History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to SwinburneLang, Andrew
History
History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne
Lang, Andrew
English literature -- History and criticism
"Touching musical harmony whether by instrument or by voice, it being
but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such
notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath
in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been
thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath
in it harmony. A thing which delighteth all ages and beseemeth all
states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent being
added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used
when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is
an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the
mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing,
rising, and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the
turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea,
so to imitate them, that whether it resemble unto us the same state
wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more
contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by the
other. In harmony the very image and character even of virtue and vice
is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought
by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves."
Magnificent as is the harmony of these sentences, and severe as is the
logical thought which they express, the modern reader finds that he
cannot get at the sense of them by merely running his eye over them.
The sentences must be carefully construed, and such writing cannot
possibly be popular; as, in some degree, some writings of Bacon still
remain.
The posthumously published books of Hooker were supposed to have been
tampered with by the Editors. Hooker did not publish his sermons,
of which several were put forth after his death. Even his Puritan
adversaries could not with decency have complained that they are too
short. In one sermon he speaks freely of the Pope as "The Man of Sin".
"Martin Marprelate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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