“The Countess of Pembroke, being reported to have studied astronomy, and to have accustomed herself to telescopical observations, [Pg 218] I dedicated, anonymously, this essay to her ladyship, who was much celebrated for her love of the arts and sciences, and many other accomplishments. I had not the honour of being known to her; and I am not certain whether she ever heard by whom the pamphlet was written.[37]”
This Essay once composed and printed, the Doctor consigned it to its fate, and thought of it no more.
And the public, after the re-invisibility of the meteor, and the declension of the topic, followed the same course.
But not equally passive either with the humility of the author, or with the indifferency of the readers, were the consequences of this little work; which, having been written wholly in moments stolen from repose, though requiring researches and studies that frequently kept him to his pen till four o’clock in the morning, without exempting him from rising at his common hour of seven; terminated in an acute rheumatic fever, that confined him to his bed, or his chamber, during twenty days.
This sharp infliction, however, though it ill recompensed his ethereal flights, by no means checked his literary ambition; and the ardour which was cooled for gazing at the stars, soon seemed doubly re-animated for the music of the spheres.
A wish, and a design, energetic, though vague, of composing some considerable work on his own art, had long roved in his thoughts, and flattered his fancy: and he now began seriously to concentrate his meditations, and arrange his schemes to that single point. And the result of these cogitations, when no longer left wild to desultory wanderings, produced his enlightened and scientific plan for a
GENERAL HISTORY OF MUSIC.
This project was no sooner fixed than, transiently, it appeared to him to be executed; so quick was the rush upon his imagination of illuminating and varying ideas; and so vast, so prolific, the material which his immense collection of notes, abridgments, and remarks, had amassed, that it seemed as if he had merely to methodize his manuscripts, and entrust them to a copyist, for completing his purpose.
But how wide from the rapidity of such incipient perceptions were the views by which, progressively, they were superseded! Mightier and mightier appeared the enterprize upon every new investigation; more difficult, more laborious, and more precarious in all its results: yet, also, as is usual where Genius is coupled with Application, more inviting, more inciting, and more alluring to the hope of literary glory. ’Tis only where the springs of Genius are clogged by “the heavy and retarding weight” of Indolence; or where they are relaxed by the nervous and trembling irresolutions of timidity, that difficulties and dangers produce desertion.