g about the opening sentence of an
important article. You need not look at pictures or statues, Mr. Lang
contends; you need not even read poetry, if you "hate poetry and
painting," like George II. But you must often listen to music whether you
will or not. There is no escape from it any more than from the influenza.
Mr. Lang no doubt speaks chiefly for himself. Nature, as he frankly
admits, has not made him musical; and though he can stand "Will ye no come
back again?" and "Bonnie Dundee," Wagner and Chopin say absolutely nothing
to him. In any case, he is somewhat astray in declaring that literary men
dislike music. Even Johnson, who is generally quoted as among the
music-haters, and who, as we all know, called music "the least
disagreeable of noises," even he was at the worst only insensible to the
charms of the art. He once bought a flageolet--that he never made out a
tune is no matter--and Burney, the musical historian, says that six months
before his death he asked to be taught "at least the alphabet of your
language." Scott, too, though the incurable defects of his voice and ear
drove his music teacher to despair, was very partial to the national music
of his country, and, like Congreve's Jeremy, had a "reasonable ear" for a
jig. Nay, Lamb himself, whose lack of musical ear has been boldly
proclaimed in one of the best of the Elia essays, used to go to Vincent
Novello's house for no other purpose than to hear Novello play the organ
and listen to his daughter's singing. These may, indeed, be taken as types
of the indifferent men, the men who do not care very much whether they
ever hear music or not. But look at the number of authors who have
explicitly declared their delight in music. De Quincey was one; Browning
was another. Did not Goldsmith play the flute, and Milton amuse himself
with the organ? Rogers loved a barrel organ to distraction, and Ruskin
went into mild raptures over Halle's playing of Thalberg's "Home, sweet
home." Burns and Hogg scraped on the fiddle, and Shelley strummed on a
guitar, now on the Bodleian at Oxford. Moore sang Irish songs, Tom
Campbell once tipped a German organist to play for half an hour to him;
and if Shakespeare wasn't musical he ought to have been considering the
way in which he has spoken of the man who "hath no music in his soul." In
short, in regard to music, our great writers have been just like other
people--some have been passionately fond of music, some have liked it in a