in poetry; nervous,
exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always
correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution
frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of _soaring the boldest
flights_; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age
they lived in, _descended to the lowest_. Yet, as both their
excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so
both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of
perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate
the human soul."

On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is
eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits
off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and
imitation.

"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression,
so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be
entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind
hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising or falling of the
notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent;
broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick
divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,
to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel
kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse
to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that
their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude
between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to
excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and
raise the passions of the soul.

"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some
very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method
here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of
expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular
words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus,
were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of _Milton_,

--Their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:

it is highly probable, that upon the word _divide_, he would run a
_division_ of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the
sentence, he would not th