The different way in which the same story may be told by different persons was never more strikingly illustrated than by the manner in which the celebrated Jeremy Collier has described the effects of Timotheus's music upon Alexander, in the Second Part of his Essays. We all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let us now hear his great contemporary and antagonist:--"_Timotheus_, a _Grecian_," says Collier, "was so great a _Master_, that he could make a Man storm and swagger like a Tempest. And then, by altering the _Notes_ and the _Time_, he would take him down again, and sweeten his Humour in a trice. One Time, when _Alexander_ was at Dinner, this Man play'd him a _Phrygian_ Air: The Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance, and puts himself into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no sooner sounded by the Change of the Harmony, but his Arms were grounded, and his Fire extinct; and he sat down as orderly as if he had come from one of _Aristotle's Lectures_. I warrant you _Demosthenes_ would have been flourishing about such a Business a long Hour, and may be not have done it neither. But _Timotheus_ had a nearer Cut to the Soul: He could neck a Passion at a Stroke, and lay it Asleep. _Pythagoras_ once met with a Parcel of drunken Fellows, who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently orders the _Musick_ to play Grave, and chop into a _Dorian_: Upon this, they all threw away their _Garlands_, and were as sober and as shame-faced as one would wish."--It is evident that Dryden, in his inspired Ode, and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same thing. But what a work does the latter make with his "necking a passion at his stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a tempest," and then "taking him down and sweetening his humour in a trice." What in Dryden is "Softly sweet in Lydian measures," Collier calls "chopping into a Dorian."--This Collier was the same who, in his Biographical Dictionary, says of Shakespeare, that "though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet _he could when he pleased be as serious as any body_." X.--PLAY-HOUSE MEMORANDA (1813)