he whole gamut, as may be observed in
your larums or household scolds, and in your castanets or impertinent
tittle-tattles, who have no other variety in their discourse but that of
talking slower or faster.

Upon communicating this scheme of music to an old friend of mine, who
was formerly a man of gallantry and a rover, he told me, that he
believed he had been in love with every instrument in my concert. The
first that smit him was a hornpipe, who lived near his father's house in
the country; but upon his failing to meet her at an assize, according to
appointment, she cast him off. His next passion was for a kettledrum,
whom he fell in love with at a play; but when he became acquainted with
her, not finding the softness of her sex in her conversation, he grew
cool to her; though at the same time he could not deny, but that she
behaved herself very much like a gentlewoman. His third mistress was a
dulcimer, who he found took great delight in sighing and languishing,
but would go no farther than the preface of matrimony; so that she would
never let a lover have any more of her than her heart, which, after
having won, he was forced to leave her, as despairing of any further
success. "I must confess," says my friend, "I have often considered her
with a great deal of admiration; and I find her pleasure is so much in
this first step of an amour, that her life will pass away in dream,
solitude, and soliloquy, till her decay of charms makes her snatch at
the worst man that ever pretended to her. In the next place," says my
friend, "I fell in love with a kit,[196] who led me such a dance through
all the varieties of a familiar, cold, fond, and indifferent behaviour,
that the world began to grow censorious, though without any cause: for
which reason, to recover our reputations, we parted by consent. To mend
my hand," says he, "I made my next application to a virginal, who gave
me great encouragement, after her cautious manner, till some malicious
companion told her of my long passion for the kit, which made her turn
me off as a scandalous fellow. At length, in despair," says he, "I
betook myself to a Welsh harp, who rejected me with contempt, after
having found that my great-grandmother was a brewer's daughter." I found
by the sequel of my friend's discourse, that he had never aspired to a
hautboy; that he had been exasperated by a flageolet; and that to this
very day, he pines away for a flute.

Upon the whole, having thorough