ESSAY THE FIRST. MUSIC, USIC, as an imitative art, ranks so much below Poetry and Painting, that, in my own opinion, which I have found confirmed by many late writers of the best judgment, it can hardly be so termed with propriety.* Notwithstanding this, it has certain qualities, so analogous to those which constitute Metre or Versification, such as Accent, Rhythm, Pause, and Cadence, that it thereby becomes, equally with Poetry, an object of criticism. It is, however, only within this century that, by our own writers, observations of a critical kind have been made upon it with any degree of philosophical precision.Thus when Mr. Addison made the Italian Opera, which was then lately introduced into England, the object of his elegant ridicule, he chose rather to dwell on certain absurdities in its stage representation and dramatic execution, than on the merit or demerit of the composer or performers. Hence a late musical historian † treated him with a flippancy that ill became him to express, had * See Harris's Three Treatises, Dr. Beattie on Poetry and Music, and particularly Mr. Twining's Second Dissertation prefixed to his Translation of Aristotle's Poetics. + Sir John Hawkins, in the Preface to his History of Music. |