| Citation |
VGW(PA.736.008
15-22 Oct 1736:11 (12)
The Monitor. No. 10. . . [1 lines in Latin from Horace.]
I have made it my observation, that your common disputants
in conversation, are for ever positive and peremptory on
every subject they attempt to handle, tho' never so much out
of their sphere. They enter upon an argument to shew their
wit, and exhaust their whole stock, without making provision
for any new. The difference of our talents are undoubtedly
as various as our faces; and were every man confin'd to his
proper genius, we should have greater proficients, and less
of the jack of all trades.
In company the other night, I was entertain'd by some
gentlemen, for the space of three hours, in a dispute about
musick. It wou'd be endless to repeat the witticisms this
subject gave birth to; and it wou'd have been very unjust to
have deny'd them the liberty of entertaining themselves with
railery on a subject that is so far from sacred.
Nothing can be more unjust, than to imagine that the sole
pleasure in hearing good musick, consists in the sound; or
that it is nothing but the tickling of the ear, and a mere
delight of sense, as they were pleas'd to call it. The truth
is, that altho' the ear is the vehicle of the sounds of
musick, the eye is of the colours in painting; yet the
pleasure of the one, as well as the other, does not consist
in the perception of sounds or colours, but in the
perception of harmony, beauty, or symmetry arising from
them: The hearing of two or more sounds is the operation of
sense; but the perceiving of harmony between them is the act
of the mind. To call musick therefore a pleasure of the
ear, is no less improper, than it would be to stile reading
the pleasure of the eye, or writing the pleasure of the
hand: The ear, the eye, and the hand, furnish the
materials; but it is the operation of the mind upon those
materials that gives the delight.
This power of perceiving of harmony in sounds, is what is
generally call'd an ear for musick: Those who are possess'd
of it, will enter into the remarks I am making: As for
those who have it not, it would be as impossible to give
them any notion of the pleasure arising from harmony, as to
convey to a blind man an idea of colour. I would therefore
advise those gentlemen that find themselves unmov'd by
harmony, (which I take for granted are but few, ) to look
upon musick as a thing out of their province; and I warn
them from intermedling with it in any manner whatsoever; for
fear of making that foolish figure which is so well
describ'd in the old proverb, Afinus ad Lyram.
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