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LETTER ON MUSIC. |
153 |
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expected that those touches of political feeling, those tones of national complaint, in -which the poetry sometimes sympathises with the music, would he suffered to pass without censure or alarm. It has been accordingly said, that the tendency of this publication is mischievous*, and that I have chosen these airs but as a vehicle of dangerous politics — as fair and precious vessels (to borrow an image of St. Augustin f), from which the wine of error might be administered. To those who identify nationality with treason, and who see, in every effort for Ireland, a system of hostility towards England,—to those, too, who, nursed iu the gloom of prejudice, are alarmed by the faintest gleam of liberality that threatens to disturb their darkness — like that Demophon of old, who, when the sun shone upon him, shivered J:—to such men I shall not deign to offer an apology for the warmth of any political sentiment which may occur in the course of these pages. But as there are many, among the more wise and tolerant, who, with feeling enough to mourn over the wrongs of their country, and sense enough to perceive all the danger of not redressing them, may yet think that allusions in the least degree bold or inflammatory should be avoided in a publication of this popular description—I beg of these respected persons to believe, that there is no one who deprecates more sincerely than I do any appeal to the passions of an ignorant and angry multitude ; but that it is not through that gross and inflammable region of society a work of this nature could ever have been intended to circulate. It looks much higher for its audience and readers : it is found upon the piano-fortes of the rich and the educated — of those who can afford to have their national zeal a little stimulated, without exciting much dread of the excesses into which it may hurry them ; and of many whose nerves may be, now and then, alarmed with advantage, as much more is to be gained by their fears than could ever be expected from their justice.
Having thus adverted to the principal objection which has been hitherto made to the poetical part of this work, allow me to add a few words in defence of my ingenious coadjutor, Sir John Stevenson, who has been accused of having spoiled the simplicity of the airs by
* See Letters, under the signatures of Timseus, &c. in the Morning Post, Pilot, and other papers.
t " Non accuso verba, quasi vasa electa atque pretiosa; sed vinum erroris quod cum eis nobis propinatur."— Lib. i. Confess, chap. 16.
X This emblem of modern bigots was head-butler (rgaiTE£«ra»0 to Alexander the Great. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypoth. lib. 1. |
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