pretty nearly agreed, that we had no music expressive of the passions. I shall also take occasion to illustrate the progress of ornamental style by occasional digressions to the practice of great singers of whatever country, and if I succeed in any degree in this my first investigation, I may be induced to extend my enquiry amongst the Italian composers, who certainly have carried the florid song to the furthest, and seem now disposed, by their applause and approbation of Rossini and his followers, to try the utmost limits to which it can go. I am the rather inclined to follow this course, because we are really incompetent judges of the language of passion adopted by the natives of other countries. We know and feel what awakens certain trains of sentiment, emotions, and passions in our breasts, but we cannot with equal accuracy determine the effects of all these combinations, which proceed first from physical organization, next from education and association, and lastly from manners, upon livelier or more sluggish temperaments than our own. The native of Russia and the native of Italy have different feelings, and a language and manner of expressing those feelings as totally different to ours as to each other, and the same reasoning applies to every land and every clime. This truth holds with greater force in regard to music, which springs from and adapts itself to the constitution of the hearer, and is thus formed by various and varying circumstances. It is of our own music as applied to our own poetry then that we can speak with the greatest chance of accuracy.

I have explained that my purpose is to begin with Purcell-and to this intent, I have gone carefully through the two volumes of his Orpheus Britannicus, and extracted every word upon which he has placed a division. I do not so term three or four notes, though such groups strictly speaking do not belong to syllabic melody. Such phrases seem to me to form a genus intermediate between syllabic and melismatic. They vary and enliven it is true, but they are only the slightest words of the language of divisións. These therefore I have wholly passed over, in order to come at once to the more general points.

It might I think with safety have been predicated, that so early a writer as Purcell would be very careful in the selection of the words upon which to place divisions, and accordingly so I have found him. There are very few instances which may not as it

seems to me be reduced to a theory-a principle-borne out by his usage as well as by the nature of effect. This theory is indeed only that of all musical composition-the echo of sound to sense. But although his use of divisions will frequently appear very crude and even contradictory at first, there is little, it will be found on reflection, that is not justified by the principle and power of the art-viz. to raise definite emotions, either by its physical and direct operation, or by just analogies. What constitutes these analogies is now so generally apprehended, that I need not explain this part of the subject further than to say, that time has enlarged the sphere of association in the same proportions as it has extended the range of fancy and of knowledge and the varied connection of images with sensations. I may however premise that loud and soft, grave and acute, rapid or slow sounds, which accord with and at last come to represent certain objects either of sense or reflexion, are not now the only properties of music employed to raise emotions; there are also certain progressions which indicate natural objects and mark intellectual trains. Examples of the former are to be found in Purcell, but we must chiefly have recourse to Haydn for them, who has gone furthest in descriptive music. Handel's command of the affections is unquestionably the greatest of all the composers that ever lived, and particularly of those which are the most sublime, though he has applied, and sometimes very beautifully, the properties of sound to description of material things. The principles however are universally the same, and it is only the enlargement of the sphere of our knowledge that has increased the range of the imagination. The superior technical attainments of musicians and the improvement of instruments must not be omitted among the causes which have contributed to the extension of these analogies. Neither are they the least powerful. This said, I shall proceed to such a classification as the facts seem to me to warrant.

The first and most obvious species is that where the sense of the word stands in a direct relation with the sound of a division; such for instance are the words-"sung, move, flies, circle, slide, twisted, round, hastes, warbling, tuneful, tingling, sound, rattling, roaring, swift, hasten, eager, inconstant, turn, rove, wander, rolling, run, wild, thunder, lightning, shaking, rebound, down,

chase, free, shining, mounting, trembling, dazzling.' Other words may be classed under the same head, though their signification is not quite so absolutely imported; these are-" racks, longer, noise, plough, pants, spread, conjure."

2. Purcell seems to consider that the multiplication of notes conveys comprehensiveness and extension, as on the words thousand, all, ethereal, groves."

* Like Handel's "murmuring," in "Heart the seat," Acis and Galatea.

3. He expresses sorrow and tenderness, often very beautifully, by the protraction a division slowly executed bestows. He places passages therefore on "ah, oh, wound, drooping, toils, dies, melting, sighed, grieve, sad, cold, gloomy, pangs." On the contrary he considers that pleasure is imaged by the variety, and employs such phrases as "gay, pleasing, sweeter, pleasures, joy, music, blooming, save, happiness, laugh, charming, sprightly, deck, glad, blessing, chearful, captivates, sweet, gentle, brighter, amorous." The difference here is not so much in the notation as in the time. Grief of course is expressed by slow sounds-joy by quick. Passages indicating the former have however more distance between the intervals, and a far greater sameness generally than the latter.

* See also "Let the dreadful engines," wherein are two most expressive divisions on the word Ah.

We find divisions used for exultation-as on "conquests, celebrate, rejoice, renowned, noble, heroic, divine, bold." This is obviously drawn from the elevation which divisions are wont to inspire by the power they seem to imply, and accordingly Purcell uses them to express

5. "Power, glory, victorious, triumph, great, dare, mighty, strike, war, gigantic, storm, fatal, arms, fierce, ambition, majesty, strong, flames, fight." They also ascend oftener than they descend, as more illustrative of the exaltation of mind these passions produce.