Anatomizing melancholy, old Burton adds to the instance of David that of Elisha, who when he was troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, “and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him.” Of course the erudite anatomist heaps up corroborative instances of all kinds and ages, mythological, classical, mediæval; and he quotes many of those obscure and obsolete authorities whom it has been the cheap policy of many a bookmaker to cite from Burton’s thesaurus second-hand.
Spenser opens a canto of his “Faerie Queene” with a tribute to the powers of minstrelsy as exercised by Orpheus,—
“Or such as that celestial psalmist was,
That when the wicked fiend his lord tormented,
With heavenly notes, that did all others pass,
The outrage of his furious fit relented.”
Or again, to quote a parallel passage from a later poet of the didactic school, whom, perhaps simply because he (Dr. Armstrong) was didactic, some people think as essentially prosy as Spenser is on all sides allowed to be quintessentially poetical:—
“Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old
Appeased the fiend of melancholy Saul.”
Buretti declares music to have the power of so affecting the whole nervous system as to give sensible ease in a large variety of disorders, and in some cases a radical cure. Particularly he instances sciatica as capable of being relieved by this agency. Theophrastus is mentioned by Pliny as recommending it for the hip gout; and there are references on record by old Cato and Varro to the same effect. Æsculapius figures in Pindar as healing acute disorders with soothing songs.