ficial as it is, may yet go some way towards abating an ill-grounded deference to antiquity, merely because it is antiquity. I am conscious that had Dr. Burney's elaborate Work been published before the first edition of this went to the press, I should have made it somewhat more worthy of the public attention; considered merely, for what it was designed, an Historical Summary of the Progress of Cathedral Music in this country, with such critical reflections as might occur to me in an account of that progress. The partiality however, which he has shewn to it, has induced me in this edition to revise it with more care, than otherwise I might have done; and, though I cannot withdraw the strictures I made on many of our Composers, in point of Vocal Intelligibility; I entirely submit to his superior judgment in every thing that respects scientific Harmony. END OF THE SECOND ESSAY. ESSAY THE THIRD. THE HE authority of Erasmus was produced in the preceding Essay, and more might have been added, to shew that many of the most learned and judicious Persons, who flourished at the dawn of the Reformation, reprobated very strongly that complicated Harmony, which accompanied the Church Service. It was all indeed mere sing-song, or rather (if the expression be not too quaint) sing without song; for the term Song implies some certain degree of Melody and Air, of which that Music was utterly devoid; it therefore could only be called plain singing or chaunting, which, perhaps, is the best translation of the term planus Cantus. But it was not on account of this deficiency, that our first Reformers disapproved of Popish Church Music; it was, because it rendered the words of the Liturgy indistinct and unintelligible. They would have been contented not to have received pleasure from it, had the Congregation received edification. This not being the case, we have reason to think that, as Reformation proceeded, the two principal leaders of it, Luther and Calvin, resolved to make a considerable |