THOUGHTS ON THE SUBLIME IN MUSIC. 247 



plained of as deficient in expression, or as not going to the heart : 

 we should no longer hear the trash of Bellini and his fellow labour- 

 ers in the field of dullness, cried up to the skies, and Mozart, per- 

 haps in the same breath, stigmatized as heavy : no longer hear 

 vaunts of the improvements daily making in the art, when it is 

 known that those improvements are made principally, if not solely, 

 in the lower walks of that art ; in short, no longer hear music ap- 

 plauded, solely because it pleases, or decried, because it is beyond 

 the comprehension of a depraved taste. 



Can any one, who has given the subject a moment's considera- 

 tion, deny that the sublime is the highest department of all the fine 

 arts ? Who, in poetry, thinks of setting Thomas Moore or Mrs. 

 Hemans before Milton ? Many — the great majority, we have no 

 doubt — in their hearts prefer the former ; but, having some regard 

 to their reputation as persons of taste, dare not avow their lurking 

 partiality. Again ; who, if he were making out a list of eminent 

 painters, and placing them in the order of their merit, would set 

 Copley, Fielding, or Hunt before Michael Angelo ? Certainly 

 no one would so commit himself: and why ? not because his works 

 are more generally pleasing, or more comprehensible to the uniniti- 

 ated ; but, in both these instances, because the principle is acknow- 

 ledged, that, to succeed in producing sublimity is to have attained 

 the highest excellence. We, consequently, never hear of Milton 

 being dry, or Michael Angelo unintelligible. On the contrary, 

 whatever they may think, all are anxious to be foremost in express- 

 ing their admiration of the works of these great men. Thus we see 

 that, in these two arts, poetry and painting, certain fixed principles 

 are acknowledged, in criticising and determining the degrees of praise 

 to be awarded to works produced in them. This is one step gained. 

 But in music, unhappy music, the attempt to introduce criticism 

 founded on such principles, is scouted as the height of absurdity, as 

 savouring of pedantry, and shewing the hardy innovator to be 

 totally devoid, not only of genius, but of taste. In music, every 

 one evidently thinks his own taste sufficient to determine, to his 

 own satisfaction, the merits or demerits of a composition ; on this, 

 and this alone, it must either stand or fall. Thus it is that a mo- 

 dern Italian cavatina is preferred to and set far above Hosanna to 

 the Son of David, by Orlando Gibbons, (if, indeed a comparison is 

 condescended to), because, forsooth, it has more expression, because 

 it goes to the heart, and a thousand other reasons equally full of 

 meaning. But what is the proper way of viewing the subject? 

 The sublime style of every art is, as we have stated, the highest 



