And pray, said the colonel, what kind of composition was the spondean hymn?
It was a hymn, replied De Lancaster, performed by the priests and minstrels in the heathen temples as a prelude to the ceremony of sacrifice, and it was called spondean, as consisting of such syllables only, which gives us to understand the solemn character of the composition, the object of which was to engage the attention, and conciliate the favour of their deities, whilst the incense was in operation.
If it could do that, said the colonel, and make dead idols serviceable, I can’t wonder it should make drunken insurgents sober.
Sir—replied the expounder, (lengthening out the word into a note of something like asperity) You have not heard me out, else I should have told you, that ancient sages cured fevers, fits of melancholy, phrensy, nay, even bodily wounds, by the sanative and enchanting power of song. Who, that has but dipped into their remedies, can be ignorant, that soft airs, well executed on the flute, were found to be a never-failing cure for the sciatica, or hip-gout, as it is called? A host of witnesses conspire to testify to the truth of what I tell you. Can it have escaped the notice of any well-read scholar by what means Theophrastus found a remedy for every malady, every molestation, that could disorder and disturb the health and temperature of the human mind? Sir, he had an instrument appropriated to every mental complaint, a pipe tuned to the pitch of every passion, high or low, flat or sharp. Xenocrates brought men stark mad to their senses. Thales of Crete drove away fevers, nay, even the plague itself, by music. Erophilus regulated the pulsation of the hearts of his patients by the cadences and time-keeping of his lyre.
We do that quite as correctly by our watches, said Llewellyn.
De Lancaster took no notice of this, but proceeded—Can you any longer wonder that the sage, who has made sympathy his study, and is versed in the science of these harmonious modulations and their respective energies, should effect those cures, which are recorded of them, and which, when explained and understood, are no longer hard to be believed? As for what is fabled of Amphion, Orpheus and others, who by the united powers of music and legislative poetry succeeded in reforming and civilizing their barbarous contemporaries, I would not have you to suppose I cannot distinguish allegory from fact. In the same light I regard the account, which Suidas gives us of the philosopher Plato, who was reported to have been begotten of his mother in a vision by the melody of the harp of Apollo.
I should be inclined to doubt that, said the colonel.
Nay, resumed De Lancaster, there is no occasion to debate what nobody wishes you to believe. You cannot but perceive it is merely an allegorical compliment to the genius of that extraordinary person, whose deep researches into the mysterious theory of sounds and numbers having enabled him to speculate in a very ingenious manner upon the doctrine of harmony, as connected with the movements of the celestial spheres, and also with the human soul even after death, was feigned to have been the very offspring of that harmony, which he developed and applied. These legends, and the like of these, I know how to appreciate, and with what latitude they are to be received; at the same time I am not to be shaken in my confidence, when relying on the ancients, who studied music as a science, whilst we do little more than practise it as an art, and of course stand in the like relation to them as fiddlers do to philosophers. In short, my friends, it is not man alone that is the slave of harmony, but the whole brute creation also: if stags can be allured by the pipe; if the fishes in the Alexandrian lake will surrender themselves to the song of the fisherman; if the hyperborean swan, if the birds of the air, at once so fearful and so free; nay, if even the wild elephant of India, and the ear-stricken inhabitants of the ocean, will yield themselves up to the minstrel, who will tell me, that a mere moping hypochondriac, like my poor daughter-in-law, might not be cured of her distempered fancy by the harp of David Williams?
De Lancaster having closed his argument, and dismissed his witnesses, the audience broke up; Llewellyn repaired to his patient, Edward Wilson to his pupil, and Philip whispered to the colonel, that he should be glad to have a few minutes talk with him in private. This was instantly complied with, and Philip opened the important conference, as follows—
I should wish to know, colonel, if you attended to what my father has been saying?