Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From ev'ry voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia's name through all the notes we sing,
The work of ev'ry skilful tongue,
The sound of ev'ry trembling string,
The sound and triumph of our song.
For ever consecrate the day,
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav'n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre,
The streams stand still, the stones admire;
The list'ning savages advance,
The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in aukward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended, as he play'd,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
Music religious heats inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
Th' Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue,
And seems well pleas'd and courted with a song.
Soft moving sounds and heav'nly airs
Give force to ev'ry word, and recommend our pray'rs. When time itself shall be no more,
And all things in confusion hurl'd,
Music shall then exert its pow'r,
And sound survive the ruins of the world:
Then saints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee :
All heav'n shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.
Consecrate the place and day,
To music and Cecilia.
Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallow'd bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepar'd,
Keep up the loud harmonious song,
And imitate the blest above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
TO MR. H. S. April 3, 1694.
SINCE, dearest Harry," you will needs request
A short account of all the muse-possest,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,
I'll try to make their sev'ral beauties known,
And show their verses worth, tho' not my own.
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
'Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser, next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursu'd
Henry Sacheverell, whose story is well known.-Yet with all his follies, some respect may seem due to the memory of a man, who had merit in his youth, as appears from a paper of verses under his name, in Dryden's Miscellanies; and who lived in the early friendship of Mr. Addison.
The introductory and concluding lines of this poem are a bad imitation of Horace's manner-Sermoni propiora. In the rest, the poetry is better than the criticism, which is right or wrong, as it chances; being echoed from the common voice.
Thro' pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleas'd at distance all the sights
Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote,
O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader press:
He more had pleas'd us, had he pleas'd us less.
One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes
With silent wonder, but new wonders rise.
As in the milky-way a shining white
O'er-flows the heav'ns with one continu'd light;
That not a single star can shew his rays,
Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great poet, that I dare to name
Th' unnumber'd beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excess,
But wit like thine in any shape will please.
What muse but thine can equal hints inspire,
And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre :"
Pindar, whom others in a labour'd strain,
And forc'd expression, imitate in vain?
Well-pleas'd in thee he soars with new delight,
flight.
And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler
Blest man whose spotless life and charming lays
Employ'd the tuneful prelate in thy praise:
Blest man! who now shalt be for ever known
In Sprat's successful labours and thy own.
But Milton, next, with high and haughty stalks, Unfetter'd in majestick numbers walks;
Cowley had great merit, but nature had formed him to manage Anacreon's lute, and not Pindar's lyre.
No vulgar hero can his muse ingage;
Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage.
See! see, he upward springs, and tow'ring high
Spurns the dull province of mortality,
Shakes heav'ns eternal throne with dire alarms,
And sets th' Almighty thunderer in arms.
What-e'er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst ev'ry verse array'd in majesty,
Bold, and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critick's nicer laws.
How are you struck with terror and delight,
When angel with arch-angel copes in fight!
When great Messiah's out-spread banner shines,
How does the chariot rattle in his lines!
What sounds of brazen wheels, what thunder, scare,
And stun the reader with the din of war!
With fear my spirits and my blood retire,
To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;
But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise,
And view the first gay scenes of Paradise;
What tongue, what words of rapture can express
A vision so profuse of pleasantness."
Oh had the poet ne'er profan'd his pen,
To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men;
His other works might have deserv'd applause!
But now the language can't support the cause;
While the clean current, tho' serene and bright,
Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.
⚫ I wonder what these laws could be. Nobody understood the critic's nicest laws, better than Milton, or observed them with more respect. The observation might be true of Shakespeare; but, by illhap, we do not so much as find his name in this account of English poets.
A vision so profuse of pleasantness.] A prettily turned line. The expression (originally Milton's, P. L. iv. 243. viii. 286.) pleased our poet so much, that we have it again in the letter from Italy-profuse of bliss, and elsewhere.
• Serene and bright,] This is a strange description of Milton's language, if he means the language of his prose works. The panegyric seems made at random.
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