| Citation |
PJ.757.019
4 Aug 1757:11, 13 (765)
Some account of an estimate of the manners and principles of
the times, by the author of essays on the characteristics. .
. .
This excess of effeminate delicacy has influenced every
other entertainment; it has produced a low and unmanly taste
in music. We do not go to concerts or operas to admire the
composition, but the tricks of the performer, who is always
most applauded when he runs through the compass of the
throat, or traverses the finger-board with the swiftest
dexterity. . . .
Tho' a great genius has rendered the stage the last refuse
of manly taste, "and with a variety of powers beyond
example, established nature; Shakespear, and himself, " yet
it is to be feared, the crowd of spectators is drawn by
secondary circumstances, as the fashionable part of it fit
with the same face of admiration at Lear, an opera, or a
pantomime. . . .
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