“That when two or more persons have been soberly and very intently discoursing upon some particular solid matter, musing and very ponderously considering thereof; all on the sudden, some one of them shall abruptly (without any pause) begin to talk of a thing quite of another nature, nothing relating to the aforesaid business. “Now those by-standers (who have judgement), will presently apprehend that although his matter might be good, yet his manner and his wit might have been better approved of in staying some certain convenient time, in which he might have found out some pretty interluding discourse, and have taken a handsome occasion to have brought in his new matter. “Just so is it in music, and more particularly in this last-recited-matter; as to chop different things of different natures, and of different keys, one upon the neck of another, impertinently. “For I would have it taken notice of, that music is (at least) as a language, if it will not be allowed a perfect one; because it is not so well understood as it might be.— “Having thus far prepared you with an apprehension of the needfulness of the thing, I will now show you how it is to be done without abruption and absurdness. “First, (as abovesaid) it may be that discourse may take off the remembrance of the last key in which you played, or some occasion of a leaving off for some pretty time, by a string breaking or the like; or if not, then (as commonly it happens) there may be a need of examining the tuning of your lute, for the strings will alter a little in the playing of one lesson, although they have been well stretched. But if lately put on, or have been slacked down by any mischance of pegs slipping, then they will need mending, most certainly. “I say some such occasion may sometimes give you an opportunity of coming handsomely to your new intended key: but if none of these shall happen, then you ought, in a judicious and masterly way, to work from your last key which you played upon, in some voluntary way till you have brought your matter so to pass that your auditors may be captivated with a new attention; yet so insinuatingly, that they may have lost the remembrance of the foregoing key they know not how; nor are they at all concerned for the loss of it, but rather taken with a new content and delight at your so cunning and complete artifice.” With strict propriety then may it be said of these my chapters as Wordsworth has said of certain sonnets during his tour in Scotland and on the English border, that they