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Burns had sometimes nearly as slight materials to work upon, in many of those fine compositions, based upon snatches of old songs, which he contributed to Johnson's Museum,' or to the publication of Mr Thomson; yet we doubt whether, without these hints, his songs would have been so good as they are. A single line, to an inventive mind, is much. It gives the key-note by which the composition is regulated; it calls up some natural and touching association, which becomes the fruitful parent of many more; the imagination has received all that it required-a suggestion, a direction and the images and the feelings which are always at the bidding of a creative fancy, readily come thronging back into the memory of the poet, and are fixed in some sportive or melancholy strain.

We observe, indeed, that an attempt has been made, from these fragments of lines, to reconstruct some of the songs in this collection; not, indeed, in similar words, for no attempt is made to give them a character of antiquity; but in such a manner as that the words may harmonize with, and bring out the sentiment of the air. Several of the airs in the 'Skene Manuscript,' which are now in course of publication, with symphonies and accompaniments, * have been illustrated by original words, and, as we think, with considerable skill and address. They possess, in particular, that cardinal virtue of a song-simplicity; and are free from that tawdry sentimentalism which is the general character of the vocal compositions of the present day. As a specimen of these, we quote the words to the very beautiful old air in the MS., entitled, Peggy is over the sea with the soldier;' -a hint which at once suggests the idea of some deserted swain left at home by a coquettish admirer of the scarlet coat, and venting his regrets in song. There could be nothing particularly unpleasing, we think, in hearing the old air wedded to such words as these :

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* Ancient Scotish Melodies, from the Scotish Songs and Airs of the Skene MS. Arranged with Symphonies and Accompaniments, by G. F. Graham and Finlay Dun.'

Friends that watched o'er her sae lang and sae weel,
Hearts that were ever sae loving and leal,—
A' are forgot

For the scarlet coat

She's over the sea with the soldier!

Scotland's clear burnies and gowany braes,
Night o' saft slumber and innocent days,
Changed for the strife

Of a rover's life

She's over the sea with the soldier !

Kindness that's bumble and hamely to see,
Meets little grace in a light lassie's e'e;
Years of true love

Maun bootless prove

She's over the sea with the soldier!

But the chief importance of the work, as we have said, consists in its bearing on the history of Scotish music; and, in this respect, it is interesting in two points of view, both of which bear a considerable analogy to the corresponding services which the republication of the early ballad literature of a nation effects for poetry.

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First, by fixing at a certain and very early period, the precise state in which some of those airs then were with which we are now familiar, and which, since that time, we can follow through various shapes and modifications, it enables us to trace, with some certainty, the fluctuations of musical taste and style during several centuries;-an advantage analogous to that rendered to the history of poetical style, so far as regards language and versification the absence or redundance of ornament, the intermixture or abstinence from ideas of foreign original,-by the publication of an authentic collection of the popular literature at any particular period, so as to afford us safe materials for comparison with those that preceded and followed. And if, as is most probable, judging from what has already taken place, the publication of the present manuscript lead to the discovery of others of still earlier date, its importance, as illustrating the progress of Scotch music, will be very greatly increased. We observe the learned editor notices, that there is reason to believe that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, if not be'fore, the best of the Scotch songs and melodies had been com'mitted to notation;' and he ascribes their subsequent disappearance, partly to the ravages of time, but still more to the

active measures adopted in Scotland about the year 1550, by the ecclesiastical and civil power, for putting down 'all rhymes and • ballads reflecting upon the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its 'members;'-a purpose for which the popular airs, united to coarse, satirical words, and adapted to modern instances' of a scurrilous and obscene cast, (of which, in the existing state of the Catholic Church, there was no want,) had been found, in Scotland, as in England, France, and Germany, to be extremely well adapted. We know not on what foundation the Editor grounds his statement as to the probability of the popular melodies of Scotland having been committed to notation as early as the fifteenth century, if not before; but, if such was the case, it is extremely probable that some of these collections may yet be resuscitated, by the curiosity awakened, and the line of enquiry set on foot, by the publication of the present Manuscript; and that thus some of the contested questions as to the originality of the Scotish music, the exact nature and extent of the foreign influences by which it may have been modified, and the share which James the First had in its improvement may be settled; and such absurdities as that of ascribing its reform and present character to Rizzio may be so conclusively set at rest, that it shall be impossible, even for such persons as the author of Music and Friends, or Pleasant (?) Recollections of a Dilletante,' gravely to repeat them. Till we saw this nonsense,—which the good sense of Hawkins, and Burney, and the Italians themselves, who are not disposed, of course, to underrate their own musical influence on other countries, had repudiated,—again brought forward in a work bearing the date of 1838,* we were rather disposed to think the discussion of the question in Mr Dauney's Dissertation somewhat a work of supererogation; conceiving the notion itself to be one of those shadowy phantoms which had been laid for ever in its grave, by the spell of argument and common sense.

But a more important service is rendered both to music and poetry, by the republication of the older strains of each; for, in both arts, there is a tendency towards the same malady, which, in both cases, is cured by similar appliances. Both poetry and music seem at times to forget that their nature is essentially popular; that it is in the element of the common air that they must live, or have no life;' that the one may gain the applause of scholastic critics, and the other of cognoscenti, and yet that

**

Music and Friends.' By William Gardiner. Lond. 1838.

both may deservedly fall cold and lifeless on the public ear, and be read or listened to with a feeling of listlessness or weariness, which we are afraid openly to express, but which we do not feel the less, notwithstanding the assurances we receive from the composers themselves that we ought to be excessively delighted. Thus, in poetry, as soon as civilization reaches a certain stage, and the period of action, and of the description of action, has begun to be superseded by science and philosophy, and the charm which lies in mere diction begins to be perceived, there commences a leaning towards the choice of subjects with which the mass of the people have few sympathies in common ;-the cultivation of a species of learned and scholastic poetical philosophy, Platonic or otherwise, as the case may be; and a corresponding anxiety for the creation of a style unattempted before in prose or rhyme, altogether remote from ordinary usage, creating new words, or employing old in new senses;-a tendency towards the sequestrating of poetry from those universal topics and simple forms of expression by which it connects itself with humanity in general, and making it not a spontaneous expression of feeling, an inspiration coming from the heart and finding its way to it, but a mere matter of the head,—an art, a mystery, requiring a poetical apprenticeship for its attainment, and appealing, in its creations, mainly, if not entirely, to the sympathies of the initiated. From this exclusive and technical character, it has been more than once reclaimed by the well-timed republication of the earlier ballads, and primitive lyrics of our ancestors—rough, manly, energetic, spirit-stirring; and, amidst all their vulgarities, and redundancies, and conventional lines and phrases, rewarding us, from time to time, by some touch of nature which makes intervening centuries disappear between us, and shows us that, when the chord of genuine feeling is struck, even by an unlearned hand, the whole world is kin. Such was the service rendered to English poetry, during the period of barrenness and cold imitation of the greater models of our intellectual school of poetry, Dryden and Pope, by the appearance of Percy's Reliques, in 1765. We are aware that the editor of the Reliques, in order to meet what he supposed to be the taste of the public, in many cases modernized and altered portions of these old ballads-very often for the better; but still enough of the old materials remained, to entitle the work to the name of Reliques of Ancient Poetry.' They proved the magic which resided in simplicity and in strong feeling, associated as they were with much against which a cultivated taste revolted; they recalled to our recollection the essentially popular character and destination of

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poetry; and mainly contributed to the formation of that school in which we see an attempt made to blend modern depth with antique plainness-the-comprehensive philosophical views which experience has suggested, with the contemplation and delineation of our natural feelings, in their humblest forms, and in the simplest language;-of which we witness the finest examples in some of the lyrics of Wordsworth and Southey.

In music, again, we find a tendency towards the same aberrations. The simple, though it produces its effect, soon appears. too easy; difficulties are courted, merely for the sake of being overcome, and of thus displaying the technical skill of the performer. Sometimes the search after novelty leads the composer to venture into the field where music is weakest-that of direct imitation of natural sounds by musical notes,-a species of rivalry, the hopelessness of which makes us feel the good sense of Agesilaus' answer, when requested to hear a man sing who could imitate the nightingale, I have heard the nightingale herself.' Nay, musicians have attempted not merely to imitate sounds by notes, but even to represent motion-to describe the seasonsto picture sunrise or sunset-to convey the impressions of colour

-or even to narrate the incidents of a battle or a campaign; for the ingenious organist of Ferdinand III., Froberger, is said to have presented a very striking musical representation of Count Thurn's passage over the Rhine, and the dangers of the transit, in twenty-six cataracts, or falls of notes."* Indeed, when a taste for this sort of mimetic music is once introduced (the proper sphere of which would be the comic opera), it is wonderful how even the greatest genius gives way to the contagion, and follows the herd,for a greater than Froberger, Handel, has now and then ventured upon similar tricks of sound. In the Messiah,' at the passage, I will shake the heavens and the earth,' he has introduced a sort of musical pun, by repeating the word several times on a chain of musical shakes, as if,' says a critic,' the quavering of the voice could represent the commotions of the world.' And, in his 'Israel in Egypt,' he has undertaken to represent, by musical notes, two of the plagues of Egypt, viz. the buzzing of flies and the hopping of frogs.

But even where these elaborate quackeries have been avoided, there is still a tendency, as music becomes more scientific, to diverge more and more from the simplicity of original melody;

* Sir. J. Hawkins, vol. i, Preliminary Disc. p. 3.

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