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the other fex, so they unanimoufly declare that they will give all poffible encouragement to fuch as will take the benefit of the statute, though none yet have appeared to do it.

The worthy prefident, who is their most devoted champion, has lately fhewn me two copies • of verses composed by a gentleman of this fociety; the first, a congratulatory ode infcribed to Mrs. Touchwood, upon the loss of her two foreteeth, the other a panegyrick upon Mrs. Andiron's left shoulder. Mrs. Vizard, (he fays) fince the fmall-pox, is grown tolerably ugly, and a top toft in the club; but I never heard him so lavish of his fine things, as upon old Nell Trot, who con* stantly officiates at their table; her he even adores and extols as the very counterpart of mother Shipton; in short, Nell (fays he) is one of the extraordinary works of nature; but as for complexion, shape, and features, so valued by others, they are all mere outside and symmetry, which is his averfion. Give me leave to add, that the prefident is a facetious pleasant gentleman, and never more fo, than when he has got (as he 'calls them) his dear mummers about him; and he often protests it does him good to meet a fellow with a right genuine grimace in his air, (which is fo agreeable in the generality of the 'French nation ;) and, as an instance of his fincerity in this particular, he gave me a fight of a lift in his pocket-book of all of this class, who, for these five years, have fallen under his obfervation, with himself at the head of them, and, in the rear (as one of a promifing and improving

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afpect), Sir,
Oxford,

March 12, 1710.
R

Your obliged and

Humble fervant,

ALEX. CARBUNCLE.'

WEDNESDAY,

*

NO 18. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21.

-Equitis, quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas Omnis ad incertos oculos & gaudia vana.

HOR. Ep. i. 1. 2. ver. 187.

But now our nobles too are fops and vain,
Neglect the fenfe, but love the painted scene.

CREECH

IT is my defign in this paper to deliver down to

pofterity a faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual progrefs which it has made upon the English stage; for there is no question but our great-grandchildren will be very curious to know the reason why their forefathers used to fit together like an audience of foreigners in their owncountry, and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand.

Arfinoc was the first opera that gave us a tafte of Italian music. The great success this opera met with produced fome attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and reafonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation. This alarmed the poetasters and fidlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware; and therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as fuch to this day, That nothing is capable of being well fet to music, that is not nonfenfe.

This maxim was no fooner received, but we immediately fell to tranflating the Italian operas; and as there was no great danger of hurting the fenfe of those extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own, which were intirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to tranflate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the fame tune. Thus the famous fong in Camilla,

Barbara si t'intendo, &c.

Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning, which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was tranflated into that English lamentation,

Frail are a lover's hopes, &c.

And it was pleasant enough to fee the most refined persons of the British nation dying away, and languishing to notes that were filled with a fpirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very frequently, where the sense was rightly tranflated, the neceffary tranfpofition of words, which were drawn out of the phrafe of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus word for word:

And turn'd my rage into pity ;

which the English, for rhyme fake, tranflated,

And into pity turn'd my rage.

By this means the foft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian, fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry founds that were turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity in the tranflation. It oftentimes happened likewife, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most infignificant words in the fentence. I have known the word and pursued through the whole gamut, have been entertained with many a melodious the, and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divifions bestowed upon then, for, and from; to the eternal honour of our English particles,

The next step to our refinement, was the introducing of Italian actors into our opera; who fung their parts in their own language, at the fame time that our countrymen performed theirs in our native tongue. The king or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian, and his flaves answered him in English: The lover frequently made his court, and gained the heart of his princess, in a language which she did not understand. One would have thought it very difficult to have carrried on dialogues after this manner, without an interpreter between the persons that conversed together; but this was the state of the English stage for about three years.

At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera; and therefore, to ease themselves intirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the language of our own stage; infomuch that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us names, and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, fince we do put fuch an entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it were behind our backs. In the mean time, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the taste of his wife forefathers, will make the following reflection. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the Italian tongue was so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public stage in that language.

One fcarce knows how to be ferious in the confutation of an abfurdity that shews itself at the first fight. It does not want any great measure of fenfe to fee the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes it the more aftonishing, it is not the tafte of the rabble, but of perfons of the greatest politeness, which has established it.

tafte

If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment. Would one think it was poffible (at a time when an author lived that was able to write the Phaedra and Hippolitus) for a people to be so stupidly fond of the Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable tragedy? Music is certainly a very agreeable entertertainment: But if it would take the intire poffeffion of our ears, if it, would make us incapable of hearing fenfe, if it would exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the refinement of human nature; I must confess I would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his commonwealth.

At present our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported with any thing that is not English: So it be of a foreign growth, let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the fame thing. In short, our English mufic is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its

stead.

When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at liberty to present his plan for a new one; and, though it be but indifferently put together, it may furnish several hints that may be of ufe to a good architect. I shall take the fame liberty in a following paper, of giving my opinion upon the fubject of mufic; which I shall lay down only in a problematical manner, to be confidered by those who are masters in the art.

C

THURSDAY,

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