flection:
"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 scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an absurdity
that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want any great measure
of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes
it the more astonishing, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of
persons of the greatest politeness, which has established it.

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
possible, 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 entertainment: but if it
would take the entire possession of our ears; if it would make us
incapable of hearing sense; 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
anything that is not English: so it be of a foreign growth, let it be
Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing. In short, our
English music 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 use to a good
architect. I shall take the same liberty in a following paper of giving
my opinion upon the subject of music; which I shall lay down only in a
problematical manner, to be considered by those who are masters in the
art.

LAMPOONS.

_Saevit atrox Volscens_, _nec teli conspicit usquam_
_Auctorem_, _nec quo se ardens immittere possit_.

VIRG., _AEn._ ix. 420.

Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round,
Descry'd not him who gave the fatal wound;
Nor knew to fix revenge.

DRYDEN.

There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerou