by whom we have been led to them, how is it that this critic, great
master as he is of the vulgar tongue, should affirm that breeches is
the only word by which this part of a man's dress can be expressed.
Had he forgotten that there was such a word as galligaskins?—to say
nothing of inexpressibles and dont-mention 'ems. Why also did he
forget pantaloons?—and thus the Chapter like a rondeau comes round to
St. Pantaleon with whom it began,
_Sancte Pantaleon, ora pro nobis!_
“Here is another Chapter without a heading,”—the Compositor would have
said when he came to this part of the Manuscript, if he had not seen
at a glance, that in my great consideration I had said it for him.
Yes, Mr. Compositor! Because of the matter whereon it has to treat, we
must, if you please, entitle this an
ARCH-CHAPTER.
A Frenchman once, who was not ashamed of appearing ignorant on such a
subject, asked another who with some reputation for classical
attainments had not the same rare virtue, what was the difference
between Dryads and Hamadryads; and the man of erudition gravely
replied that it was much the same as that between Bishops and
Archbishops.
I have dignified this Arch-Chapter in its designation, because it
relates to the King.
Dr. Gooch, you are hereby requested to order this book for his
Majesty's library,
_C'est une rare pièce, et digne sur ma foi,
Qu'on en fasse présent au cabinet d'un roi._[1]
[Footnote 1: MOLIERE.]
Dr. Gooch I have a great respect for you. At the time when there was
an intention of bringing a bill into Parliament for emancipating the
Plague from the Quarantine Laws, and allowing to the people of Great
Britain their long withheld right of having this disease as freely as
the small pox, measles and any other infectious malady, you wrote a
paper and published it in the Quarterly Review, against that insane
intention; proving its insanity so fully by matter of fact, and so
conclusively by force of reasoning, that your arguments carried
conviction with them, and put an end, for the time, to that part of
the emancipating and free trade system.
Dr. Gooch, you have also written a volume of medical treatises of
which I cannot speak more highly than by saying, sure I am that if the
excellent subject of these my reminiscences were living, he would, for
his admiration of those treatises have solicited the pleasure and
honour of your acquaintance.
Dr. Gooch, comply with this humble request of a sincere, though
unknown admirer, for the sake of your departed brother-in-physic, who,
like yourself, brought to the study of the healing art, a fertile
mind, a searching intellect and a benevolent heart. More, Dr. G. I
might say, and more I would say, but—
Should I say more, you well might censure me
(What yet I never was) a flatterer.[2]
[Footnote 2: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.]
When the King (God bless his Majesty!) shall peruse this book and be
well-pleased therewith, if it should enter into his royal mind to call
for his Librarian, and ask of him what honour and dignity hath been
done to the author of it, for having delighted the heart of the King,
and of so many of his liege subjects, and you shall have replied unto
his Majesty, “there is nothing done for him;” then Dr. Gooch when the
King shall take it into consideration how to testify his satisfaction
with the book, and to manifest his bounty toward the author, you are
requested to bear in mind my thoughts upon this weighty matter, of
which I shall now proceed to put you in possession.
Should he generously think of conferring upon me the honour of
knighthood, or a baronetcy, or a peerage, (Lord Doncaster the title,)
or a step in the peerage, according to my station in life, of which
you Dr. Gooch can give him no information; or should he meditate the
institution of an Order of Merit for men of letters, with an intention
of nominating me among the original members, worthy as such intentions
would be of his royal goodness, I should nevertheless, for reasons
which it is not necessary to explain, deem it prudent to decline any
of these honours.
Far be it from me, Dr. Gooch, to wish that the royal apparel should be
brought which the King useth to wear, and the horse that the King
rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; and that
this apparel and horse should be delivered to the hand of one of the
King's most noble princes, that he might array me withal; and bring me
on horseback through the streets of London, and proclaim before me,
thus shall it be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honour!
Such an exhibition would neither accord with this age, nor with the
manners of this nation, nor with my humility.
As little should I desire that his Majesty should give orders for me
to be clothed in purple, to drink in gold and to sleep upon gold, and
to ride in a chariot with bridles of gold, and to have an head-tire of
fine linen, and a chain about my neck, and to eat next the King,
because of my wisdom, and to be called the King's cousin. For purple
garments, Dr. Gooch are not among the _propria quæ maribus_ in England
at this time; it is better to drink in glass than in gold, and to
sleep upon a feather bed than upon a golden one; the only head-tire
which I wear is my night-cap, I care not therefore for the fineness of
its materials; and I dislike for myself chains of any kind.
That his Majesty should think of sending for me to sit next him
because of my wisdom, is what he in his wisdom will not do, and what,
if he were to do, would not be agreeable to me, in mine. But should
the King desire to have me called his Cousin, accompanying that of
course with such an appanage as would be seemly for its support, and
should he notify that most gracious intention to you his Librarian,
and give order that it should be by you inserted in the Gazette,—to
the end that the secret which assuredly no sagacity can divine, and no
indiscretion will betray, should incontinently thereupon be
communicated through you to the royal ear; and that in future editions
of this work, the name of the thus honoured author should appear with
the illustrious designation, in golden letters of, “by special command
of his Majesty,
COUSIN TO THE KING.”
A gracious mandate of this nature, Dr. Gooch, would require a severe
sacrifice from my loyal and dutiful obedience. Not that the respectful
deference which is due to the royal and noble house of Gloucester
should withhold me from accepting the proffered honour: to that house
it could be nothing derogatory; the value of their consanguinity would
rather be the more manifest, when the designation alone, unaccompanied
with rank, was thus rendered by special command purely and singularly
honourable. Still less should I be influenced by any apprehension of
being confounded in cousinship with Olive, calling herself Princess of
Cumberland. Nevertheless let me say, Dr. Gooch, while I am free to say
it,—while I am treating of it paulo-post-futuratively, as of a
possible case, not as a question brought before me for my prompt and
irrevocable answer,—let me humbly say that I prefer the incognito even
to this title. It is not necessary, and would not be proper to enter
into my reasons for that preference; suffice it that it is my humour
(speaking be it observed respectfully, and using that word in its
critical and finer sense), that it is the idiosyncrasy of my
disposition, the familiar way in which it pleases me innocently to
exercise my privilege of free will. It is not a secret which every
body knows, which nobody could help knowing and which was the more
notoriously known because of its presumed secresy. Incognito I am and
wish to be, and incognoscible it is in my power to remain:
He deserves small trust,
Who is not privy councillor to himself,
but my secret, (being my own) is, like my life (if that were needed)
at the King's service, and at his alone;
_Τοῖς κυρίοις γὰρ πάντα χρὴ δηλοῦν λόγον._[3]
[Footnote 3: SOPHOCLES.]
Be pleased therefore Dr. Gooch, if his Majesty most graciously and
most considerately should ask, what may be done for the man (—meaning
me,—) whom the King delighteth to honour;—be pleased, good Dr. Gooch,
to represent that the allowance which is usually granted to a retired
Envoy, would content his wishes, make his fortunes easy, and gladden
his heart;—(Dr. Gooch you will forgive the liberty thus taken with
you!)—that “where the word of a King is, there is power,”—that an
ostensible reason for granting it may easily be found, a sealed
communication from the unknown being made through your hands;—that
many Envoys have not deserved it better, and many secret services
which have been as largely rewarded have not afforded to the King so
much satisfaction;—finally that this instance of royal bounty will not
have the effect of directing public suspicion toward the object of
that bounty, nor be likely to be barked at by Joseph Hume, Colonel
Davies, and Daniel Whittle Harvey!
CHAPTER CLXXXVIII.
FOLLY IN PRINT, REFERRED TO, BUT (N.B.) NOT EXEMPLIFIED. THE FAIR MAID
OF DONCASTER. DOUBTS CONCERNING THE AUTHENTICITY OF HER STORY.
THEVENARD AND LOVE ON A NEW FOOTING. STARS AND GARTERS, A MONITORY
ANECDOTE FOR OUR SEX, AND A WHOLESOME NOVELTY IN DRESS RECOMMENDED TO
BOTH.
They be at hand, Sir, with stick and fiddle,
They can play a new dance, Sir, called hey, diddle, diddle.
KING CAMBYSES.
You have in the earlier chapters of this Opus, gentle Reader, heard
much of the musical history of Doncaster; not indeed as it would have
been related by that thoroughly good, fine-ear'd, kind-hearted,
open-handed, happiest of musicians and men, Dr. Burney the first; and
yet I hope thou mayest have found something in this relation which has
been to thy pleasure in reading, and which, if it should be little to
thy profit in remembrance, will be nothing to thy hurt. From music to
dancing is an easy transition, but do not be afraid that I shall take
thee to a Ball,—for I would rather go to the Treading Mill myself.
What I have to say of Doncaster dancing relates to times long before
those to which my reminiscences belong.
In a collection of Poems entitled “Folly in Print”—(which title might
be sufficiently appropriate for many such collections)—or a Book of
Rhymes, printed in 1667, there is a Ballad called the Northern Lass,
or the Fair Maid of Doncaster. Neither book or ballad has ever fallen
in my way, nor has that comedy of Richard Broome's, which from its
name Oldys supposed to have been founded upon the same story. I learn
however in a recent and voluminous account of the English Stage from
the Revolution (by a gentleman profoundly learned in the most
worthless of all literature, and for whom that literature seems to
have been quite good enough,) that Broome's play has no connection
with the ballad, or with Doncaster. But the note in which Oldys
mentions it has made me acquainted with this Fair Maid's propensity
for dancing, and with the consequences that it brought upon her. Her
name was Betty Maddox; a modern ballad writer would call her
Elizabeth, if he adopted the style of the Elizabethan age; or Eliza if
his taste inclined to the refinements of modern euphony. When an
hundred horsemen wooed her, says Oldys, she conditioned that she would
marry the one of them who could dance her down;
You shall decide your quarrel by a dance,[1]
but she wearied them all; and they left her a maid for her pains.
_Legiadria suos fervabat tanta per artus,
Ut quæcunque potest fieri saltatio per nos
Humanos, agili motu fiebat ab illâ._[2]
[Footnote 1: DRYDEN.]
[Footnote 2: MACARONICA.]
At that dancing match they must have footed it till, as is said in an
old Comedy, a good country lass's capermonger might have been able to
copy the figure of the dance from the impressions on the pavement.
For my own part I do not believe it to be a true story; they who
please may. Was there one of the horsemen but would have said on such
occasion, with the dancing Peruvians in one of Davenant's operatic
dramas,
Still round and round and round,
Let us compass the ground.
What man is he who feels
Any weight at his heels,
Since our hearts are so light, that, all weigh'd together,
Agree to a grain, and they weigh not a feather.
I disbelieve it altogether, and not for its want of verisimilitude
alone, but because when I was young there was no tradition of any such
thing in the town where the venue of the action is laid; and therefore
I conjecture that it is altogether a fictitious story, and may
peradventure have been composed as a lesson for some young spinster
whose indefatigable feet made her the terror of all partners.
The Welsh have a saying that if a woman were as quick with her feet as
her tongue, she would catch lightning enough to kindle the fire in the
morning; it is a fanciful saying, as many of the Welsh sayings are.
But if Miss Maddox had been as quick with her tongue as her feet,
instead of dancing an hundred horsemen down, she might have talked
their hundred horses to death.
Why it was a greater feat than that of Kempe the actor, who in the age
of odd performance danced from London to Norwich. He was nine days in
dancing the journey and published an account of it under the title of
his “Nine Day's Wonder.”[3] It could have been no “light fantastic
toe” that went through such work; but one fit for the roughest game at
football. At sight of the aweful foot to which it belonged, Cupid
would have fled with as much reason as the Dragon of Wantley had for
turning tail when Moor of Moor Hall with his spiked shoe-armour
pursued him. He would have fled before marriage, for fear of being
kicked out of the house after it. They must have been feet that
instead of gliding and swimming, and treading the grass so trim, went
as the old Comedy says lumperdee, clumperdee.[4]
[Footnote 3: Webster's Westward Ho. Act. v. Sc. i.—Anno 1600.]
[Footnote 4: RALPH ROISTER DOISTER.]
The Northern Lass was in this respect no Cinderella. Nor would any
one, short of an Irish Giant have fallen in love with her slipper, as
Thevenard the singer did with that which he saw by accident at a
shoe-maker's, and enquiring for what enchanting person it was made,
and judging of this earthly Venus as the proportions of Hercules have
been estimated _ex pede_, sought her out, for love of her foot,
commenced his addresses to her, and obtained her hand in marriage.
The story of Thevenard is true, at least it has been related and
received as such; this of the Fair Maid of Doncaster is not even _ben
trovato_. Who indeed shall persuade me, or who indeed will be
persuaded, that if she had wished to drop the title of spinster and
take her matrimonial degree, she would not have found some good excuse
for putting an end to the dance when she had found a partner to her
liking? A little of that wit which seldom fails a woman when it is
needed, would have taught her how to do this with a grace, and make it
appear that she was still an invincible dancer, though the Stars had
decreed that in this instance she should lose the honour of the dance.
Some accident might have been feigned like those by which the ancient
epic poets, and their imitators contrive in their Games to disappoint
those who are on the point of gaining the prize which is contended
for.
If the Stars had favoured her, they might have predestined her to meet
with such an accident as befel a young lady in the age of minuets. She
was led out in a large assembly by her partner, the object of all
eyes; and when the music began and the dance should have began also,
and he was in motion, she found herself unable to move from the spot,
she remained motionless for a few seconds, her colour changed from
rose to ruby, presently she seemed about to faint, fell into the arms
of those who ran to support her, and was carried out of the room. The
fit may have been real, for though nothing ailed her, yet what had
happened was enough to make any young woman faint in such a place. It
was something far more embarrassing than the mishap against which
Soame Jenyns cautions the ladies when he says,
No waving lappets should the dancing fair,
Nor ruffles edged with dangling fringes wear;
Oft will the cobweb ornaments catch hold
On the approaching button, rough with gold;
Nor force nor art can then the bonds divide
When once the entangled Gordian knot is tied.
So the unhappy pair, by Hymen's power
Together joined in some ill-fated hour,
The more they strive their freedom to regain,
The faster binds the indissoluble chain.
It was worse than this in the position in which she had placed herself
according to rule, for beginning the minuet, she was fastened not by a
spell, not by the influence of her malignant Stars, but by the hooks
and eyes of her garters. The Countess of Salisbury's misfortune was as
much less embarrassing as it was more celebrated.
No such misfortunes could have happened to that Countess who has been
rendered illustrious thereby, nor to the once fair danceress, who
would have dreaded nothing more than that her ridiculous distress
should become publicly known, if they had worn _genouillères_, that is
to say, knee-pieces. A necessary part of a suit of armour was
distinguished by this name in the days of chivalry; and the article of
dress which corresponds to it may be called kneelets, if for a new
article we strike a new word in that mint of analogy, from which
whatever is lawfully coined comes forth as the King's English. Dress
and cookery are both great means of civilization, indeed they are
among the greatest; both in their abuse are made subservient to luxury
and extravagance, and so become productive of great evils, moral and
physical; and with regard to both the physician may sometimes
interfere with effect, when the moralist would fail. In diet the
physician has more frequently to oppose the inclinations of his
patient, than to gratify them; and it is not often that his advice in
matters of dress meets with willing ears, although in these things the
maxim will generally hold good, that whatever is wholesome is
comfortable, and that whatever causes discomfort or uneasiness is more
or less injurious to health. But he may recommend kneelets without
having any objection raised on the score of fashion, or of vanity; and
old and young may be thankful for the recommendation. Mr.
Ready-to-halt would have found that they supported his weak joints and
rendered him less liable to rheumatic attacks; and his daughter
Much-afraid, if she had worn them when she “footed it handsomely,”
might have danced without any fear of such accidents as happened to
the Countess of old, or the heroine of the minuet in later times.
Begin therefore forthwith, dear Lady-readers, to knit _genouillères_
for yourselves, and for those whom you love. You will like them better
I know by their French name, though English comes best from English
lips; but so you knit and wear them, call them what you will.
CHAPTER CLXXXIX.
THE DOCTOR'S OPINION OF LATE HOURS. DANCING. FANATICAL OBJECTION OF
THE ALBIGENSES; INJURIOUS EFFECT OF THAT OPINION WHEN TRANSMITTED TO
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS. SIR JOHN DAVIES AND BURTON QUOTED TO SHOW THAT
IT CAN BE NO DISPARAGEMENT TO SAY THAT ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE, WHEN
ALL THE SKY'S A BALL-ROOM.
I could be pleased with any one
Who entertained my sight with such gay shows,
As men and women moving here and there,
That coursing one another in their steps
Have made their feet a tune.
DRYDEN.
The Doctor was no dancer. He had no inclination for this pastime even
in what the song calls “our dancing days,” partly because his activity
lay more in his head than in his heels, and partly perhaps from an
apprehension of awkwardness, the consequence of his rustic breeding.
In middle and later life he had strong professional objections, not to
the act of dancing, but to the crowded and heated rooms wherein it was
carried on, and to the late hours to which it was continued. In such
rooms and at such assemblies, the Devil, as an old dramatist says,
“takes delight to hang at a woman's girdle, like a rusty watch, that
she cannot discern how the time passes.”[1] Bishop Hall in our
friend's opinion spake wisely when drawing an ideal picture of the
Christian, he said of him, “in a due season he betakes himself to his
rest. He presumes not to alter the ordinance of day and night; nor
dares confound, where distinctions are made by his Maker.”
[Footnote 1: WEBSTER.]
Concerning late hours indeed he was much of the same opinion as the
man in the old play who thought that “if any thing was to be damned,
it would be Twelve o'clock at night.”
These should be hours for necessities,
Not for delights; times to repair our nature
With comforting repose, and not for us
To waste these times.[2]
He used to say that whenever he heard of a ball carried on far into
the night, or more properly speaking, far into the morning, it
reminded him with too much reason of the Dance of Death.
Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed:
The breath of night's destructive to the hue
Of ev'ry flow'r that blows. Go to the field,
And ask the humble daisy why it sleeps
Soon as the sun departs? Why close the eyes
Of blossoms infinite, long ere the moon
Her oriental veil puts off? Think why,
Nor let the sweetest blossom Nature boasts
Be thus exposed to night's unkindly damp.
Well may it droop, and all its freshness lose,
Compell'd to taste the rank and pois'nous steam
Of midnight theatre, and morning ball.
Give to repose the solemn hour she claims
And from the forehead of the morning steal
The sweet occasion. O there is a charm
Which morning has, that gives the brow of age
A smack of earth, and makes the lip of youth
Shed perfume exquisite. Expect it not,
Ye who till noon upon a down-bed lie,
Indulging feverous sleep.[3]
[Footnote 2: SHAKESPEARE.]
[Footnote 3: HURDIS' VILLAGE CURATE.]
The reader need not be told that his objections were not puritanical,
but physical. The moralist who cautioned his friend to refrain from
dancing, because it was owing to a dance that John the Baptist lost
his head, talked, he said, like a fool. Nor would he have formed a
much more favourable opinion of the Missionary in South Africa, who
told the Hottentots that dancing is a work of darkness, and that a
fiddle is Satan's own instrument. At such an assertion he would have
exclaimed a fiddlestick![4]—Why and how that word has become an
interjection of contempt, I must leave those to explain who can. The
Albigenses and the Vaudois are said to have believed that a dance is
the Devil's procession, in which they who dance break the promise and
vow which their sponsors made for them at their baptism that they
should renounce the Devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of
this wicked world,—(not to proceed further,)—this being one of his
works, and undeniably one of the aforesaid vanities and pomps. They
break moreover all the ten commandments, according to these fanatics;
for fanatics they must be deemed who said this; and the manner in
which they attempted to prove the assertion by exemplifying it through
the decalogue, shows that the fermentation of their minds was in the
acetous stage.
[Footnote 4: The explanation following is given in Grose's Classical
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. FIDDLESTICK'S END. Nothing: the ends
of the ancient fiddlesticks ending in a point: hence metaphorically
used to express a thing terminating in nothing.]
Unfortunately for France, this opinion descended to the Huguenots; and
the progress of the Reformation in that country was not so much
promoted by Marot's psalms, as it was obstructed by this prejudice, a
prejudice directly opposed to the temperament and habits of a
mercurial people. “Dancing,” says Peter Heylyn, “is a sport to which
they are so generally affected, that were it not so much enveighed
against by their straight-laced Ministers, it is thought that many
more of the French Catholicks had been of the Reformed Religion. For
so extremely are they bent upon this disport, that neither Age nor
Sickness, no nor poverty itself, can make them keep their heels still,
when they hear the Music. Such as can hardly walk abroad without their
Crutches, or go as if they were troubled all day with a Sciatica, and
perchance have their rags hang so loose about them, that one would
think a swift Galliard might shake them into their nakedness, will to
the Dancing Green howsoever, and be there as eager at the sport, as if
they had left their several infirmities and wants behind them. What
makes their Ministers (and indeed all that follow the Genevian
Discipline) enveigh so bitterly against Dancing, and punish it with
such severity when they find it used? I am not able to determine, nor
doth it any way belong unto this discourse. But being it is a
Recreation which this people are so given unto, and such a one as
cannot be followed but in a great deal of company, and before many
witnesses and spectators of their carriage in it; I must needs think
the Ministers of the French Church more nice than wise, if they choose
rather to deter men from their Congregations, by so strict a Stoicism,
than indulge any thing unto the jollity and natural gaiety of this
people, in matters not offensive, but by accident only.”[5]
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue,
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair;
And at their heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life.[6]
[Footnote 5: The Rector of a Parish once complained to Fenelon of the
practice of the villagers in dancing on Sunday evenings. “My good
friend,” replied the prelate, “you and I should not dance, but
allowance must be made to the poor people, who have only one day in
the week to forget their misfortunes.”]
[Footnote 6: SHAKESPEARE.]
It is a good natured Roman Catholic who says, “that the obliging vices
of some people are better than the sour and austere virtues of
others.” The fallacy is more in his language than in his morality; for
virtue is never sour, and in proportion as it is austere we may be
sure that it is adulterated. Before a certain monk of St. Gal, Iso by
name, was born, his mother dreamt that she was delivered of a
hedge-hog; her dream was fulfilled in the character which he lived to
obtain of being bristled with virtues like one. Methinks no one would
like to come in contact with a person of this description. Yet among
the qualities which pass with a part of the world for virtues, there
are some of a soft and greasy kind, from which I should shrink with
the same instinctive dislike. I remember to have met somewhere with
this eulogium past upon one dissenting minister by another, that he
was a lump of piety! I prefer the hedge-hog.
A dance, according to that teacher of the Albigenses whose diatribe
has been preserved, is the service of the Devil, and the fiddler, whom
Ben Jonson calls Tom Ticklefoot, is the Devil's minister. If he had
known what Plato had said he would have referred to it in confirmation
of this opinion, for Plato says that the Gods compassionating the
laborious life to which mankind were doomed, sent Apollo, Bacchus and
the Muses to teach them to sing, to drink, and to dance. And the old
Puritan would to his own entire satisfaction have identified Apollo
with Apollyon.
“But shall we make the welkin dance indeed?”[7]
[Footnote 7: SHAKSPEARE.]
Sir John Davies, who holds an honourable and permanent station among
English statesmen and poets deduces Dancing, in a youthful poem of
extraordinary merit, from the Creation, saying that it
then began to be
When the first seeds whereof the world did spring,
The fire, air, earth, and water did agree,
By Love's persuasion, Nature's mighty king,
To leave their first disordered combating;
And in a dance such measure to observe,
As all the world their motion should preserve.
He says that it with the world
in point of time begun;
Yea Time itself, (whose birth Jove never knew,
And which indeed is elder than the Sun)
Had not one moment of his age outrun,
When out leapt Dancing from the heap of things
And lightly rode upon his nimble wings.
For that brave Sun, the father of the day,
Doth love this Earth, the mother of the Night,
And like a reveller in rich array,
Doth dance his galliard in his leman's sight.
* * * * *
Who doth not see the measures of the Moon,
Which thirteen times she danceth every year?
And ends her pavin thirteen times as soon
As doth her brother, of whose golden hair
She borroweth part, and proudly doth it wear;
Then doth she coyly turn her face aside,
That half her cheek is scarce sometimes descried.
And lo the Sea that fleets about the land
And like a girdle clips her solid waist,
Music and measure both doth understand.
For his great crystal eye is always cast
Up to the Moon, and on her fixed fast;
And as she danceth in her pallid sphere,
So danceth he about the centre here.
This is lofty poetry, and one cannot but regret that the poet should
have put it in the mouth of so unworthy a person as one of Penelope's
suitors, though the best of them has been chosen. The moral
application which he makes to matrimony conveys a wholesome lesson:
If they whom sacred love hath link'd in one,
Do, as they dance, in all their course of life;
Never shall burning grief, nor bitter moan,
Nor factious difference, nor unkind strife,
Arise betwixt the husband and the wife;
For whether forth, or back, or round he go,
As the man doth, so must the woman do.
What if, by often interchange of place
Sometimes the woman gets the upper hand?
That is but done for more delightful grace;
For on that part she doth not ever stand;
But as the measure's law doth her command,
She wheels about, and ere the dance doth end,
Into her former place she doth transcend.[8]
[Footnote 8: It is remarkable that Sir John Davies should have written
this Poem, which he entitled the Orchestra, and that very remarkable
and beautiful one on the Immortality of the Soul.]
This poem of Sir John Davies's could not have been unknown to Burton,
for Burton read every thing; but it must have escaped his memory,
otherwise he who delighted in quotations and quoted so well, would
have introduced some of his stanzas, when he himself was treating of
the same subject and illustrated it with some of the same similitudes.
“The Sun and Moon, some say,” (says he) “dance about the earth; the
three upper planets about the Sun as their centre, now stationary, now
direct, now retrograde, now _in apogæo_, then in _perigæo_, now swift,
then slow; occidental, oriental, they turn round, jump and trace
[symbol for venus] and [symbol for mercury] about the Sun, with those
thirty-three _Maculæ_ or Burbonian planets, _circa Solem saltantes
cytharedum_, saith Fromundus. Four Medicean stars dance about Jupiter,
two Austrian about Saturn, &c. and all belike to the music of the
spheres.”
Sir Thomas Browne had probably this passage in his mind, when he said
“acquaint thyself with the _choragium_ of the stars.”
“The whole matter of the Universe and all the parts thereof,” says
Henry More, “are ever upon motion, and in such a dance as whose traces
backwards and forwards take a vast compass; and what seems to have
made the longest stand, must again move, according to the modulations
and accents of that Music, that is indeed out of the hearing of the
acutest ears, but yet perceptible by the purest minds, and the
sharpest wits. The truth whereof none would dare to oppose, if the
breath of the gainsayer could but tell its own story, and declare
through how many Stars and Vortices it has been strained, before the
particles thereof met, to be abused to the framing of so rash a
contradiction.”
CHAPTER CXC.
DANCING PROSCRIBED BY THE METHODISTS. ADAM CLARKE. BURCHELL'S REMARKS
ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRACTICE. HOW IT IS REGARDED IN THE
COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.
_Non vi par adunque che habbiamo ragionato a bastanza di questo? A
bastanza parmi, rispose il Signor Gasparo; pur desidero io d'intendere
qualche particolarità anchor._
IL CORTEGIANO.
The Methodist Preachers in the first Conference (that is Convocation
or Yearly Meeting) after Mr. Wesley's death, past a law for the public
over which their authority extends, or in their own language made a
rule, that “schoolmasters and schoolmistresses who received
dancing-masters into their schools, and parents also who employed
dancing-masters for their children, should be no longer members of the
Methodist Society.” Many arguments were urged against this rule, and
therefore it was defended in the Magazine which is the authorized
organ of the Conference, by the most learned and the most judicious of
their members, Adam Clarke. There was however a sad want of judgement
in some of the arguments which he employed. He quoted the injunction
of St. Paul, “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of
the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him,” and he
applied the text thus. Can any person, can any Christian _dance_ in
the name of the Lord Jesus? Or, through him, give thanks to God the
Father for such an employment?
Another text also appeared to him decisive against dancing and its
inseparable concomitants; “woe unto them who chaunt unto the sound of
the viol, and invent unto themselves instruments of music, as did
David.” The original word which we translate _chaunt_, signifies
according to him, _to quaver, to divide, to articulate,_ and may, he
says, as well be applied to the management of the feet, as to the
modulations of the voice. This interpretation is supported by the
Septuagint, and by the Arabic version; but suppose it be disputed, he
says, “yet this much will not be denied, that the text is pointedly
enough against that without which dancing cannot well be carried on, I
mean, instrumental music.” He might have read in Burton that “nothing
was so familiar in France as for citizens wives, and maids to dance a
round in the streets, and often too for want of better instruments to
make good music of their own voices and dance after it.” Ben Jonson
says truly “that measure is the soul of a dance, and Tune the
tickle-foot thereof,” but in case of need, the mouth can supply its
own music.
It is true the Scripture says “there is a time to dance;” but this he
explains as simply meaning “that human life is a variegated scene.”
Simple readers must they be who can simply understand it thus, to the
exclusion of the literal sense. Adam Clarke has not remembered here
that the Psalms enjoin us to praise the Lord with tabret and harp and
lute, the strings and the pipe, and the trumpet and the loud cymbals,
and to praise his name in the dance, and that David danced before the
Ark. And though he might argue that Jewish observances are no longer
binding, and that some things which were _permitted_ under the Jewish
dispensation are no longer lawful, he certainly would not have
maintained that any thing which was _enjoined_ among its religious
solemnities, can now in itself be sinful.
I grant, he says, “that a number of motions and steps, circumscribed
by a certain given space, and changed in certain quantities of time,
may be destitute of physical and moral evil. But it is not against
these things abstractedly that I speak. It is against their
concomitant and consequent circumstances; the undue, the improper
mixture of the sexes; the occasions and opportunities afforded of
bringing forth those fruits of death which destroy their own souls,
and bring the hoary heads of their too indulgent parents with sorrow
to the grave.”
So good a man as Adam Clarke is not to be suspected of acting like an
Advocate here, and adducing arguments which he knew to be fallacious,
in support of a cause not tenable by fair reasoning. And how so wise a
man could have reasoned so weakly, is explained by a passage in his
most interesting and most valuable autobiography. “_Malâ ave_, when
about twelve or thirteen years of age, I learned to _dance_. I long
resisted all solicitations to this employment, but at last I suffered
myself to be overcome; and learnt, and profited beyond most of my
fellows. I grew passionately fond of it, would scarcely walk but in
_measured time_, and was continually _tripping_, moving and
_shuffling_, in all times and places. I began now to value myself,
which, as far as I can recollect, I had never thought of before; I
grew impatient of control, was fond of company, wished to mingle more
than I had ever done with young people; I got also a passion for
_better clothing_, than that which fell to my lot in life, was
discontented when I found a neighbour's son _dressed better_ than
myself. I lost the spirit of _subordination_, and did not _love work_,
imbibed a spirit of _idleness_, and in short, drunk in all the
brain-sickening effluvia of _pleasure_; dancing and company took the
place of _reading_ and _study_; and the authority of my parents was
feared indeed, but not respected; and few serious impressions could
prevail in a mind imbued now with frivolity, and the love of pleasure;
yet I entered into no disreputable assembly, and in no one case, ever
kept any improper company; I formed no illegal connection, nor
associated with any whose characters were either tarnished or
suspicious. Nevertheless _dancing_ was to me a _perverting influence_,
an _unmixed moral evil_; for although by the mercy of God, it led me
not to depravity of manners, it greatly weakened the _moral
principle_, drowned the voice of a well instructed conscience, and was
the first cause of impelling me _to seek my happiness in this life_.
Every thing yielded to the disposition it had produced, and every
thing was absorbed by it. I have it justly in abhorrence for the moral
injury it did me; and I can testify, (as far as my own observations
have extended, and they have had a pretty wide range,) I have known it
to produce the same evil in others that it produced in me. I consider
it therefore as a branch of that _worldly education_, which leads from
heaven to earth, from things spiritual to things sensual, and from God
to Satan. Let them plead for it who will; I know it to be _evil_, and
that _only_. They who bring up their children in this way, or send
them to these schools where _dancing_ is taught, are consecrating them
to the service of Moloch, and cultivating the passions, so as to cause
them to bring forth the weeds of a fallen nature, with an additional
rankness, deep rooted inveteracy, and inexhaustible fertility. _Nemo
sobrius saltat_, ‘no man in his senses will dance,’ said Cicero, a
heathen; shame on those Christians who advocate a cause by which many
_sons_ have become profligate, and many _daughters_ have been ruined.”
Such was the experience of Adam Clarke in _dancing_, and such was his
opinion of the practice.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is old Fuller's observation, that “people over
strait-laced in one part will hardly fail to grow awry in another.”
Over against the observations of Adam Clarke may be set the following,
from the life of that excellent man—Sir William Jones. “Nor was he so
indifferent to slighter accomplishments as not to avail himself of the
instructions of a celebrated dancing master at Aix-la-Chapelle. He had
before taken lessons from Gallini in that trifling art.”—Carey's Lives
of English Poets. Sir William Jones, p. 359.]
An opinion not less unfavourable is expressed in homely old verse by
the translator of the Ship of Fools, Alexander Barclay.
Than it in the earth no game is more damnable;
It seemeth no peace, but battle openly,
They that it use of minds seem unstable,
As mad folk running with clamour, shout and cry
What place is void of this furious folly?
None; so that I doubt within a while
These fools the holy Church shall defile.
Of people what sort or order may we find,
Rich or poor, high or low of name
But by their foolishness and wanton mind,
Of each sort some are given unto the same.
The priests and clerks to dance have no shame.
The friar or monk, in his frock and cowl,
Must dance in his dortour, leaping to play the fool.
To it comes children, maids, and wives,
And flattering young men to see to have their prey;
The hand-in-hand great falsehood oft contrives.
The old quean also this madness will assay;
And the old dotard, though he scantly may
For age and lameness stir either foot or hand,
Yet playeth he the fool, with others in the band.
Then leap they about as folk past their mind,
With madness amazed running in compace;
He most is commended that can most lewdness find,
Or can most quickly run about the place,
There are all manners used that lack grace,
Moving their bodies in signs full of shame,
Which doth their hearts to sin right sore inflame.
Do away your dances, ye people much unwise!
Desist your foolish pleasure of travayle!
It is methinks an unwise use and guise
To take such labour and pain without avayle.
And who that suspecteth his maid or wives tayle,
Let him not suffer them in the dance to be;
For in that game though size or cinque them fayle
The dice oft runneth upon the chance of three.
The principle upon which such reasoning rests is one against which the
Doctor expressed a strong opinion, whenever he heard it introduced.
Nothing, he thought, could be more unreasonable than that the use of
what is no ways hurtful or unlawful in itself, should be prohibited
because it was liable to abuse. If that principle be once admitted,
where is it to stop? There was a Persian tyrant, who having committed
some horrible atrocity in one of his fits of drunkenness, ordered all
the wine in his dominions to be spilt as soon as he became sober, and
was conscious of what he had done; and in this he acted rightly, under
a sense of duty as well as remorse, for it was enjoining obedience to
a law of his religion, and enforcing it in a manner the most
effectual. But a Christian government which because drunkenness is a
common sin shall prohibit all spirituous liquors, would by so doing
subject the far greater and better part of the community to an unjust
and hurtful privation, thus punishing the sober, the inoffensive and
the industrious, for the sake of the idle, the worthless and the
profligate.
Jones of Nayland regarded these things with no puritanical feeling.
“In joy, and thanksgiving,” says that good and true minister of the
Church of England, “the tongue is not content with speaking, it must
evoke and utter a song, while the feet are also disposed to dance to
the measures of music, as was the custom in sacred celebrities of old
among the people of God, before the World and its vanities had
engrossed to themselves all the expressions of mirth and festivity.
They have now left nothing of that kind to religion; which must sit by
in gloomy solemnity, and see the World with the Flesh and the Devil
assume to themselves the sole power of distributing social happiness.”
“Dancing,” says Mr. Burchell, “appears to have been in all ages of the
world, and perhaps in all nations, a custom so natural, so pleasing,
and even useful, that we may readily conclude it will continue to
exist as long as mankind shall continue to people the earth. We see it
practised as much by the savage as by the civilized, as much by the
lowest, as by the highest classes of society; and as it is a
recreation purely corporeal, and perfectly independent of mental
qualification, or refinement, all are equally fitted for enjoying it:
it is this probably which has occasioned it to become universal. All
attempts therefore at rendering any exertion of the mind necessary to
its performance, are an unnatural distortion of its proper and
original features. Grace and ease of motion are the extent of its
perfection; because these are the natural perfections of the human
body. Every circumstance and object by which man is surrounded may be
viewed in a philosophical light; and thus viewed, dancing appears to
be a recreative mode of exercising the body and keeping it in health,
the means of shaking off spleen, and of expanding one of the best
characters of the heart,—the social feeling. When it does not affect
this, the fault is not in the dance, but in the dancer; a perverse
mind makes all things like itself. Dancing and music, which appears to
be of equal antiquity, and equally general among mankind, are
connected together only by a community of purpose: what one is for the
body, the other is for the mind.”
The Doctor had come to a conclusion not unlike this traveller's
concerning dancing,—he believed it to be a manifestation of that
instinct by which the young are excited to wholesome exercise, and by
which in riper years harmless employment is afforded for superfluous
strength and restless activity. The delight which girls as well as
boys take in riotous sports were proof enough, he said, that Nature
had not given so universal an inclination without some wise purpose.
An infant of six months will ply its arms and legs in the cradle, with
all its might and main, for joy,—this being the mode of dancing at
that stage of life. Nay, he said, he could produce grave authorities
on which casuists would pronounce that a probable belief might be
sustained, to prove that it is an innate propensity and of all
propensities the one which has been developed in the earliest part of
mortal existence; for it is recorded of certain Saints, that on
certain holidays, dedicated either to the mystery, or to the heavenly
patron under whose particular patronage they were placed, they danced
before they were born, a sure token or presage of their future
holiness and canonization, and a not less certain proof that the love
of dancing is an innate principle.
Lovest thou Music?
Oh, 'tis sweet!
What's dancing?
E'en the mirth of feet.[2]
[Footnote 2: From a Masque quoted by D'ISRAELI.]
CHAPTER CXCI.
A SERIOUS WORD IN SAD APOLOGY FOR ONE OF THE MANY FOOLISH WAYS IN
WHICH TIME IS MIS-SPENT.
Time as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound;
But the World's Time, is Time in masquerade!
Their's, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged,
With motley plumes; and where the peacock shews
His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red
With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.
COWPER.
Hunting, gaming and dancing are three propensities to which men are
inclined equally in the savage and in the civilized,—in all stages of
society from the rudest to the most refined, and in all its grades;
the Doctor used to say they might be called semi-intellectual. The
uses of hunting are obvious wherever there are wild animals which may
be killed for food, or beasts of prey which for our own security it is
expedient to destroy.
Indeed because hunting, hawking and fishing (all which according to
Gwillim and Plato are comprised in the term Venation) tend to the
providing of sustenance for man, Farnesius doth therefore account them
all a species of agriculture. The great heraldic author approves of
this comprehensive classification. But because the more heroic hunting
in which danger is incurred from the strength and ferocity of the
animals pursued, hath a resemblance of military practice, he delivers
his opinion that “this noble kind of venation is privileged from the
title of an Illiberal Art, being a princely and generous exercise; and
those only, who use it for a trade of life, to make sure thereof, are
to be marshalled in the rank of mechanics and illiberal artizans.” The
Doctor admired the refinement of these authors, but he thought that
neither lawful sporting, nor poaching could conveniently be
denominated agricultural pursuits.
He found it not so easy to connect the love of gaming with any
beneficial effect; some kind of mental emotion however, he argued, was
required for rendering life bearable by creatures with whom sleep is
not so compleatly an act of volition, that like dogs they can lie down
and fall asleep when they like. For those persons therefore who are
disposed either by education, capacity, or inclination to make any
worthier exertion of their intellectual faculties, gaming, though
infinitely dangerous as a passion, may be useful as a pastime. It has
indeed a strong tendency to assume a dangerous type, and to induce as
furious an excitement as drunkenness in its most ferocious form, but
among the great card-playing public of all nations, long experience
has produced an effect in mitigating it analogous to what the practice
of inoculation has effected upon the small-pox. Vaccination would have
afforded our philosopher a better illustration if it had been brought
into notice during his life.
Pope has assigned to those women who neither toil or spin, “an old age
of cards,” after “a youth of pleasure.” This perhaps is not now so
generally the course of female life, in a certain class and under
certain circumstances, as it was in his days and in the Doctor's. The
Doctor, certainly was of opinion that if the senescent spinsters and
dowagers within the circle of his little world, had not their cards as
duly as their food, many of them would have taken to something worse
in their stead. They would have sought for the excitement which they
now found at the whist or quadrille table, from the bottle, or at the
Methodist Meeting. In some way or other, spiritual or spirituous they
must have had it;[1] and the more scandalous of these ways was not
always that which would occasion the greatest domestic discomfort, or
lead to the most injurious consequences. Others would have applied to
him for relief from maladies which by whatever names they might be
called, were neither more nor less than the effect of that _tædium
vitæ_ which besets those who having no necessary employment have not
devised any for themselves. And when he regarded the question in this
light he almost doubted whether the invention of cards had not been
more beneficial than injurious to mankind.
[Footnote 1: It happened during one of the lamented Southey's visits
here at the Vicarage, West-Tarring, that a cargo of spirits was run
close by. His remark was—“Better spirituous smuggling than spiritual
pride.”]
It was not with an unkind or uncharitable feeling, still less with a
contemptuous one that Anne Seward mentioning the death of a lady “long
invalid and far advanced in life,” described her as “a civil social
being, whose care was never to offend; who had the spirit of a
gentlewoman in never doing a mean thing, whose mite was never withheld
from the poor; and whose inferiority of understanding and knowledge
found sanctuary at the card-table, that universal leveller of
intellectual distinctions.” Let not such persons be despised in the
pride of intellect! Let them not be condemned in the pride of self
righteousness!
“Our law,” says the Puritan Matthew Mead, “supposes all to be of some
calling, not only men but women, and the young ladies too; and
therefore it calls them during their virgin state spinsters. But alas,
the viciousness and degeneracy of this age hath forfeited the title.
Many can _card_, but few can spin; and therefore you may write them
_carders_, _dancers_, _painters_, _ranters_, _spenders_, rather than
spinsters. Industry is worn out by pride and delicacy; the comb and
the looking-glass possess the place and the hours of the spindle and
the distaff; and their great business is to curl the locks, instead of
twisting wool and flax. So that both male and females are prepared for
all ill impressions by the mischief of an idle education.”
“There is something strange in it,” says Sterne, “that life should
appear so short _in the gross_, and yet so long _in the detail_.
Misery may make it so, you'll say;—but we will exclude it,—and still
you'll find, though we all complain of the shortness of life what
numbers there are who seem quite overstocked with the days and hours
of it, and are constantly sending out into the highways and streets of
the city, to compel guests to come in, and take it off their hands: to
do this with ingenuity and forecast, is not one of the least arts and
business of life itself; and they who cannot succeed in it, carry as
many marks of distress about them, as bankruptcy itself could wear. Be
as careless as we may, we shall not always have the power,—nor shall
we always be in a temper to let the account run thus. When the blood
is cooled, and the spirits which have hurried us on through half our
days before we have numbered one of them, are beginning to
retire;—then wisdom will press a moment to be heard,—afflictions, or a
bed of sickness will find their hours of persuasion:—and should they
fail, there is something yet behind:—old age will overtake us at the
last, and with its trembling hand, hold up the glass to us.”
CHAPTER CXCII.
MORE OF THE DOCTOR'S PHILOSOPHY, WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BE LIKED BY
THE LADIES, AND SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BY THE
GENTLEMEN. THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO COUNT CASTIGLIONE, AND TO SIR
JOHN CHEKE.
_Ou tend l'auteur à cette heure?
Que fait-il? Revient-il? Va-t-il? Ou s'il demeure?_
L'AUTEUR.
_Non, je ne reviens pas, car je n'ai pas été;
Je ne vais pas aussi, car je suis arrété;
Et ne demeure point, car, tout de ce pas même
Je pretens m'en aller._
MOLIERE.
The passage with which the preceding Chapter is concluded, is
extracted from Sterne's Sermons, one of those discourses in which he
tried the experiment of adapting the style of Tristram Shandy to the
pulpit;—an experiment which proved as unsuccessful as it deserved to
be. Gray however thought these sermons were in the style which in his
opinion was most proper for the pulpit, and that they showed “a very
strong imagination and a sensible head. But you see him, he adds,
often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his
perriwig in the face of his audience.”
The extract which has been set before the reader is one of those
passages which bear out Gray's judgement; it is of a good kind, and in
its kind so good, that I would not weaken its effect, by inserting too
near it the following Epigram from an old Magazine, addressed to a
lady passionately fond of cards.
Thou, whom at length incessant gaming dubs,
Thrice honourable title! Queen of Clubs,
Say what vast joys each winning card imparts,
And that, too justly, called the King of Hearts.
Say, when you mourn of cash and jewels spoil'd,
May not the thief be Knave of Diamonds stil'd?
One friend, howe'er, when deep remorse invades,
Awaits thee Lady; 'tis the Ace of Spades!
It has been seen that the Doctor looked upon the love of gaming as a
propensity given us to counteract that indolence which if not thus
amused, would breed for itself both real and imaginary evils. And
dancing he thought was just as useful in counteracting the factitious
inactivity of women in their youth, as cards are for occupying the
vacuity of their minds at a later period. Of the three
semi-intellectual propensities, as he called them which men are born
with, those for hunting and gaming are useful only in proportion, as
the earth is uncultivated, and those by whom it is inhabited. In a
well ordered society there would be no gamblers, and the Nimrods of
such a society, must like the heroes in Tongataboo, be contented with
no higher sport than rat-catching: but dancing will still retain its
uses. It will always be the most graceful exercise for children at an
age when all that they do is graceful; and it will always be that
exercise which can best be regulated for them, without danger of their
exerting themselves too much, or continuing in it too long. And for
young women in a certain rank, or rather region of life,—the temperate
zone of society,—those who are above the necessity of labour, and
below the station in which they have the command of carriages and
horses,—that is for the great majority of the middle class;—it is the
only exercise which can animate them to such animal exertion as may
suffice
“To give the blood its natural spring and play.”[1]
[Footnote 1: SOUTHEY.]
Mr. Coleridge says (in his Table Talk) “that the fondness for dancing
in English women is the reaction of their reserved manners: it is the
only way in which they can throw themselves forth in natural liberty.”
But the women are not more fond of it in this country, than they are
in France and Spain. There can be no healthier pastime for them, (as
certainly there is none so exhilarating, and exercise unless it be
exhilarating is rarely healthful)—provided,—and upon this the Doctor
always insisted,—provided it be neither carried on in hot rooms, nor
prolonged to late hours. They order these things, he used to say,
better in France; they order them better indeed anywhere than in
England, and there was a time when they were ordered better among
ourselves.
“The youth of this city,” says the honest old chronicler and historian
of the metropolis his native place, “used on holidays, after evening
prayers, to exercise their basters and bucklers, at their master's
doors; and the maidens, one of them playing on a timbrel, to dance for
garlands hanged athwart the streets, which open pastimes in my youth,
being now suppressed, worser practises within doors are to be feared.”
Every one who is conversant with the Middle Ages, and with the
literature of the reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles I. must have
perceived in how much kindlier relations the different classes of
society existed toward each other in those days than they have since
done. The very word independence had hardly found a place in the
English language, or was known only as denoting a mischievous heresy.
It is indeed, as one of our most thoughtful contemporaries has well
said, an “unscriptural word,”—and “when applied to man, it directly
contradicts the first and supreme laws of our nature; the very essence
of which is universal dependence upon God, and universal
interdependence on one another.”
The Great Rebellion dislocated the relations which had for some
centuries thus happily subsisted; and the money getting system which
has long been the moving principle of British society, has, aided by
other injurious influences, effectually prevented the recovery which
time, and the sense of mutual interest, and mutual duty, might
otherwise have brought about. It was one characteristic of those old
times, which in this respect deserve to be called good, that the
different classes participated in the enjoyments of each other. There
were the religious spectacles, which, instead of being reformed and
rendered eminently useful as they might have been, were destroyed by
the brutal spirit of puritanism. There were the Church festivals, till
that same odious spirit endeavoured to separate, and has gone far
toward separating, all festivity from religion. There were tournaments
and city pageants at which all ranks were brought together: they are
now brought together only upon the race-course. Christmas Mummers have
long ceased to be heard of. The Morris dancers have all but
disappeared even in the remotest parts of the kingdom. I know not
whether a May-pole is now to be seen. What between manufactures and
methodism England is no longer the merry England which it was once a
happiness and an honour to call our country. Akenside's words “To the
Country Gentlemen of England,” may be well remembered.
And yet full oft your anxious tongues complain
That lawless tumult prompts the rustic throng;
That the rude Village-inmates now disdain
Those homely ties which rul'd their fathers long.
Alas, your fathers did by other arts
Draw those kind ties around their simple hearts.
And led in other paths their ductile will;
By succour, faithful counsel, courteous cheer,
Won them their ancient manners to revere,
To prize their countries peace and heaven's due rites fulfil.
My friend saw enough of this change in its progress to excite in him
many melancholy forebodings in the latter part of his life. He knew
how much local attachment was strengthened by the recollection of
youthful sports and old customs; and he well understood how little men
can be expected to love their country, who have no particular
affection for any part of it. Holidays he knew attached people to the
Church, which enjoined their observance; but he very much doubted
whether Sunday Schools would have the same effect.
In Beaumont and Fletcher's Play of the Prophetess, the countrymen
discourse concerning the abdicated Emperor who has come to reside
among them. One says to the other,
Do you think this great man will continue here?
the answer is
Continue here? what else? he has bought the great farm;
A great man[2] with a great inheritance
And all the ground about it, all the woods too
And stock'd it like an Emperor. Now all our sports again
And all our merry gambols, our May Ladies,
Our evening dances on the green, our songs,
Our holiday good cheer; our bagpipes now, boys,
Shall make the wanton lasses skip again,
Our sheep-shearings and all our knacks.
[Footnote 2: Southey has inserted a query here. “Qy Manor or Mansion.”
It is usually printed as in the text.—See Act v. Sc. iii.]
It is said however in the _Cortegiano, che non saria conveniente che
un gentilhuomo andasse ad honorare con la persona sua una festa di
contado, dove i spettatori, et i compagni fussero gente ignobile._
What follows is curious to the history of manners. _Disse allhor' il
S. Gasparo Pallavicino, nel paese nostro di Lombardia non s'hanno
queste rispetti: anzi molti gentil'huomini giovani trovansi, che le
feste ballano tuttol' di nel Sole co i villani, et con esti giocano a
lanciar la barra, lottare, correre et saltare; et io non credo che sia
male, perche ivi non si fa paragone della nobiltà, ma della forza, e
destrezza, nelle quai cose spesso gli huomini di villa non vaglion
meno che i nobili; et par che que quella domestichezza habbia in se
una certa liberalità amabile._—An objection is made to this; _Quel
ballar nel Sole, rispose M. Federico, a me non piace per modo alcuno;
ne so che guadagno vi si trovi. Ma chi vuol pur lottar, correr et
saltar co i villani, dee (al parer mio) farlo in modo di provarsi, et
(come si suol dir) per gentilezza, non per contender con loro, et dee
l'huomo esser quasi sicuro di vincere; altramente non vi si metta;
perche sta troppo male, et troppo è brutta cosa, et fuor de la dignità
vedere un gentilhuomo vinto da un villano, et massimamente alla lotta;
però credo io che sia ben astenersi almano in presentia di molti,
perche il guadagno nel vincere è pochissimo, et la perdita nell' esse
vinto è grandissima._
That is, in the old version of Master Thomas Hoby; “it were not meet
that a gentleman should be present in person, and a doer in such a
matter in the country, where the lookers-on and the doers were of a
base sort. Then said the Lord Gasper Pallavicino, in our country of
Lombardy these matters are not passed upon; for you shall see there
young gentlemen, upon the holydays, come dance all the day long in the
sun with them of the country, and pass the time with them in casting
the bar, in wrestling, running and leaping. And I believe it is not
ill done; for no comparison is there made of nobleness of birth, but
of force and slight; in which things many times the men of the country
are not a whit inferior to gentlemen: and it seemeth this familiar
conversation containeth in it a certain lovely freeness.” “The dancing
in the sun,” answered Sir Frederick, “can I in no case away withal;
and I cannot see what a man shall gain by it. But whoso will wrestle,
run and leap with men of the country, ought, in my judgement, to do it
after a sort; to prove himself, and (as they are wont to say) for
courtesy, not to try mastery with them. And a man ought (in a manner)
to be assured to get the upper hand, else let him not meddle withal;
for it is too ill a sight, and too foul a matter, and without
estimation, to see a gentleman overcome by a carter, and especially in
wrestling. Therefore I believe it is well done to abstain from it, at
the leastwise in the presence of many; if he be overcome, his gain is
small, and his loss in being overcome very great.”
This translation is remarkable for having a Sonnet, or more correctly
speaking, a quatorzain by Sackville prefixed to it, and at the end of
the volume a letter of Sir John Cheke's to the translator, curious for
its peculiar spelling, and for the opinion expressed in it that our
language ought as much as possible to be kept pure and unmixed.
“I have taken sum pain,” he says, “at your request, cheflie in your
preface; not in the reading of it, for that was pleasaunt unto me,
boath for the roundnes of your saienges and welspeakinges of the saam,
but in changing certein wordes which might verie wel be let aloan, but
that I am verie curious in mi freendes matters, not to determijn, but
to debaat what is best. Whearin I seek not the bestnes haplie bi
truth, but bi mijn own phansie and sheo of goodnes.
“I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and
pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if
we take not heed bi tijm, ever borowing and never payeng, she shall be
fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tung naturallie
and praiseablie utter her meaning, when she boroweth no conterfectness
of other tunges to attire her self withall, but useth plainlie her own
with such shift as nature, craft, experiens, and folowing of other
excellent doth lead her unto; and if she went at ani tijm (as being
unperfight she must) yet let her borow with suche bashfulnes, that it
mai appear, that if either the mould of our own tung could serve us to
fascion a woord of our own, or if the old denisoned wordes could
content and ease this neede, we wold not boldly venture of unknoven
wordes. This I say, not for reproof of you, who have scarslie and
necessarily used, whear occasion serveth, a strange word so, as it
seemeth to grow out of the matter and not to be sought for; but for
mijn our defens, who might be counted overstraight a deemer of
thinges, if I gave not thys accompt to you, my freend and wijs, of mi
marring this your handiwork.
“But I am called awai. I prai you pardon mi shortnes; the rest of my
saienges should be but praise and exhortacion in this your doinges,
which at moar leisor I shold do better.
From my house in Wood street
the 16 of July 1557.
Yours assured
JOAN CHEEK.”
Sir John Cheke died about two months after the date of this letter:
and Hoby's translation was not published till 1561, because “there
were certain places in it, which of late years being misliked of some
that had the perusing of it, the Author thought it much better to keep
it in darkness a while, then to put it in light, imperfect, and in
piecemeal, to serve the time.” The book itself had been put in the
list of prohibited works, and it was not till 1576 that the Conte
Camillo Castiglione, the author's son, obtained permission to amend
the obnoxious passages and publish an expurgated edition.
It would have vexed Sir John if he had seen with how little care the
printer, and his loving friend Master Hoby observed his system of
orthography, in this letter. For he never used the final e unless when
it is sounded, which he denoted then by doubling it; he rejected the
y, wrote u when it was long, with a long stroke over it, doubled the
other vowels when they were long, and threw out all letters that were
not pronounced. No better system of the kind has been proposed, and
many worse. Little good would have been done by its adoption, and much
evil, if the translators of the Bible had been required to proceed
upon his principle of using no words but such as were true English of
Saxon original. His dislike of the translation for corrupting as he
thought the language into vocables of foreign growth, made him begin
to translate the New Testament in his own way. The Manuscript in his
own hand, as far as it had proceeded, is still preserved at Bene't
College,[3] and it shows that he found it impracticable to observe his
own rule. But though as a precisian he would have cramped and
impoverished the language, he has been praised for introducing a short
and expressive style, avoiding long and intricate periods, and for
bringing “fair and graceful writing into vogue;” he wrote an excellent
hand himself, and it is said that all the best scholars in those times
followed his example, “so that fair writing and good learning seemed
to commence together.”
[Footnote 3: This has been since printed with a good Glossary by the
Rev. James Goodwin, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi Coll.
Cambridge, and is very curious. All that remains is the Gospel
according to St. Matthew. As an instance of Cheke's Englishisms I may
refer to the rendering of _προσήλυτον_ in c. xxiij. _v._ 15, by
_freschman_. Some little of the MS. is lost.—See Preface, p. 10.]
O Soul of Sir John Cheke, thou wouldst have led me out of my way, if
that had been possible,—if my ubiety did not so nearly resemble
ubiquity, that in Anywhereness and Everywhereness I know where I am,
and can never be lost till I get out of Whereness itself into Nowhere.
CHAPTER CXCIII.
MASTER THOMAS MACE, AND THE TWO HISTORIANS OF HIS SCIENCE, SIR JOHN
HAWKINS AND DR. BURNEY. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE OLD LUTANIST AND OF HIS
“MUSIC'S MONUMENT.”
This Man of Music hath more in his head
Than mere crotchets.
SIR W. DAVENANT.
Thou wast informed, gentle Reader, in the third Volume and at the two
hundred and sixth page of this much-hereafter-to-be-esteemed Opus,
that a _Tattle de Moy_ was a new-fashioned thing in the Year of our
Lord 1676. This was on the authority of the good old Lutanist, whom, I
then told you, I took leave of but for a while, bethinking me of
Pope's well known lines,
But all our praises why should Lords engross?
Rise, honest Muse! and sing the MAN OF ROSS.
And now gentle reader, seeing that whether with a consciousness of
second sight or not, Master Mace, praiseworthy as the Man of Ross, has
so clearly typified my Preludes and Voluntaries, my grave Pavines and
graver Galliards, my Corantoes and Serabands, my Chichonas, and above
all my Tattle-de-Moys, am I not bound in gratitude to revive the
memory of Master Mace; or rather to extend it and make him more fully
and more generally known than he has been made by the two historians
of his science Sir John Hawkins and Dr. Burney. It is to the honour of
both these eminent men, who have rendered such good services to that
science, and to the literature of their country, that they should have
relished the peculiarities of this simple-hearted old lutanist. But it
might have been expected from both; for Dr. Burney was as
simple-hearted himself, and as earnestly devoted to the art: and Sir
John who delighted in Ignoramus and in Izaak Walton, could not fail to
have a liking for Thomas Mace.
“Under whom he was educated,” says Sir John, “or by what means he
became possessed of so much skill in the science of music, as to be
able to furnish out matter for a folio volume, he has no where
informed us; nevertheless his book contains so many particulars
respecting himself, and so many traits of an original and singular
character, that a very good judgement may be formed both of his temper
and ability. With regard to the first, he appears to have been an
enthusiastic lover of his art; of a very devout and serious turn of
mind; and cheerful and good humoured under the infirmities of age, and
the pressure of misfortunes. As to the latter his knowledge of music
seems to have been confined to the practice of his own instrument; and
so much of the principles of the science as enabled him to compose for
it; but for his style in writing he certainly never had his fellow.”
This is not strictly just as relating either to his proficiency in
music, or his style as an author. Mace says of himself, “having said
so much concerning the lute, as also taken so much pains in laying
open all the hidden secrets thereof, it may be thought I am so great a
lover of it, that I make light esteem of any other instrument besides;
which truly I do not; but love the viol in a very high degree; yea
close unto the lute; and have done much more, and made very many more
good and able proficients upon it, than ever I have done upon the
lute. And this I shall presume to say, that if I excel in either, it
is most certainly upon the viol. And as to other instruments, I can as
truly say, I value every one that is in use, according to its due
place; as knowing and often saying, that all God's creatures are good;
and all ingenuities done by man, are signs, tokens, and testimonies of
the wisdom of God bestowed upon man.”
So also though it is true that Thomas Mace stands distinguished among
the writers on Music, yet it could be easy to find many fellows for
him as far as regards peculiarity of style. A humourist who should
collect odd books might form as numerous a library, as the man of
fastidious taste who should confine his collection to such works only
as in their respective languages were esteemed classical. “The
singularity of his style,” says Sir John, “remarkable for a profusion
of epithets and words of his own invention, and tautology without end,
is apt to disgust such as attend less to the matter than manner of his
book; but in others it has a different effect; as it exhibits, without
the least reserve all the particulars of the author's character, which
was not less amiable than singular.”—“The vein of humour that runs
through it presents a lively portraiture of a good-natured, gossipping
old man, virtuous and kind-hearted.”—The anxious “precision with which
he constantly delivers himself, is not more remarkable than his eager
desire to communicate to others all the knowledge he was possessed of,
even to the most hidden secrets.”—“The book breathes throughout a
spirit of devotion; and, agreeable to his sentiments of music is a
kind of proof that his temper was improved by the exercise of his
profession.”—There is no pursuit by which, if it be harmless in
itself, a man may not be improved in his moral as well as in his
intellectual nature, provided it be followed for its own sake: but
most assuredly there is none however intrinsically good, or beneficial
to mankind, from which he can desire any moral improvement, if his
motive be either worldly ambition, or the love of gain.—_Ἀδύνατον ἐκ
φαύλης ἀφορμῆς ἐπὶ τὸ τέλος ἐυδραμεῖν._[1]
[Footnote 1: IAMBLICHUS.]
To give an account of “Music's Monument,” which Dr. Burney calls a
matchless book, not to be forgotten among the curiosities of the
seventeenth century! will be to give the character of Thomas Mace
himself, for no author ever more compleatly embodied his own spirit in
his writings.
It is introduced with an Epistle Dedicatory, which by an easy
misrepresentation has been made to appear profane.
To Thee, One-Only-Oneness, I direct
My weak desires and works.
Thou only art The Able True Protector;
Oh be my shield, defender and director,
Then sure we shall be safe.
Thou know'st, O Searcher of all hearts how I,
With right, downright, sincere sincerity,
Have longed long to do some little good,
(According to the best I understood)
With thy rich talent, though by me made poor,
For which I grieve, and will do so no more,
By thy good Grace assisting, which I do
Most humbly beg for. Oh, adjoin it to
My longing ardent soul; and have respect
To this my weak endeavour, and accept,
In thy great mercy, both of it and me,
Even as we dedicate ourselves to Thee.
An Epistle, in verse, follows “to all Divine Readers, especially those
of the Dissenting Ministry, or Clergy, who want not only skill, but
good will to this most excelling part of divine service, viz. singing
of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to the praise of the Almighty,
in the public Assemblies of his Saints: and yet more particularly, to
all great and high Persons, Supervisors, Masters, or Governors of the
Church, (if any such there should be) wanting skill, or good will
thereunto.”
He says to those “high men of honour,” that
Example is the thing;
There's but one way, which is yourselves to sing.
This sure will do it; for when the vulgar see
Such worthy presidents their leaders be,
Who exercise therein and lead the van,
They will be brought to't, do they what they can.
But otherwise for want of such example,
Tis meanly valued, and on it they trample;
And by that great defect, so long unsought,
Our best Church Music's well-nigh brought to nought.
Besides,
No robes adorn high persons like to it;
No ornaments for pure Divines more fit.
That Counsel given by the Apostle Paul
Does certainly extend to Christians all.
Colossians the third, the sixteenth verse;
(Turn to the place:) that text will thus rehearse,
Let the word of Christ dwell in you plenteously,
(What follows? Music in its excellency.)
Admonishing yourselves, in sweet accord,
In singing psalms with grace unto the Lord,
_Sed sine arte_, that cannot be done,
_Et sine arte_, better let alone.
Having thus “fronted this Book with the divine part, and preached his
little short sermon” upon the last of St. Paul, he says that his first
and chief design in writing this book was only to discover the occult
mysteries of the noble lute, and to shew the great worthiness of that
too much neglected and abused instrument, and his good will to all the
true lovers of it, in making it plain and easy, giving the true
reasons why it has been formerly a very hard instrument to play well
upon, and also why now it is become so easy and familiarly pleasant.
“And I believe,” says he, “that whosoever will but trouble himself to
read those reasons,—and join his own reason, with the reasonableness
of those reasons, will not be able to find the least reason to
contradict those reasons.”
He professed that by his directions “any person, young or old, should
be able to perform so much and so well upon it, in so much or so
little time, towards a full and satisfactory delight and pleasure,
(yea, if it were but only to play common toys, jigs or tunes,) as upon
any instrument whatever; yet with this most notable and admirable
exception, (for the respectable commendation of the lute,) that they
may, besides such ordinary and common contentments, study and practice
it all the days of their lives, and yet find new improvements, yea
doubtless if they should live unto the age of Methusalem, ten times
over; for there is no limitation to its vast bounds and bravery.” It
appears that the merit of this book in this respect is not overstated,
one of his sons attained to great proficiency on this instrument by
studying the book without any assistance from his father; and Sir John
Hawkins affirms on his own knowledge that Mr. John Immyns, lutanist to
the Chapel Royal, has the like experience of it. “This person who had
practised on sundry instruments for many years, and was able to sing
his part at sight, at the age of forty took to the lute, and by the
help of Mace's book alone, became enabled to play thorough base, and
also easy lessons on it; and by practice had rendered the tablature as
familiar to him, as the notes of the scale.”
The notation called the tablature is minutely explained in the work.
It has not the least relation to the musical character; the six
strings of the lute are represented by as many lines, “and the several
frets or stops by the letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, y (a preference
to i as being more conspicuous) k; the letter _a_ ever signifying the
open string in all positions.” Many persons have been good performers
on the lute, and at the same time totally ignorant of the notes of the
Gamut. His printer, he said, “had outdone all music work in this kind
ever before printed in this nation; and was indeed the only fit person
to do the like, he only having those new materials, the like to which
was never had made before in England.” They might have been more
distinct, and more consistent;—five being common English characters,
the _c_ more resembling the third letter in the Greek alphabet than
any thing else, the _b_ reversed serving for _g_, and the _d_ in like
manner for _e_.
The characters for the time of notes he compares to money, as
supposing that most people would be ready enough to count them the
better for that. Considering therefore the semi-breve as a groat, the
minim becomes two pence, the crotchet a penny, the quaver a
half-penny, and the semi-quaver a farthing. Trouble not yourself for
the demi-quaver, he says, till you have a quick hand, it being half a
semi-quaver.
But besides these, there are marks in his notation for the fifteen
graces which may be used upon the lute, though few or none used them
all. They are the Shake, the Beat, the Back-fall, the Half-fall, the
Whole-fall, the Elevation, the Single Relish, the Double Relish, the
Slur, the Slide, the Spinger, the Sting, the Tutt, the Pause and the
Soft and Loud Play, “which is as great and good a grace as any other
whatever.”
“Some,” says Master Mace, “there are, and many I have met with, who
have such a natural agility in their nerves, and aptitude to that
performance, that before they could do any thing else to purpose, they
would make a shake rarely well. And some again can scarcely ever gain
a good shake, by reason of the unaptness of their nerves to that
action, but yet otherwise come to play very well. I, for my own part,
have had occasion to break both my arms; by reason of which, I cannot
make the nerve-shake well, nor strong; yet by a certain motion of my
arm, I have gained such a contentive shake, that sometimes my scholars
will ask me, how they shall do to get the like? I have then no better
answer for them, than to tell them, they must first break their arm,
as I have done; and so possibly after that, by practice, they may get
my manner of Shake.”
Rules are given for all these graces, but observe he says “that
whatever your grace be, you must in your farewell express the true
note perfectly, or else your pretended grace, will prove a disgrace.”
“The Spinger is a grace very neat and curious, for some sort of notes,
and is done thus: After you have hit your note, you must just as you
intend to part with it, dab one of your rest fingers lightly upon the
same string, a fret or two frets below, (according to the air,) as if
you did intend to stop the string, in that place, yet so gently, that
you do not cause the string to sound, in that stop, so dab'd; but only
so that it may suddenly take away that sound which you last struck,
yet give some small tincture of a new note, but not distinctly to be
heard as a note; which grace, if well done and properly is very taking
and pleasant.”
The Sting is “another very neat and pretty grace,” it makes the sound
seem to swell with pretty unexpected humour, and gives much
contentment upon cases.
The Tut is easily done, and always with the right hand. “When you
would perform this grace, it is but to strike your letter which you
intend shall be so graced, with one of your fingers, and immediately
clap on your next striking finger upon the string which you struck; in
which doing, you suddenly take away the sound of the letter; and if
you do it clearly, it will seem to speak the word, _Tut_, so plainly,
as if it were a living creature, speakable!”
While however the pupil was intent upon exhibiting these graces, the
zealous master exhorted him not to be unmindful of his own, but to
regard his postures, for a good posture is comely, creditable and
praiseworthy, and moreover advantageous as to good performance. “Set
yourself down against a table, in as becoming a posture, as you would
choose to do for your best reputation. Sit upright and straight; then
take up your lute, and lay the body of it in your lap across. Let the
lower part of it lie upon your right thigh, the head erected against
your left shoulder and ear; lay your left hand down upon the table,
and your right arm over the lute, so that you may set your little
finger down upon the belly of the lute, just under the bridge, against
the treble, or second string: and then keep your lute stiff, and
strongly set with its lower edge against the table-edge; and so,
leaning your breast something hard against its ribs, cause it to stand
steady and strong, so that a bystander cannot easily draw it from your
breast, table, and arm. This is the most becoming, steady and
beneficial posture.”
“Your left hand thus upon the table, your lute firmly fixed, yourself
and it in your true postures,—bring up your left hand from the table,
bended, just like the balance of a hook, all excepting your thumb,
which must stand straight and span'd out; your fingers also, all
divided out from the other in an equal and handsome order; and in this
posture, place your thumb under the neck of the lute, a little above
the fret, just in the midst of the breadth of the neck; all your
four-fingers in this posture, being held close over the strings on the
other side, so that each finger may be in a readiness to stop down
upon any fret. And now in this lively and exact posture, I would have
your posture drawn, which is the most becoming posture I can direct
unto for a lutanist.”
“Know that an old lute is better than a new one.” Old instruments
indeed, are found by experience to be far the best, the reasons for
which Master Mace could no further dive into than to say, he
apprehended, “that by extreme age, the wood and those other adjuncts,
glue, parchment, paper, linings of cloth, (as some used) but above all
the varnish, are by time very much dried, limped, made gentle,
rarified, or to say better, even airified; so that that stiffness,
stubbornness, or _clunguiness_ which is natural to such bodies, are so
debilitated and made pliable, that the pores of the wood, have a more
free liberty to move, stir or secretly vibrate; by which means the air
(which is the life of all things both animate and inanimate) has a
more free and easy recourse to pass and repass, &c. Whether I have hit
upon the right cause, I know not, but sure I am that age adds goodness
to instruments.”
The Venice lutes were commonly good; and the most esteemed maker was
Laux Malles, whose name was always written in text letters. Mace had
seen two of his lutes, “pitiful, old, battered, cracked things;” yet
for one of these, which Mr. Gootiere, the famous lutanist in his time
showed him, the King paid an hundred pounds. The other belonged to Mr.
Edward Jones, one of Gootiere's scholars; and he relates this “true
story” of it; that a merchant bargained with the owner to take it with
him in his travels, on trial; if he liked it, he was on his return to
give an hundred pounds for it; otherwise he was to return it safe, and
pay twenty pounds “for his experience and use of it.”—He had often
seen lutes of three or four pounds a piece “more illustrious and
taking to a common eye.”
The best shape was the Pearl mould, both for sound and comeliness, and
convenience in holding. The best wood for the ribs was what he calls
air-wood, this was absolutely the best; English maple next. There were
very good ones however of plum, pear, yew, rosemary-air, and ash.
Ebony and ivory, though most costly and taking to a common eye were
the worst. For the belly the finest grained wood was required, free
from knots or obstructions; cypress was very good, but the best was
called Cullen's-cliff, being no other than the finest sort of fir, and
the choicest part of that fir. To try whether the bars within, to
strengthen and keep it straight and tight, were all fast, you were
gently to knock the belly all along, round about, and then in the
midst, with one of your knuckles; “if any thing be either loose in it,
or about it, you may easily perceive it, by a little fuzzing or
hizzing; but if all be sound, you shall hear nothing but a tight plump
and twanking knock.”
Among the aspersions against the lute which Master Mace indignantly
repelled, one was that it cost as much in keeping as a horse. “I do
confess,” said he, “that those who will be prodigal and extraordinary
curious, may spend as much as may maintain two or three horses, and
men to ride upon them too if they please. But he never charged more
than ten shillings for first stringing one, and five shillings a
quarter for maintaining it with strings.”
The strings were of three sorts, minikins, Venice Catlins, and Lyons,
for the basses; but the very best for the basses were called Pistoy
Basses; these, which were smooth and well-twisted strings, but hard to
come by, he supposes to be none others than thick Venice Catlins, and
commonly dyed of a deep dark red. The red strings however were
commonly rotten, so were the yellow, the green sometimes very good;
the clear blue the best. But good strings might be spoilt in a quarter
of an hour, if they were exposed to any wet, or moist air. Therefore
they were to be bound close together, and wrapt closely up either in
an oiled paper, a bladder, or a piece of sere cloth, “such as often
comes over with them,” and then to be kept in some close box, or
cupboard, but not amongst linen (for that gives moisture,) and in a
room where is usually a fire. And when at any time you open them for
your use, take heed they lie not too long open, nor in a dark window,
nor moist place; for moisture is the worst enemy to your strings.
“How to choose and find a true string, which is the most curious piece
of skill in stringing, is both a pretty curiosity to do, and also
necessary. First, draw out a length, or more; then take the end, and
measure the length it must be of, within an inch or two, (for it will
stretch so much at least in the winding up,) and hold that length in
both hands, extended to reasonable stiffness: then, with one of your
fingers strike it; giving it so much liberty in slackness as you may
see it vibrate, or open itself. If it be true, it will appear to the
eye, just as if they were two strings; but if it shows more than two,
it is false, and will sound unpleasantly upon your instrument, nor
will it ever be well in tune, either stopt or open, but snarl.” Sir
John Hawkins observes that this direction is given by Adrian Le Roy in
his instructions for the lute, and is adopted both by Mersennus and
Kircher. Indeed this experiment is the only known test of a true
string, and for that reason is practised by such as are curious at
this day.
In his directions for playing, Master Mace says, “take notice that you
strike not your strings with your nails, as some do, who maintain it
the best way of play; but I do not; and for this reason; because the
nail cannot draw so sweet a sound from the lute as the nibble end of
the flesh can do. I confess in a concert it might do well enough,
where the mellowness, (which is the most excellent satisfaction from a
lute) is lost in the crowd; but alone, I could never receive so good
content from the nail as from the flesh.”
Mace considered it to be absolutely necessary that all persons who
kept lutes should know how to repair them; for he had known a lute
“sent fifty or sixty miles to be mended of a very small mischance,
(scarce worth twelve pence for the mending) which besides the trouble
and cost of carriage, had been broken all to pieces in the return, and
so farewell lute and all the cost.” One of the necessary tools for
this work is “a little working knife, such as are most commonly made
of pieces of broken good blades, fastened into a pretty thick haft of
wood or bone, leaving the blade out about two or three inches;” “grind
it down upon the back,” he says, “to a sharp point, and set to a good
edge; it will serve you for many good uses, either in cutting,
carving, making pins, &c.”
His directions for this work are exceedingly minute; but when the lute
was in order, it was of no slight importance to keep it so, and for
this also he offers some choice observations. “You shall do well, ever
when you lay it by in the day-time, to put it into a bed that is
constantly used, between the rug and blanket, but never between the
sheets, because they may be moist.” “This is the most absolute and
best place to keep it in always.” “There are many great commodities in
so doing; it will save your strings from breaking, it will keep your
lute in good order, so that you shall have but small trouble in tuning
it; it will sound more brisk and lively, and give you pleasure in the
very handling of it; if you have any occasion extraordinary to set up
your lute at a higher pitch, you may do it safely, which otherwise you
cannot so well do, without danger to your instrument and strings: it
will be a great safety to your instrument, in keeping it from decay,
it will prevent much trouble in keeping the bars from flying loose and
the belly from sinking: and these six conveniences considered all
together, must needs create a seventh, which is, that lute-playing
must certainly be very much facilitated, and made more delightful
thereby. Only no person must be so inconsiderate as to tumble down
upon the bed whilst the lute is there, for I have known, said he,
several good lutes spoilt with such a trick.”
I will not say of the reader, who after the foregoing specimens of
Music's Monument has no liking for Master Mace and his book that he
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoil,
but I cannot but suspect that he has no taste for caviare, dislikes
laver, would as willingly drink new hock as old, and more willingly
the base compound which passes for champagne, than either. Nay I could
even suspect that he does not love those “three things which persons
loving, love what they ought,—the whistling of the wind, the dashing
of the waves, and the rolling of thunder:” and that he comes under the
commination of this other triad, “let no one love such as dislike the
scent of cloves, the taste of milk and the song of birds.” My Welsh
friends shall have the pleasure of reading these true sayings, in
their own ancient, venerable and rich language.
_Tri dyn o garu tri pheth à garant à ddylaint; gorddyan y gwgnt, boran
y tònau, ac angerdd y daran._
_Tri pheth ma chared neb a 'u hanghara: rhogleu y meillion, blâs
llaeth, a chân adar._
CHAPTER CXCIV.
A MUSIC LESSON FROM MASTER THOMAS MACE TO BE PLAYED BY LADY FAIR:—A
STORY, THAN WHICH THERE IS NONE PRETTIER IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC.
What shall I say? Or shall I say no more?
I must go on! I'm brim-full, running o'er.
But yet I'll hold, because I judge ye wise;
And few words unto such may well suffice.
But much—much more than this I could declare;
Yet for some certain reasons I'll forbear.
But less than this I could not say; because,
If saying less, I should neglect my cause,
For 'tis the Doctor's cause I plead so strong for,
And 'tis his cause compleated that I long for,
And 'tis true doctrine certainly I preach,
And 'tis that doctrine every priest should teach.
THOMAS MACE, TO ALL DIVINE READERS.
O Lady fair, before we say,
Now cease my lute; this is the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And ended is that we begun;
My lute be still, for I have done:[1]