There are two circumstances which qualified that country above all other for this midnight music.
The first I shall mention, was the softness of their climate.
This gave the lover opportunities of being abroad in the air, or of lying upon the earth whole hours together, without fear of damps or dews; but as for our tramontane lovers, when they begin their midnight complaint with,
My lodging it is on the cold ground,[82]
we are not to understand them in the rigour of the letter, since it would be impossible for a British swain to condole himself long in that situation without really dying for his mistress. A man might as well serenade in Greenland as in our region. Milton seems to have had in his thoughts the absurdity of these Northern serenades in the censure which he passes upon them:
——Or midnight ball,
Or serenade, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.[83]
The truth of it is, I have often pitied, in a winter night, a vocal musician, and have attributed many of his trills and quavers to the coldness of the weather.
The second circumstance which inclined the Italians to this custom, was that musical genius which is so universal among them. Nothing is more frequent in that country than to hear a cobbler working to an opera tune. You can scarce see a porter that has not one nail much longer than the rest, which you will find, upon inquiry, is cherished for some instrument. In short, there is not a labourer, or handicraft-man, that in the cool of the evening does not relieve himself with solos and sonatas.
The Italian soothes his mistress with a plaintive voice, and bewails himself in such melting music that the whole neighbourhood sympathises with him in his sorrow:
Qualis populea mœrens Philomela sub umbra ...
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et mœstis late loca questibus implet.[84]