CONFESSIONS OF A MUSIC-HATER. 383 



f gentle, forsooth !) at a violin or guitar, but I fancy the instrument some 

 species of rack, and the performer some bloody-minded executioner, a 

 Trois Echelles, or an Abhorson. Seven years in Botany Bay ! What 

 punishment is that ? Sentence a rogue to a year of the piano-forte, and 

 take my word for it, crime will diminish at the rate of a fox-hunt. 

 Music appears to me to be convertible to no possible use but this, and I 

 really wonder the plan has not been hit upon before this by the Utilita- 

 rians, or the speculators on a new system of secondary punishments. A 

 scale of musical inflictions might easily be graduated according to the 

 varying enormity of offences. The newspaper wits would call them 

 sound corrections ; but never mind the newspaper wits ; the thing would 

 answer, depend upon it. For murder I would have a concert for life, 

 or a perpetual oratorio ; for homicide ten years perhaps of the Italian 

 Opera ; for highway robbery a musical festival, or two, if there should 

 be aggravating circumstances; shop-lifting and picking of pockets 

 might be punished with a certain number of tunes on a barrel-organ or 

 dulcimer, at the discretion of the court ; usury might appropriately be 

 restrained by the Jew's harp ; housebreakers by the dread of being sent 

 to the house robbed, and kept chained to the leg of the pianoforte until 

 the musical education of the young ladies of the family is completed ; 

 treason and blasphemy what should we have for these? I have it- 

 the traitor, if a male, I would marry to a Prima Donna ; if a female I 

 would give her such a husband as Paganini : the blasphemer should 

 suifer a torture which would satisfy even Captain Gordon. I would 

 inflict on him Mozart's Creation. Pray, Miss, why do you stare at one 

 in that way ? 



Really, Mr. Editor, it is quite shocking in you to allow a person to 

 contribute to your Magazine so barbarously ignorant as to say it was 

 Mozart composed the Creation. 



Now shall I be even with the young lady .- rub for rub is fair play. 



Might I make so bold with you, fair mistress ! as to ask you who it 

 was that invented the tread-mill ? 



There it is I know it she has not a word to say. Now, sir, if a 

 young lady is not obliged to remember the author of one device for tor- 

 turing mankind, why should I be flouted for being equally oblivious of 

 the author of another ? 



It is certainly for my sins I have scarcely a friend or acquaintance 

 who is not either a vocal or instrumental executioner performer I mean 

 executioner is not the word, it is only the thing : I grant you, there- 

 fore, it was wrong to use it. Nothing can be more impolite than to call 

 things by their proper names ; it is quite unaristocratic the infallible 

 characteristic of a plebeian. But as I said, I move for my sins in the 



most musical circle in , no matter where. Madame, I hate nothing 



so much as curiosity what have you to do with my latitude and longi- 

 tude ? 



Well, you shall have a sample of my sufferings, " Ex uno disce 

 omnes," as Machiavelli remarks. 



I call upon a friend a young barrister rising in his profession. You 

 would suppose he was to be found drawing a declaration, searching 

 Peere William's Reports, or immursed up to the eyes in Fearne or the 

 Touchstone ; if not professionally occupied, why then you would expect 

 to find him at some such work as Ricardo's Political Economy, Hal- 

 lam's Middle Ages, or at least a new novel : no such thing nothing 



