Читать книгу Merrie England in the Olden Time - George Daniel - Страница 18

With dogs and bears, horses and geese, * game-cocks and monkeys exhibiting their caprioles, shall man be motionless and mute?

* There is an odd print of “Vestris teaching a goose to

dance.” The terms, for so fashionable a professor as he was

in his day, are extremely moderate; “Six guineas entrance,

and one guinea a lesson.” The following song is inscribed

underneath.

“Of all the fine accomplishments sure dancing far the best

is,

But if a doubt with you remains, behold the Goose and

Vestris;.

And a dancing we will go, will go, &c.

Let men of learning plead and preach; their toil 'tis all in

vain,

Sure, labour of the heels and hands is better than the

brain:

And a dancing, &c.

Then talk no more, ye men of arts, 'bout keeping light and

shade,

Good understanding in the heels is better than the head:

And a dancing, &c.

Great Whigs, and eke great Tories too, both in and out will

dance,

Join hands, change sides, and figure in, now sink, and now

advance.

And a dancing, &c.

Let Oxford boast of ancient lore, and Cam of classic rules,

Noverre might lay you ten to one his heels against your

schools!

And a dancing, &c.

Old Homer sung of gods and kings in most heroic strains,

Yet scarce could get, we have been told, a dinner for his

pains.

And a dancing, &c.

Poor Milton wrote the most sublime, 'gainst Satan, Death, and

Vice,

But very few would quit a dance to purchase Paradise.

And a dancing, &c.

The soldier risks health, life, and limbs, his fortune to

advance,

While Pique and Vestris fortunes make by one night's single

dance.

And a dancing, &c.

'Tis all in vain to sigh and grieve, or idly spend our

breath,

Some millions now, and those unborn, must join the dance of

death.

And a dancing, &c.

Yet while we live let's merry be, and make of care a jest,

Since we are taught what is, is right; and what is right is

best!

And a dancing, &c.

Sweetly singeth the tea-kettle; merrily danceth the parched pea on the fire-shovel! Even grim Death has his dance.”

“And music, Eugenio, in which I know you are an enthusiast. The Italians have a proverb,

'Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.' The soul is said to be music.

'But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'

“Haydn used to say that without melody the most learned and singular combinations are but unmeaning, empty sound. What but the simplicity and tenderness of the Scotch and Irish airs constitutes their charm? This great composer was so extravagantly fond of Scotch, Irish, and Welsh melodies, that he harmonised many of them, and had them hung up in frames in his room. We remember to have heard somewhere of an officer in a Highland regiment, who was sent with a handful of brave soldiers to a penal settlement in charge of a number of convicts; the Highlanders grew sick at heart; the touching strains of 'Lochaber nae mair.' heard far from home, made them so melancholy, that the officer in command forbade its being played by the band.

So, likewise, with the national melody, the 'Rans-des-Vaches' among the Swiss mountaineers. When sold by their despotic chiefs, and torn from their dearest connexions, suicide and desertion were so frequent when this melody was played, that orders were issued in all their regiments, prohibiting any one from playing an air of that kind on pain of death. La maladie du pays—that sickening after home! But Handel's music has received more lasting and general applause than that of any other composer. By Boyce and Battishall his memory was adored; Mozart was enthusiastic in his praise; Haydn could not listen (who can?) to his glorious Messiah * without weeping; and Beethoven has been heard to declare, that were he ever to come to England he should uncover his head, and kneel down at his tomb!

* Bishop Ken says,

“Sweet music with blest poesy began,

Congenial both to angels and to Man,

Song was the native language to rehearse

The elevations of the soul in verse:

And through succeeding ages, all along,

Saints praised the Godhead in devoted song.”

And he adds in plain prose, that the Garden of Eden was no

stranger to “singing and the voice of melody.” Jubal was the

“father of those who handled the harp and organ.” Long-

before the institution of the Jewish church, God received

praise both by the human voice and the “loud timbrel and

when that church was in her highest prosperity, King David

seems to have been the composer of her psalmody—both poetry

and music. He occupied the orchestra of the temple, and

accounted it a holy privilege “to play before the Lord” upon

“the harp with a solemn sound.” Luther said, “I verily think

that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music.”

And what a glorious specimen of this divine art is his

transcendant “Hymn!” breathing the most awful grandeur, the

deepest pathos, the most majestic adoration! The Puritans—

devils and Puritans hate music—are piously economical in

their devotions, and eschew the principle “not to give unto

the Lord that which costs us nothing!” Their gift is

snuffled through the “vocal nose”—“O most sweet voices!”

“Blessings on the memory of the bard, * and 'Palms eternal flourish round his urn,' who first struck his lyre to celebrate the wooden walls of unconquered and unconquerable Merrie England! If earth hide him,

'May angels with their silver wings o'ershade

The ground, now sacred by his reliques made

if ocean cover him, calm be the green wave on its surface! May his spirit find rest where souls are blessed, and his body be shrined in the holiest cave of the deep and silent sea!”

* A few old amateurs of music and mirth may possibly

remember Collins's Evening Brush, that rubbed off the rust

of dull care from the generation of 1790. His bill comprised

“Actors of the old school and actors of the new; tragedy

tailors, and butchers in heroics; bell-wethers in buskins,

wooden actors, petticoat caricatures, lullaby jinglers,

bogglers and blunderers, buffoons in blank-verse, &c. &c.”

The first of the three Dibdins opened a shop of merriment at

the Sans Souci, where he introduced many of his beautiful

ballads, and sang them to his own tunes. The navy of England

owe lasting obligations to this harmonious Three. It

required not the aid of poetry and music (and how

exquisitely has Shield set the one to the other!) to

stimulate our gallant seamen; but it needed much to awaken

and keep alive enthusiasm on shore, and elevate their moral

character—for landsmen “who live at home at ease/' were

wont to consider the sailor as a mere tar-barrel, a sea-

monster. How many young bosoms have been inspired by the

lyrics of the three Dibdins! What can surpass the homely

pathos of “I thought my heart would break when I sang, Yo!

heave O!”

“The Last Whistle” and “Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom

Bowling!” stirring the manly heart like the sound of a

trumpet! It is wise to infuse the amorpatriæ into popular

amusements; national songs work wonders among the million.

In Little Russia, no sooner are the postilions mounted for a

journey, than they begin to hum a patriotic air, which often

continues for hours without intermission. The soldiers sing

during a long and fatiguing march; the peasant lightens his

labour in the same manner; and in a still evening the air

vibrates with the cheerful songs of the surrounding

villages.

“'Hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings.'”

“I was not unmindful of the merry chorister! But the lark has made a pause; and I have your promise of a song. Now is the time to fill up the one, and to fulfil the other.”