188

ORPHEUS; AMPHION; ARION.

water-rat," on whom Waife's dog, Sir Isaac, had been endeavouring in vain to force his acquaint

wrathless as they heard him play. Waller's contemporary,
Sir William Temple, gravely asks what is become of the
charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and
serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures
changed. Macaulay makes merry at Sir William for putting
the story of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the
battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same reasons for
believing that Orpheus led beasts with his lyre, which we
have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or that
Alexander conquered Darius. For, quite prosaically, and
not with the poetic licence of Beaumont and Fletcher's
Arcadius, Sir William inclines

"To think the tale of Orpheus no fable;
'Tis possible he did enchant the rocks,

And charm the forest, soften hell itself,

With his commanding lute.”

And what says Wordsworth of another old-world worthy

"The gift to King Amphion

That walled a city with its melody,

Was for belief no dream :-thy skill, Arion,

Could humanize the creatures of the sea,

Where men were monsters. A last grace he craves,

Leave for one chant ;-the dulcet sound

Steals from the deck o'er willing waves,
And listening dolphins gather round,"

"I did once belong," says

by one of which his life is saved.
Marryat's old Tom, "to a small craft called the Arion, and
they say as how the story was that that chap could make the
fish follow him just when he pleased. I know that when we
were in the North Sea, the shoals of seals would follow the
ship if you whistled: but those brutes have ears—now fish
havn't got none." But the minstrelsy that bids "wake, the

T

SEAL ENTHUSIASTS.

189,

ance. Ben Jonson, in The Poetaster, speaks of rhyming people to death,

The Scandinavian seal-hunter takes advantage of the fact that the seal's sense of hearing is so acute, and their love for music so great, that a few notes from a flute will bring scores of them to the surface in a minute or two. Mr. Robert Browning sings of

"the tune, for which quails on the corn-land will each leave his mate

To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate, Till for boldness they fight one another; and then, what has

weight

To set the quick jerboa a-musing, outside his sand house."

Maid of Lorne," would have instructed the old salt, though in verses the reverse of didactic in tone or intent, that

'Earth, Ocean, Air, have nought so shy

But owns the power of minstrelsy.

In Lettermore the timid deer

Will pause, the harp's wild chime to hear;
Rude Heiskar's seal, through surges dark,
Will long pursue the minstrel's bark.”

A couplet in Sir Thomas Overbury's poem would only perhaps partially meet old Tom's difficulty, for it treats of fishes as dumb, not deaf. But then does not dumb include and imply deaf? And might not Overbury choose dumb because of the rhyme?

"And fishes too, though they themselves be dumbe,
To hear Arion's harpe did gladly come."

190

BONNIE KILMENY.

In what Mr. Kingsley calls the "grand ballad" of Glasgerion, we hear how the elfin harper could harp fish out of the water, and water out of a stone. The Kilmeny of the Ettrick Shepherd "keepèd afar frae the haunts o' men, her holy hymns unheard to sing,"-unheard by men, but not by the brute-world; for, wherever her peaceful form appeared, and her sweet voice sounded, the wild beasts gathered in peace:

"The wolf played blithely round the field,

The lordly bison lowed and kneeled,
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lily hand.
And when at eve the woodlands rang,
When hymns of other worlds she sang,
In ecstasy of sweet devotion,

Oh, then the glen was all in motion;
The wild beasts of the forest came,

Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame,

And goved around, charmed and amazed ;
Ev'n the dull cattle crooned and gazed;

The hind came tripping o'er the dew,” etc.

The Poet's Song of Mr. Tennyson, and the Prelude to the Tales of a Wayside Inn by Professor Longfellow, will supply parallel passages; not to dwell on a less technical resemblance in Wordsworth's narrative poem, the White Doe of Rylstone.

"BRIN

XI.

Minstrel and Seer.

2 Kings iii. 15.

ORING me a minstrel," said Elisha, when he would be moved to prophesy. The minstrelsy would serve to attune the faculties of the

seer to the faculty of prevision. The prelude of the minstrel was the preparative of the prophet. "But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him," and he prophesied.

When Saul met the company of prophets coming down from the high place, it was with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them : and they prophesied; and the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, and he prophesied with them, and was turned into another man; insomuch that the people said one to another, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" His exceptional susceptibility to music, as manifested in the curative art of

192

SUGGESTIVE MINSTRELSY.

the harper of Bethlehem, gives a fresh accent of interest to this passage, as betokening here too an elective affinity between minstrel and seer.

The minstrelsy harmonizes the moral frame, intellectual powers, and æsthetical sensibilities; composing, and withal exciting, the listener, by the spell of its suggestive* strains.

Music is defined by De Quincey an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the temperament of him who hears it; and he refers with admiration to a passage in the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne, which, though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people, argued the English Opium-eater, is to suppose

* The effect of music upon the faculty of invention is subject on which Mr. Disraeli professes to have long curiously observed and deeply meditated. He considers it a finer prelude to creation than to execution; saying that one does well to meditate upon a subject under the influence of music, but that to execute we should be alone, and supported by our essential and internal strength. He goes on to say that the greatest advantage a writer can derive from music is that it teaches most exquisitely the art of development: “It is in remarking the varying recurrence of a great composer to the same theme, that a poet may learn how to dwell upon the phases of a passion, how to exhibit a mood of mind under all its alternations, and gradully to pour forth the full tide of feeling."-Contarini Fleming, part iii., chap. viii.