IS there not something very fanciful in the analogy which some people have discovered between the arts? I do not deny the commune quoddam vinculum, but would keep the principle within its proper bounds. Poetry and painting, I believe, are only allied to music and to each other; but music, besides having the above-named ladies for sisters, has also astronomy and geometry for brothers, and grammar—for a cousin, at least. I am sure I have left out many of the family, though, if I could enumerate what seems at present the whole, it is odds, but there would be a new relation discovered soon by an adept in this business.—Why should not I find out one or two?—I will try.

Let me see—what is there near me? Oh! a standish—music then shall be like my standish. Any thing else?—Yes—like the grate—or like that shirt now hanging by the fire, which makes so excellent a screen.

“How prove you this in your great wisdom?”

Marry! thus—music bears great analogy to my standish; because there is one bottle for the ink, another for the sand, and the third for wafers—these are evidently the unison, third, and fifth, which make a compleat chord; and those three a compleat standish.—The pen is so evidently the plectrum, that it is insulting you to mention it.

“But why like the grate?”

Bless me! did you never see a testudo,—a lyre? The bars are the strings, the back is the belly—need I enlarge? What is the fire but the vis musica?—and here, the poker is the plectrum.

“But how can it possibly be like the shirt?”

Pho! any thing in analogy is possible.—Like my shirt?—Why, the body is the bass, the sleeves are two trebles—the ruffles are shakes and flourishes—the three buttons of the collar are evidently the common chord.—But, a truce with such nonsense.—There are scarce any two things in the world but may be made to resemble each other. Permit me to shew the slightness of another received opinion concerning music.

“What passion cannot music raise or quell?” says Dryden, or Pope, I forget which: and the same thought is so often expressed by other poets, and so generally adopted by all authors upon this subject, that it would be a bold attempt to contradict it, were there not an immediate appeal to general feeling, which I hope is superior to all authority. Thus supported then, I ask in my turn—“What passion can music raise or quell?” Who ever felt himself affected, otherwise than with pleasure, at those strains which are supposed to inspire grief—rage—joy—or pity? and this, in a degree, equal to the goodness of the composition and performance. The effect of music, in this instance, is just the same as of poetry. We attend—are pleased—delighted—transported—and when the heart can bear no more, “glow, tremble, and weep.” All these are but different degrees of pure pleasure. When a poet or musician has produced this last effect, he has attained the utmost in the power of poetry or music. Tears being a general expression of grief, pain, and pity; and music, when in its perfection, producing them, has occasioned the mistake, of its raising the passions of grief, &c. But tears, in fact, are nothing but the mechanical effect of every strong affection of the heart, and produced by all the passions; even joy and rage. It is this effect, and the pleasurable sensation together, which Offian (whether ancient or modern I care not) calls the “joy of grief.”——It is this effect, when produced by some grand image, which Dr. Blair, his Critic, styles the “sublime pathetic.”

I have chosen to illustrate these observations from poetry rather than from music, because it is more generally understood, and easier to quote—but the principle is equal in both the arts.

Adieu.