und music a pleasant and salutary
pastime, when he was fatigued by the noisy contentions of legal practice
or by strenuous application to philosophic pursuits. A perfect master of
the science of melody, Lord Bacon explained its laws with a clearness
which has satisfied competent judges that he was familiar with the
practice as well as the theories of harmony; but few passages of his
works display more agreeably his personal delight and satisfaction in
musical exercise and investigation than that section of the 'Natural
History,' wherein he says, "And besides I practice as I do advise; which
is, after long inquiry of things immersed in matter, to interpose some
subject which is immateriate or less materiate; such as this of sounds:
to the end that the intellect may be rectified and become not partial."

A theorist as well as performer, the Lord Keeper Guilford enunciated his
views regarding the principles of melody in 'A Philosophical Essay of
Musick, Directed to a Friend'--a treatise that was published without the
author's name, by Martin, the printer to the Royal Society, in the year
1677, at which time the future keeper was Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas. The merits of the tract are not great; but it displays the
subtlety and whimsical quaintness of the musical lawyer, who performed
on several instruments, was very vain of a feeble voice, and used to
attribute much of his professional success to the constant study of
music that marked every period of his life. "I have heard him say,"
Roger records, "that if he had not enabled himself by these studies, and
particular his practice of music upon his bass or lyra viol (which he
used to touch lute-fashion upon his knee), to divert himself alone, he
had never been a lawyer. His mind was so airy and volatile he could not
have kept his chamber if he must needs be there, staked down purely to
the drudgery of the law, whether in study or practice; and yet upon
such a leaden proposition, so painful to brisk spirits, all the success
of the profession, regularly pursued, depends." His first acquaintance
with melodious art was made at Cambridge, where in his undergraduate
days he took lessons on the viol. At this same period he "had the
opportunity of practice so much in his grandfather's and father's
families, where the entertainment of music in full concert was solemn
and frequent, that he outdid all his teachers, and became one of the
neatest violinists of his time." Scarcely