There is some-
thing in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is
an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole
world, and creatures of God,--such a melody to the ear,
as the whole world, well understood, would afford the
understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that
harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God.
I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but
harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick:
thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours
the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though
indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This
made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall upon
a verse;* and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaim-
ing for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a
* "Urbem a Romam in principio reges habuere."
perfect hexameter.* I feel not in me those sordid and
unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly
implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve
ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant
aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses.
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