Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 80

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(1813)

The different way in which the same story may be told by different persons was never more strikingly illustrated than by the manner in which the celebrated Jeremy Collier has described the effects of Timotheus's music upon Alexander, in the Second Part of his Essays. We all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let us now hear his great contemporary and antagonist:—"Timotheus, a Grecian," says Collier, "was so great a Master, that he could make a Man storm and swagger like a Tempest. And then, by altering the Notes and the Time, he would take him down again, and sweeten his Humour in a trice. One Time, when Alexander was at Dinner, this Man play'd him a Phrygian Air: The Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance, and puts himself into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no sooner sounded by the Change of the Harmony, but his Arms were grounded, and his Fire extinct; and he sat down as orderly as if he had come from one of Aristotle's Lectures. I warrant you Demosthenes would have been flourishing about such a Business a long Hour, and may be not have done it neither. But Timotheus had a nearer Cut to the Soul: He could neck a Passion at a Stroke, and lay it Asleep. Pythagoras once met with a Parcel of drunken Fellows, who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently orders the Musick to play Grave, and chop into a Dorian: Upon this, they all threw away their Garlands, and were as sober and as shame-faced as one would wish."—It is evident that Dryden, in his inspired Ode, and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same thing. But what a work does the latter make with his "necking a passion at his stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a tempest," and then "taking him down and sweetening his humour in a trice." What in Dryden is "Softly sweet in Lydian measures," Collier calls "chopping into a Dorian."—This Collier was the same who, in his Biographical Dictionary, says of Shakespeare, that "though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet he could when he pleased be as serious as any body."