this connection, and Milton naturally
refers to it in the previous verse.

Here follow the two Shakespeare extracts. The second one is full of
beauty of every kind, but the Pythagoreanism is in the last six lines,
with Shakespeare's own view about _why_ we cannot hear the heavenly
music.

_As You Like It_ II, vii, 5.

_Duke Senior_ [of Jaques].
If he, _compact of jars_, grow musical,
We shall have shortly _discord in the spheres_.

_Merchant_ V, i, 51.

_Lor._ My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,
Within the house, your mistress [Portia] is at hand;
And _bring your music forth into the air_.

[_Exit_ STEPHANO.

(Lorenzo and Jessica alone.)

_Lor._ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and _let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony_.

* * * * *

L. 60.

There's not the _smallest orb_, which thou behold'st,
_But in his motion like an angel sings_,
Still _quiring_ to the young-ey'd cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, _whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it_.

This is finer than Pythagoras.

The next three passages are concerned with the 'fantasie' of Music.
Jaques gives an opinion in a general form--viz., that the musician's
'melancholy' is 'fantastical'; Mariana and the Duke speak of a certain
_doubleness_ that may be noticed in the action of music on the mind.
Jessica is 'never merry' when she hears sweet music: Lorenzo descants
on the evident effects of music on even hardened natures; while
Portia and Nerissa preach a neat little sermon on the text 'Nothing is
good without respect,' with musical illustrations of the powerful
influence of time and place--_e.g._, the silence of night, makes the
music sound sweeter than by day; the crow sings as well as the lark,
if the circumstances favour the crow, or if the lark is not present to
give immediate comparison; and even the nightingale's song is no
better than the wren's, 'by day, when every goose is cackling.'

_As You_ IV, i, 13.

_Jaques._ I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is
emulation; nor the _musician's_, which is _fantastical_,
etc.

_Measure for Measure_ IV, i, 12. Enter D