPT there be given, argues the apostle, a distinction in the sounds of a musical instru ment, whether pipe or harp, how shall it be known SEPARATIST SONGSTERS. 225 together, every one of you hath a psalm" of his own, a tongue of his own, a will and a way of his own; and if the whole church so come together, and all set up each his own psalm, and use his own tongue, after his own will and his own way,—will not profane outsiders say they are mad? so will and do profane outsiders say of the discordant' outcome of noises emitted by separatist songsters, who are part-singing with a vengeance, for it is to all effect singing apart. A crackbrained crew or choir they will call them; at any rate a choir whose unruly din cracks the brain of him that hears them, if not their own. The late clerical author of a dissertation on Church Music asked what could possibly be worse, at the time he wrote, than the music in our rural parishes, and what more difficult to remedy, and yet preserve "harmony"? for singers were ever notorious for loving to have things their own way: omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus; and religious singers he pronounced to be of all the most given to sudden discords.* The * "They imagined the whole congregation assembled but to hear them: one of them told me with pride, that it was the only part of the service during which nobody was asleep. Warming upon the subject, he added, that he had authority for saying, the singers in the Jewish Church had precedence of all other officials, and performed the most essential part of the service, as was clear from the Psalms, 'The singers go 226 EAR-ACHE IN CHURCH. conceit of country musicians was to him intolerable; but what he chiefly complained of was their anthems. "Every bumpkin has his favourite solo, and oh, the murder, the profanation! If there be ears devout in the congregation, how must they ache!" Those anthems, he urged, should positively be forbidden by authority. Very telling is the description by the author of Letters to Eusebius of half a dozen ignorant, conceited fellows standing up, who begin with a falsehood by professing to sing "to the praise and glory of God" what so manifestly is sung to the honour and glory of John Jones, Peter Hussey, Philip White, John Stobes, Timothy Prim, and John Pride. Then, when they are unanimous, as Sheridan has it, their unanimity is wonderful, as all may know who remember in before, and the minstrels [which he took to mean ministers] follow after.'"-Essays by the Rev. John Eagles. If the clergyman happens not to be musical, the whole choir hold him in contempt; but, adds the same temper-tried but ever good-tempered parson, "if he make attempts occasionally to join and do his best, pleased with the compliment, they will spare him ; as thus :—one wishing to put the choir in good-humour, had the hypocrisy to applaud their efforts to the principal singer, who replied, pulling up his waistband, and looking satisfaction, 'Pretty well for that, sir; but we didn't quite pat off the stephany' [symphony].—' Does your parson sing?'-'A do mumbly a bit.' Now this was meant to let him down easy; it was neither praise nor quite contempt, but one qualified with the other."-Ibid. CHORISTERS' BABEL. 227 full choir clarionet, bass viol, and bassoon assisting, "Some put their trust in Charrots, and some in Orses, but we will remember," etc. In the gallery at this clerical critic's parish church there was a tenor voice that was particularly disagreeable,—having a perpetual yap yap in it, a hooh as if it went round a corner; he had a very odd way too, of which certainly he did not "keep the noiseless tenor." Then again, not only every one sang as loud as he could bawl, but cheeks and elbows used their utmost efforts, the bassoon vying with the clarionet, the goose-stop of the clarionet with the bassoonit was Babel with the addition of the beasts. John Locke, in one of his letters from abroad in 1664, describes a choir at Cleve with "strong voices, but so ill-tuned, so ill-managed, that it was their misfortune, as well as ours, that they could be heard. He that could not, though he had a cold, make better music with a chevy chase over a pot of smooth ale, deserved well to pay the reckoning, and go away athirst." However, Locke is free to call these the honestest singing men he had ever seen, for they endeavoured to earn their money, and earned it certainly with pains enough; what they wanted in skill they made up in loudness and variety: "every one had his own tune, and the result of all was like the noise of choosing Parliament-men, where every one endeavours to cry |