158

MR. PEPYS IN ECSTASIES.

burlesque imitation of the chromatics of Mr. Rosingrave on the organ, to the inexpressible amusement of his guests, excepting one matter-of-fact old gentleman who retained his gravity, and remained unmoved, because, as he said, he "had heard Mr. Rosingrave himself perform the same piece that morning."

It is said of Brienne that being at the Sistine Chapel at Rome in the Holy Week, he allowed that the singing was very fine, to the gratification of a friend, who was thus encouraged to exclaim,

wretch her ear is so bad that it made me angry, till the poor wretch cried to see me so vexed at her, that I think I shall not discourage her so much again, but will endeavour to make her understand sounds, and do her good that way; for she hath a great mind to learn, only to please me."(March 1, 1666-67.) Just a year later we have Mr. Pepys in ecstasies at the effect of certain "wind musick" at the King's House, which did please him "beyond any thing in the whole world"-" so sweet that it ravished me, and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife [before she became the poor wretch]; that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported, so that I could not believe that ever any musick hath that real command over the soul of a man as this did upon me; and makes me to resolve to practise wind-musick, and to make my wife do the like." (Feb. 27, 1667-68.) Fresh storm brewing for that poor-woman, in this promise (or threat) of wind-music. Blow, gentle gales, was never written for her.

UNMUSICAL POETS.

159

"Ah, I see you begin to like music." "No," was the reply, "I can't go as far as that, but I can now understand the possibility of a person being fond of music without being either a fool or a madman." Wordsworth is free to avow himself one

"of whose touch the fiddle would complain, Whose breath would labour at the flute in vain, In music all unversed." *

Sir Walter Scott expressly affirms in his autobiography that, his mother being anxious to have all her children taught psalmody, the "incurable defects" of his voice and ear drove his teacher + to despair. "It is only by long practice that I have acquired the power of selecting or distin

* In a letter of Leigh Hunt's, dated July 8, 1848, occurs this obiter scriptum: "Wordsworth, I am told, does not care for music! And it is very likely, for music (to judge from his verses) does not seem to care for him. I was astonished the other day, on looking in his works for the first time after a long interval, to find how deficient he was in all that may be called the musical side of a poet's nature, -the genial, the animal-spirited or bird-like, the happily accordant." Had Mr. Leigh Hunt in that same interval, perhaps too long an interval, also lost his ear for what there is of grand and solemn organ-like harmony in Wordsworth's higher strains and loftier flights?

+ Alexander Campbell, an enthusiast in Scottish music, who however would not allow that Walter had a bad ear; it was mere want of will, he contended.

160 SIR WALTER SCOTT: EAR OR NO EAR?

guishing melodies;" and though in mature life few things delighted or affected him more than a simple song sung with feeling, he avowed that even this pitch of musical taste had only been gained by attention and habit, and, as it were, by his feeling of the words being associated with the tune.* In his Diary of November, 1825, we come across this entry, apropos of some after-dinner music at the house of Sir Robert Dundas: “I do not know and cannot utter a note of music; and complicated harmonies seem to me a babble of confused though pleasing sounds." Yet simple melodies, he adds, especially if connected with words and ideas, had the same effect on him as on most people. But then he demanded expression and feeling; he could not bear a voice that had "no more life in it than a pianoforte or a bugle

* The late C. R. Leslie, in his pleasant pen-picture of Sir Walter at Home, records his belief, from personal observation, that in music Scott's enjoyment arose chiefly from the associations called up by the air or the words of a song. “I have seen him stand beside the piano or harp when Lady Compton, Miss Clephane, or Mrs. Lockhart were playing Highland music, or a military march, his head and whole figure slightly moving in unison with the instrument, and with an expression in his face of inward delight, that told more plainly than words could tell, how thoroughly he relished the performance."-Autobiogr. Recollections of C. R. Leslie, ch. iv.

THOMAS HOOD.

161

horn." "Tom Moore's is the most exquisite warbling I ever heard." Some critics refuse to believe that a man capable of writing such lyrics as Sir Walter wrote, could have other than a real ear for music. But the apparent inconsistency is of no singular occurrence. Thomas Hood, his daughter bears witness, though endowed with the most delicate perception of the rhythm and melody of versifying, and the most acute instinct for any jarring syllable or word, and peculiarly happy in the musical cadence of his own poetry, had yet not the slightest ear for music: he could not sing a tune through correctly.*

The Haunted Man, in Mr. Dickens' Christmas story so called, shudders when he stops to listen to a strain of plaintive music, but can only hear a

66

* To what Mrs. Broderip relates in the text, her brother adds a foot-note which mentions how people would comment on this deficiency to their father, and how he took it. One flourisher, for instance, "just safe landed from a rhapsody on music," with which Mr. Hood's looks betokened a very imperfect sympathy, ventured on the compassionating remark, Ah, you know, you've no musical enthusiasm—you don't know what it is." The author, however goodnaturedly aware of, and prompt to recognize, his deficiency, was not to be snubbed by this sort of man, and in this sort of way, so he answered, “Not know it? oh yes, I do-it's like turtle soup-for every pint of real, you meet with gallons of mock, with calves' heads in proportion.”

162

DULL OF HEARING.

tune, made manifest to him by the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year's running water, or the rushing of last year's wind.* Which things are an allegory; and the haunted man is an anomaly; but his incapacity is more or less shared by shoals of commonplace mortals, of the normal type. Says one such, in a dramatic fragment of Barry Cornwall's

In another, earlier, and more popular of those Christmas stories, that sombre man of stratagems and spoils, Tackleton, growls at coming upon old Caleb in the act of essaying a fragment of a song. "What! you're singing, are you? I can't sing." Nobody would have suspected him of it, says his author he had not what is generally termed a singing face, by any means. As Molière's Sosie exclaims in the Amphitryon,

"Cet homme assurément n'aime pas la musique."

It is Molière's Maitre de Musique who assures le bourgeois gentilhomme that "tous les désordres, toutes les guerres qu'on voit dans le monde, n'arrivent que pour n'apprendre pas la musique;" which thesis he demonstrates by a music-master's syllogism. If Monsieur Jourdain ever came to care for music, it would probably be, like his attainments in prose, without the knowing it possibly his personal predilections would have jumped with those of Bottom the weaver, who tells Titania, "I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones."