136

THE TRUMPET'S LOUD CLANGOR.

said to have threatened him with convulsions. such a man, observes the essayist of the Seer, and especially so great a master, every right of a horror of discord would be conceded,* supposing his ear to have grown up as it began; but that it did not so is manifest from his use of trumpets. The essayist himself, by the way, is, in his poetical miscellanies, largely given to the use of trumpets. Thus, in the Story of Rimini, we have a sustained blast of

“trumpets clear,

A princely music, unbedinn'd with drums ;†
The mighty brass seems opening as it comes,
And now it fills, and now it shakes the air,
And now it bursts into the sounding square ; . .
Then with a long-drawn breath the clangors die,
The palace trumpets give a last reply,” etc.

In Captain Sword and Captain Pen, "the trumpets their visible voices reared." And in another section of that poem, Leigh Hunt combines, with characteristic epithets, the two instruments

* In reference to the moot-point, who is to judge at what nice degree of imperfection the disgust is to begin, where no disgust is felt by the general ear.

+ Dryden is not careful to favour any such superstition :

"The trumpet's loud clangor

Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms,

The double double double beat

Of the thundering drum," etc.

AN INSPIRITING BLAST.

137

we have seen him fain to keep asunder: "Sneereth* the trumpet, and stampeth the drum." In his verses, again, entitled "Power and Gentleness," he repeats the epithet when speaking of "the harsh bray the sneering trumpet sends across the fray." There is no sneer in the trumpet tones heard by Bunyan when Christiana and her boys are let in at the wicket gate: "This done, he [the keeper of the gate] called to a trumpeter that was above, over the gate, to entertain Christiana with shouting, and sound of trumpet, for joy. So he obeyed, and sounded, and filled the air with his melodious. notes." But the accepted function of the instrument seems to be Martem accendere cantu, as Virgil says of a trumpeter; so martially inspiriting is the blare. The goddess of Athens was supposed to have invented a peculiar trumpet used by her favoured votaries. At the battle of Salamis, "the trumpet inflamed them with its clangor," says Eschylus, who was there that day. Lipsius has much to tell us of the Roman trumpet, in his De Militia Romana: one noteworthy point, re

* Why this is affectations, censors of the Cockney school, as it once was styled, will be apt to say. John Keats, the cock of that Cockney school, so called, has an equally odd epithet for the trumpet, in his Eve of St. Agnes, where we read how, "up, aloft, The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide."

138

SONOROUS METAL.

counted by Gibbon, is, that the charge was sounded by a horse-trumpet of solid brass, as distinguished from the retreat, which was sounded by the foottrumpet of leather and light wood; but this pertains rather to the times of the decline and fall of the empire than to the palmy days of ancient Rome. In his elaborate description of the triumph of Paulus Æmilius, Plutarch is particular to mention that the trumpets came first, not with such airs as are used in a procession of solemn entry, but with such as the Romans sounded when animating their troops to the charge.

In Chaucer's Knightes Tale we catch on echo of 'Pypes, trompes, nakers, and clariounes,

That in the batail blewe bloody sownes."

That is a sonorous line of Milton's, in the procession to the Stygian Council, "Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." And in the following book, when describing the departing from the council of the "grand infernal Peers," he writes:

66 Then of their session ended they bid cry,
'With trumpets' regal sound the great result:
Towards the four winds four speedy Cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy,

By herald's voice explain'd; the hollow abyss
Heard far and wide." *

* The metallic clangor is in this instance answered with a vocal outburst fully its match; for, "all the host of Hell

STIRRING SOUND OF THE TRUMP. 139

Fam litui strepunt, is the sure signal for doughty deeds of arms. Experience has proved, says Gibbon, that the mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. Butler speaks of "trumpet and of drum, that makes the warrior's stomach come

"For if a trumpet sound, or drum beat,

Who has not a month's mind to combat?”

Fray Antonio Agapida bears record of the famous Count de Tendilla, that he permitted no sound of

with deafening shout return'd them loud acclaim." Readers of Scott may recall his account of the thrilling and astounding clamour to which each Welshman lent his voice with all the energy of defiance, thirst of battle, and hope of conquest, when the standard of Gwenwyn was raised against Raymond Berenger; the blast of the Norman trumpets being fairly overborne by the vocal vehemence of the Welshmen. "Cherily

as they rung, the trumpets, in comparison of the shout which they answered, sounded like the silver whistle of the stout boatswain amid the howling of the tempest." In another of his works Sir Walter speaks of the "long and melancholy notes sent forth" by trumpets,-as if this were their characteristic music; but the occasion is funereal, and the trumpets have "banners of crape ” attached to them. Funereal that music, however, inevitably sounds in some ears; as in those of the matres in Horace's first ode: "aghast pale mothers hear the trumpeter, and loathe the murderous blast,"-as Father Prout pretty freely Englishes the lituo tube permixtus sonitus passage, bellaque matribus detestata.

140

CLAMOROUS HARBINGERS OF WAR.

lute, or harp, or song, or other emasculating minstrelsy, to be heard in his fortress: no other music was allowed than "the wholesome rolling of the drums, and braying of the trumpet, and such-like spirit-stirring instruments as fill the mind with thoughts of iron war." Not but that warrior bold can, on occasion, if it is in him, wax sentimental too at the trumpet's sound; after the manner, for instance, of Dr. Croly's Salathiel, who thus discourses of its effect: "Every blast from the palaceroof was answered for miles around. The whole horizon was alive with enemies; and yet, if in every call captivity and death had not been the language, this circling echo of the noblest of all instrument, coming in a thousand various tones from the varied distances, softened by the dewy freshness of the night, and breathing from sources invisible, as if they were inspired by the winds, or poured from the clouds, might have seemed sublime."

Shakspeare had an open ear for the martial influences of what Macduff calls "those clamorous harbingers of blood and death." His Antony summons the trumpeters, before Alexandria, with brazen din to blast the city's ear. His Agamemnon summons one to give with his trumpet note to Troy, that "the appalled air may pierce the head of the great combatant," Hector, and hail him hither. Ajax is still broader and more

loud