THE SOUL OF SONG. 73 



All fables, when understood, become facts. Orpheus is no fable ; 

 he is the poet skilled in harmony whom the ages honour with the 

 attributes of divinity in remembrance of the solace which men foimd 

 in his songs. The Orphic hymns are lost, but fragments of his 

 legendary life remain to testify how closely men cling to the remem- 

 brance of pleasure. "When Orpheus bewailed the death of his wife 

 Euridyce, the sweet sound of his lyre caused a forest of elms to spring 

 up, and the charm of his harp was so great that the woods nodded, the 

 brown rocks broke their bonds and marched entranced towards him. 

 That the extravagance is only superficial, witness the repeated refer- 

 ences of poets, who return again and again to these lovely legends 

 because there is a truth beneath them which is universal : — 



Therefore the poet 

 Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods ; 

 Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, 

 But music for the time doth change his nature. 



The universal poet saw the breadth of the myth, and added : — 



The man that hath no music in himself, 

 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds ; 

 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 

 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; 

 And his affections dark as Erebus. 



Shakspere. 



The spirit of the world was young when music was made the hand- 

 maid of religion ; and it still afibrds a glimpse of that antiquity to 

 know that deeds of heroism and valour were sanctified in song, and 

 that music completed the glory of the inauguration and the festival. 

 Whether at the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games, or 

 at the victories of Eomulus, 750 years before Christ, when the army, 

 horse and foot, followed the chariot of the conqueror, hymning their 

 gods in songs of their country ; or whether at the marriage feast or 

 the funeral prayer, the charm of music still predominates, — interweaves 

 itself with the fate and circumstance of man, and creeps into his heart 

 like a sunbird seeking for a home. It is this poM'er which rouses a 

 rude peasantry from the lethargy of serfdom to repossess themselves 

 of liberties long lost, under the impulse of their national melodies. 

 The effect produced on the S wiss soldiers, when in the service of the 

 French, by an ancient air of the Rannes des Vaches, was so powerful 

 that it was forbidden to be played, so forcibly did it remind the men 



