“Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison and of plague:
And hence the wise of ancient days adored
One power of Physic, Melody, and Song.”
Over Luther, as Sir James Stephen has remarked, there brooded a constitutional melancholy, sometimes engendering sadness, but more often giving birth to dreams so wild that, if vivified by the imagination of Dante, they might have passed into visions as awful and majestic as those of the “Inferno.” Various were the spells to which Luther had recourse, to cast out the demons that haunted him; and of these remedial agencies the most potent perhaps was music. “He had ascertained and taught that the spirit of darkness abhors sweet sounds not less than light itself; for music (he says), while it chases away the evil suggestions, effectually baffles the wiles of the tempter. His lute, and hand, and voice, accompanying his own solemn melodies, were therefore raised to repel the vehement aggressions of the enemy of mankind.”
A story is told of Farinelli, the famous singer, being sent for express to Madrid, to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain, who was then buried in the profoundest melancholy—proof against every appeal to exertion, living without signs of life in a darkened chamber, the unresisting prey of dejection beyond relief. But relief came with Farinelli. The vocalist was desired by the physicians to sing in an outer room, which for a day or two he did, without any apparent effect upon the royal patient. But at length it was noticed that the king seemed partially roused from his stupor, and became an evident listener; next day tears were seen starting from his eyes; the day after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left open; and at last “the perturbed spirit entirely left our modern Saul, and the medicinal voice of Farinelli effected what no other medicine could.” Well known in modern verse is the poet’s picture of a despairing sufferer, whom nought avails to move until—
“At last a slave bethought her of a harp:
The harper came, and tuned his instrument;
At the first notes, irregular and sharp,