To music he was more sympathetic, but even here his sympathies had their limitations. Music in the minor key made him melancholy, and had to be discontinued when he was in residence at St. Paul's;[162] and this was not his only musical prejudice.—
"Nothing can be more disgusting than an oratorio. How absurd to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about the Israelites in the Red Sea!"
"Yesterday I heard Rubini and Grisi, Lablache and Tamburini. The opera, by Bellini, I Puritani, was dreadfully tiresome, and unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last opera I shall ever go to."
"Semiramis would be to me pure misery. I love music very little. I hate acting. I have the worst opinion of Semiramis herself, and the whole thing seems to me so childish and so foolish that I cannot abide it. Moreover, it would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St. Paul's to go to the opera; and, where etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet."
After a Musical Festival at York he writes to Lady
Holland:—
"I did not go once. Music for such a length of time (unless under sentence of a jury) I will not submit to. What pleasure is there in pleasure, if quantity is not attended to, as well as quality? I know nothing more agreeable than a dinner at Holland House; but it must not begin at ten in the morning, and last till six. I should be incapable for the last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's[163] attack upon the Church."
Yet, in spite of these limitations, he took lessons on the piano, and often warbled in the domestic circle. In 1843 he writes—"I am learning to sing some of Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great perfection," His daughter says, with filial piety, that, when he had once learnt a song, he sang it very correctly, and, "having a really fine voice, often encored himself." A lady who visited him at Combe Florey corroborates this account, saying that after dinner he said to his wife, "I crave for Music, Mrs. Smith. Music! Music!" and sang, "with his rich sweet voice, A Few Gay Soarings Yet." In old age he said;—
"If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time to music. All musical people seem to me happy; it is the most engrossing pursuit; almost the only innocent and unpunished passion."
When we turn from the æsthetic to the literary faculty, we find it a good deal better developed. That he was a sound scholar in the sense of being able to read the standard classics with facility and enjoyment we know from his own statements. In the early days of the Edinburgh Review he perceived and extolled the fine scholarship of Monk[164] and Blomfield[165] and Maltby.[166] The fact that Marsh[167] was a man of learning mitigated the severity of the attack on "Persecuting Bishops." His glowing tribute to the accomplishments of Sir James Mackintosh is qualified by the remark that "the Greek language has never crossed the Tweed in any great force." In brief, be understood and respected classical scholarship. He was keenly interested in English literature, and kept abreast of what was produced in France; but German he seems to have regarded as a kind of joke, and Italian he only mentions as part of a young lady's education.
In 1819 he wrote to his son at Westminster:—