Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
—Merchant of Venice.
Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by the Muses, from whom the term music is derived; but, although dear to all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the Iliad as delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is called sometimes Citharœdus and sometimes Musagetes, in both which characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity. The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new capital on the Bosporus.
Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or, at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but, according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees and
Fill the shade with a religious awe,—
in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music; for
The birds instructed man,