17 



38. Music consists in the agreeable succession whether of 

 single or simultaneous sounds ; the former is called melody, 

 the latter Ikarmony : it differs from beauty in this that it not 

 only produces pleasing sensations, but excites various senti- 

 ments, and occasionally even passions : whereas beauty, ex- 

 cept that of the sexes, is incapable of exciting any emotion, 

 but that of admiration. Colours, neither by their succes- 

 sion nor by their simultaneity, produce any distinct pleasure 

 arising therefrom. 



39. Music, in as much as it affords sensational pleasure, for 

 want of an}'^ other appropriate terra, is called beautiful, as 

 Jike beautiful objects, it excites admiration : but this analogy 

 is very distant and imperfect ; as those musical passages de- 

 nominated beautiful not only produce admiration, but im- 

 jjress sensations infinitely more intense and forcible, than any 

 that beauty (except the sexual) can inspire. 



40. But the principal, and indeed incomprehensible merit 

 of music, consists in its action on the imagination and men- 

 tal affections, with which no succession of sounds has any 

 conventional nor other conceivable connexion ; in this respect 

 its power seems to partake of the supernatural, like that an- 

 ciently attributed to magic ; and hence the epithet enchanting 

 is properly applied to it: in fact the ancients supposed that 

 by music the !Moon may be brought doAvn from her sphere, 

 lunam deducere cantu, and rocks and wild beasts attracted, 

 saaa ferasqne hjra movit Rhodopeins Orpheus, and the most fu- 



voL. XI. D rious 



