"[4]
such as warmed Spenser when he wrote his "Bowre of Blesse;" Tasso his
"Gardens of Armida;" Collins his "Melancholy," who
"Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul"--
such hearts, I say, and such as have drunk with unsatiated thirst at the
fountains of these "masters of the lay," are better qualified to speak
upon a question of the "concord of sweet sounds" than all the merely
scientific musicians, whether professors or amateurs, in the world.
[4] "Lingua." Dodsley's Old Plays.
"Of melody aye held in thrall," I profess myself an admirer of that
English music which preceded the appearance of Mr. Braham--the music of
Arne, Jackson, Carter, Storace, Linley, Shield, Davy, even of Dibdin,
and of those fine airs, (the names of whose composers are now little
better than traditional), which glow in the Beggar's Opera. And of this
music there never was heard a singer equal to Incledon, and perhaps
never will. The pathos, the richness, the roundness, the satisfying
fulness to the ear, which characterize these composers, can never be
mastered by the _merely scientific_ singer; _they_ composed for the
_voice_, and without that organ in its most perfect state, complete
justice can never be done to their strains.
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