As to the other delights of the mind, we have already
treated of them, as they occurred to us. But their aversedness and dislike to music, that affords us so great delights and such charming satisfactions, a man could not
forget if he would, by reason of the inconsistency of what
Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book called
his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public spectacles and to delight above any other man in the
music and shows of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not
admit of music problems or of the critical enquiries of
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philologists, no, not so much as at a compotation. Yea,
he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses rather
to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some
narration of military adventures or with the importune
scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in questions of poetry. For this
very thing he had the face to write in his treatise of
Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to
Nanarus satrap of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero
nor an Attalus nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a
Euripides, a Simonides, a Melanippides, a Crates, or a
Diodotus rise up from their tables, and to place such
scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or
a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to
make people disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy, who was the first that
formed a consort of musicians, but met with these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you, have
thus addressed himself to the Samians:
O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?
For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be
in such enmity and hostility with the Muses. But
No animal accurst by Jove
Music's sweet charms can ever love.
1
What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up
betimes in the morning, and go to the theatre to hear the
harpers and flutists play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an Aristoxenus of
Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence,
clap both thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not
hereby make the Scythian king Ateas more musical than
this comes to, who, when he heard that admirable flutist
Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war, playing
[p. 178]
upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather
hear his own horse neigh? And do they not also profess
themselves to stand at an implacable and irreconcilable
defiance with whatever is generous and becoming ? And
indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either
genteel or regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure
to accompany it? And would it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to be disgusted with perfumes and
odors, like beetles and vultures, than to shun and abhor
the conversation of learned critics and musicians? For
what flute or harp ready tuned for a lesson, or
What sweetest consort e'er with artful noise,
Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,
ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the
disputes and precepts about consorts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and Dicaearchus? And also the
problems about flutes, rhythms, and harmonies; as, for
instance, why the slenderer of two flutes of the same
longitude should speak flatter?—why, if you raise the
pipe, will all its notes be sharp; and flat again, if you
lower it?—and why, when clapped to another, will it
sound flatter; and sharper again, when taken from it?—
why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the orchestra
of a theatre, will the sound be softened?—and why,
when one would have set up a bronze Alexander for a
frontispiece to a stage at Pella, did the architect advise to
the contrary, because it would spoil the actors' voices ?—
and why, of the several kinds of music, will the chromatic
diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind ? But now
the several humors of poets, their differing turns and
forms of style, and the solutions of their difficult places,
have conjoined with a sort of dignity and politeness somewhat also that is extremely agreeable and charming; insomuch that to me they seem to do what was once said
by Xenophon, to make a man even forget the joys of
[p. 179]
love, so powerful and overcoming is the pleasure they
bring us.
