Nor you, Lorenzo; — Jessica, nor you. [A Tucket sounds.® Lor. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet. We are no tell-tales, Madam; fear you not. Por. This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick; SHAKESPEARE. MUSICAL HARMONY. TOUCHING musical harmony whether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony. A thing which delighteth all ages and beseemeth all states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them, that, whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our minds already are or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed than changed and led away by the other. 8 In harmony the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and 6 A tucket is a flourish of trumpets. 7 So the old usage. We should say means. That is, entirely, or quite. THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL. 81 brought, by having them often iterated, into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some nothing more strong and potent unto good. And that there is such a difference of one kind from another we need no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness; of some, more mollified and softened in mind; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another to move and stir our affections; there is that draweth to a marvellous grave and sober mediocrity, there is also that carrieth as it were into ecstasies, filling the mind with an heavenly joy and for the time in a manner severing it from the body. So that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty1 or matter, the very harmony of sounds, being framed in due sort and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled; apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too eager; sovereign against melancholy and despair; forcible to draw forth tears of devotion, if the mind be such as can yield them; able both to move and to moderate all affections. RICHARD HOOKER: 1553-1600. THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL. I was never once married,2 and commend their resolutions who never marry twice. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from the sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful. I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my temper, - and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion and thus far we may maintain "the music of the • Moderation, temperance, tranquillity, are among the old senses of mediocrity. 1 That is, words. Ditty, in old language, is a little poem or ballad. 2 So at the time this was written. He was afterwards married, and brought up a goodly family of children. 3 To aim at, to desire, to have an inclination to, are old meanings of to affect. spheres"; for those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all churchmusic. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first Composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers : it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God, — such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ear of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their souls, are born poets; though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm.7 SIR THOMAS BROWNE: 1605-1682. TO THE EARL OF CARBERRY. MY LORD: I am not ashamed to profess that I pay this part of service to your lordship most unwillingly; for it is a sad office to be the chief minister in a house of mourning, and to present an interested person with a branch of cypress and a bottle of tears. And indeed, my Lord, it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate or divert your sorrow, than to dress the hearse of your dear lady, and to furnish it with such circumstances, that it may dwell with you, and lie in your closet, and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings. But, because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person 4 There was at that time a class of people who thought it very wrong to use any music in Divine worship. 5 Having a hidden, secret, or mysterious meaning. 6 Fit sometimes meant a song, or part of a song; a strain. ▾ Rhythm is measured motion, like the steps in a dance, or the beatings of time in music. CHARACTER OF LADY CARBERRY. 8 83 so excellent, a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles, with saints and martyrs, give me leave to present you with her picture, drawn in little and in water-colours, sullied indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a real and consonant sorrow; but drawn with a faithful hand, and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a loss to be deprived of her example and of her rule, of the original and of the copy too. The age is very evil, and deserved her not; but, because it is so evil, it hath the more need to have such lives preserved in memory, to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickedness. For, now that God hath cut this tree of Paradise down from its seat of Earth, yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining temple, or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar. My Lord, I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joys of God and of religion. And remember, when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your lady, that you pay two more ;- one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach; and another of joy for the mercies of God to your dear departed saint, that He hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more. My Lord, I think I shall, so long as I live; that is, so long as I am Your lordship's most humble servant, Character of Lady Carberry. JER. TAYLOR. I HAVE seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue; that like a wanton and undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches, in leaves and gum, and, after all such goodly outsides, you should never eat an apple, or he delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of a hopeful blossom. But the religion of this excellent lady was of another constitution : it took root downward in humility, and brought forth fruit upward in the substantial graces of a Christian; in charity and justice, in chastity and modesty, in fair friendships and sweetness of society. She had not very much of the forms and outsides of godliness, but she was hugely careful for the power of it, for the moral, essential, and useful parts; such which would make her be, not seem to be, religious. • Consonant, literally sounding together, is here used in the sense of accordant, fitting, or suitable. In all her religion, and in all her actions of relation towards God, she had a strange evenness and untroubled passage, sliding toward her ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and silent motion.` So have I seen a river deep and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the great exchequer of the sea, the prince of all the watery bodies, a tribute large and full; and hard by it a little brook skipping and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbour bottom; and, after all its talking and bragging motion, it paid to its common audit1 no more than the revenues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel. So have I sometimes compared the issues of her religion to the solemnities and famed outsides of another's piety: it dwelt upon her spirit, and was incorporated with the periodical work of every day; she did not believe that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation, but to pardon of sins, to the pleasure of God, and the salvation of souls. For religion is like the breath of heaven: if it goes abroad into the open air, it scatters and dissolves like camphor; but if it enters into a secret hollowness, into a close conveyance, it is strong and mighty, and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end, at the other side of this life, in the days of death and judgment. The other appendage of her religion, which was also a great ornament to all the parts of her life, was a rare modesty and humility of spirit, a confident despising and undervaluing of herself. For though she had the greatest judgment, and the greatest experience of things and persons, that I ever knew in a person of her youth and sex and circumstances; yet, as if she knew nothing of it, she had the meanest opinion of herself; and like a fair taper, when she shined to all the room, yet round about her own station she had cast a shadow and a cloud, and she shined to everybody but herself. But the perfectness of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid; and all her humility and arts of concealment made the virtues more amiable and illustrious. For, as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest virtues, and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a devil; so humility is the greatest eminency and art of publication in the whole world: and she, in all • Unequal is uneven or rough. 1 Audit properly means a final account; but is here put for receptacle, or the place where" accounts are settled. 2 Periodical in its original sense of regular, or recurring at stated times; routine. |