ecting
strains, we know not.

We feel plainly that music touches and gently agitates the agreeable and
sublime passions; that it wraps us in melancholy, and elevates us to
joy; that it dissolves and inflames; that it melts us into tenderness,
and rouses into rage: but its strokes are so fine and delicate, that,
like a tragedy, even the passions that are wounded please; its sorrows
are charming, and its rage heroic and delightful. As people feel the
particular passions with different degrees of force, their taste of
harmony must proportionably vary. Music, then, is a language directed to
the passions; but the rudest passions put on a new nature, and become
pleasing in harmony: let me add, also, that it awakens some passions
which we perceive not in ordinary life. Particularly the most elevated
sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or
visionary beauty and rapture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire
the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge.
This shadowy beauty the mind attempts, with a languishing curiosity, to
collect into a distinct object of view and comprehension; but it sinks
and escapes, like the dissolving ideas of a delightful dream, that are
neither within the reach of the memory, nor yet totally fled. The
noblest charm of music, then, though real and affecting, seems too
confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea.

Harmony is always understood by the crowd, and almost always mistaken by
musicians. The present Italian taste for music is exactly correspondent
to the taste for tragi-comedy, that about a century ago gained ground
upon the stage. The musicians of the present day are charmed at the
union they form between the grave and the fantastic, and at the
surprising transitions they make between extremes, while every hearer
who has the least remainder of the taste of nature left, is shocked at
the strange jargon. If the same taste should prevail in painting, we
must soon expect to see the woman's head, a horse's body, and a fish's
tail, united by soft gradations, greatly admired at our public
exhibitions. Musical gentlemen should take particular care to preserve
in its full vigour and sensibility their original natural taste, which
alone feels and discovers the true beauty of music.

If Milton, Shakspeare, or Dryden had been born with the same genius and
inspiration for music as for poetry, and had passed through the
practical part witho