“After food, when the operations of digestion and absorption give so much employment to the vessels, that a temporary state of mental repose must be found, especially in hot climates, essential to health, it seems reasonable to believe that a few agreeable airs, either heard or played without effort, must have all the good effects of sleep, and none of its disadvantages: putting the soul in tune, as Milton says, for any subsequent exertion; an experiment often made by myself. I have been assured by a credible eye-witness, that two wild antelopes used often to come from their woods to the place where a more savage beast, Sirajuddaulah, entertained himself with concerts, and that they listened to the strains with an appearance of pleasure, till the monster, in whose soul there was no music, shot one of them, to display his archery. A learned native told me, that he had frequently seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their holes upon hearing tunes on a flute, which, as he supposed, gave them peculiar delight. An intelligent Persian declared he had, more than once, been present, when a celebrated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul, (i. e. the nightingale,) was playing to a large company, in a grove near Schiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician, sometimes warbling on the trees, sometimes fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and, at length, dropping on the ground, in a kind of ecstacy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change of the mode.”
EFFECT OF MUSIC ON LIZARDS.
A modern traveller assures us, that he has repeatedly observed, in the island of Madeira, that the lizards are attracted by the notes of music, and that he has assembled a number of them by the powers of his instrument. He tells us also, that when the negroes catch them, for food, they accompany the chase, by whistling some tune, which has always the effect of drawing great numbers towards them.
Stedman, in his expedition to Surinam, describes certain sibyls among the negroes, who, among several singular practices, can charm or conjure down from the tree certain serpents, who will wreath about the arms, neck, and breast of the pretended sorceress, listening to her voice. The sacred writers speak of the charming of adders and serpents; and nothing, says he, is more notorious than that the eastern Indians will rid the houses of the most venomous snakes, by charming them with the sound of a flute, which calls them out of their holes.
MUSICAL ANECDOTE FROM MARVILLE.
Marville has given us the following anecdote. He says, “that doubting the truth of those who say it is natural for us to love music, especially the sound of instruments, and that beasts themselves are touched with it, being one day in the country, I enquired into the truth; and, while a man was playing on the trump-marine, made my observations on a cat, a dog, a horse, an ass, a hind, cows, small birds, and a cock and hens, who were in a yard, under a window on which I was leaning.
“I did not perceive that the cat was the least affected, and I even judged, by her air, that she would have given all the instruments in the world for a mouse, sleeping in the sun all the time. The horse stopped short, from time to time, before the window, raising his head up now and then, as he was feeding on the grass. The dog continued for above an hour seated on his hind legs, looking stedfastly at the player. The ass did not discover the least indication of his being touched, eating his thistles peaceably. The hind lifted up her large wide ears, and seemed very attentive. The cows slept a little, and, after gazing, as though they had been acquainted with us, went forward. Some little birds, who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, almost tore their little throats with singing: but the cock, who minded only his hens, and the hens who were solely employed in scraping a neighbouring dunghill, did not show, in any manner, that they took the least pleasure in hearing the trump-marine.”
ACCOUNT OF THE RECITATION OF THE BOATMEN OF VENICE.
It is well known, observes a celebrated literary character that, in Venice, the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and are wont to sing them in their own melody. But this talent seems at present on the decline:—at least, after taking some pains, I could find no more than two persons who delivered to me, in this way, a passage from Tasso.
There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of a medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.