edocles
cured some desperately melancholy, and some mad by this our music. Which
because it hath such excellent virtues, belike [3487]Homer brings in
Phemius playing, and the Muses singing at the banquet of the gods.
Aristotle, _Polit. l. 8. c. 5_, Plato _2. de legibus_, highly approve it,
and so do all politicians. The Greeks, Romans, have graced music, and made
it one of the liberal sciences, though it be now become mercenary. All
civil Commonwealths allow it: Cneius Manlius (as [3488]Livius relates)
_anno ab urb. cond._ 567. brought first out of Asia to Rome singing
wenches, players, jesters, and all kinds of music to their feasts. Your
princes, emperors, and persons of any quality, maintain it in their courts;
no mirth without music. Sir Thomas More, in his absolute Utopian
commonwealth, allows music as an appendix to every meal, and that
throughout, to all sorts. Epictetus calls _mensam mutam praesepe_, a table
without music a manger: for "the concert of musicians at a banquet is a
carbuncle set in gold; and as the signet of an emerald well trimmed with
gold, so is the melody of music in a pleasant banquet." Ecclus. xxxii. 5,
6. [3489]Louis the Eleventh, when he invited Edward the Fourth to come to
Paris, told him that as a principal part of his entertainment, he should
hear sweet voices of children, Ionic and Lydian tunes, exquisite music, he
should have a --, and the cardinal of Bourbon to be his confessor, which he
used as a most plausible argument: as to a sensual man indeed it is. [3490]
Lucian in his book, _de saltatione_, is not ashamed to confess that he took
infinite delight in singing, dancing, music, women's company, and such like
pleasures: "and if thou" (saith he) "didst but hear them play and dance, I
know thou wouldst be so well pleased with the object, that thou wouldst
dance for company thyself, without doubt thou wilt be taken with it." So
Scaliger ingenuously confesseth, _exercit. 274._ [3491]"I am beyond all
measure affected with music, I do most willingly behold them dance, I am
mightily detained and allured with that grace and comeliness of fair women,
I am well pleased to be idle amongst them." And what young man is not? As
it is acceptable and conducing to most, so especially to a melancholy man.
Provided always, his disease proceed not originally from it, that he be not
some light _inamarato_, some idle fantastic, who capers in conceit all the
day long, and thinks of nothing else, but how to m