1824.] 
These desezt rats seem to be formid- 
able creatures, and we ought not to 
wonder. if they had devoured the whole 
camp, soldiers and all. For among 
many stoties of their voracity men- 
tioned by travellers, we remember. one 
in particular, which would have stag- 
gered our faith, did it not come from 
a respectable authority, .M. Klaproth 
tells us, that during his residence at 
Irkutsk, in Siberia, in 1806, a report 
was received from the commandant of 
Ockoisk, to, the effect, that an innumer- 
able host of vats, having crossed the 
sea, had-devoured not only all the con- 
tents,of the government ‘store-houses, 
but the store-houses themselves. This 
is certainly: a most wonderful story; 
and although it is well known, that 
almost all the edifices in Siberia are 
built of wood, still even that is a sub- 
stance too hard to be swallowed.* 
VaZe 
en 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
On the Music- of Anciznr GREECE 
and Rome. 
| Papin and often as the subject of 
' this communication to your excel- 
lent miscellany has been discussed, there 
still remains much to be said by those 
whose profession or taste, or both, have 
led them to its due consideration, Even 
the writers of this description have not 
exhausted, though they may have thrown 
considerable light on, a topic so inte- 
resting. to the musical antiquary, and 
all real lovers of the harmouic art. 
That the ancient Greek music was, 
in many respects, very limited, is beyond 
all doubt; and that it included little, if 
any, of what we deem science, elegance, 
and taste... We. gain some intelligence 
respecting this particular, from the ma- 
nifest, fact, that the poet was generally 
hisiown musician, If it be asked, how 
it was, that, notwithstanding the con- 
stant union of the two arts in the same 
individual, music had an effect,in Greece 
that it never produced elsewhere; the 
answer is, that simple and undebauched 
as were the minds of the Greeks, their 
music was equally so. Its attributes 
were principally confined to loudness 
and. softness, rapidity and slowness ; 
and of melody, it) possessed scarcely 
more than rhythmus and a diversity of 
modes. Hence, the inferior as valk as 
the higher ranks were qualified to under- 
stand, and take am interest’ in, its’ tones 
and transitions, and to be susceptible of 
* That is, in great quantities: for it is 
notori0us that rats do swallow some.—Eb. 
On the Music of Ancient Greece and Rome. 
407 
its intended impressions. To thesé 
causes of the effects of which we read, 
are to be added the power of habit, the 
dignity then universally given to music, 
and the great and important occasions 
on which it was constantly deemed 
worthy of being employed. The public 
weight, the impassioned urgency, the 
national interest, connected with its 
performance, acted unceasingly on the 
minds, as well as on the nerves, of men, 
and the impress of its intonation became, 
as it were, vernacular; the peasant and 
the artizan, no less than the legislator 
and magistrate, were charmed with its 
appeals to their sensibility; and’ stocks 
and stones, as probably were the lower 
orders compared with ‘the refined 
classes, we cannot reasonably be sur- 
prised, if poetry gratuitously magnified 
the effects of the Grecian lyre into a 
power to move rocks and trees, and 
lead, at the pleasure of the musician, the 
wildest savages of the woods “ when he 
would, and where.” 
It appears, Sir, to me, that the only 
proper guide to a just conception of the 
Greek music is, perhaps (after all that 
has been said and-written on the subject 
by the moderns), the evidence of its 
effects, as deducible from the accounts 
that have come down to us, through 
the media of the ancient poets and his- 
torians. If this be unsatisfactory, where 
shall we seek for better proof? In vain 
should we apply to the musicians of 
later times, for an illustration of the 
subject. Their professional education 
constitutes their prejudices, and in re- 
gard to this point, obscures, rather than 
illumines,' their judgment. ‘The inquiry 
involves too extended an information, 
demands too profound and distant a 
study, to fall-within the mental sphere 
of persons whose lives are devoted to 
the cultivation of a science, the exercise 
of which, unlike that of poetry and 
painting, is as independent of political 
economy, history, and the beclles-lettres, 
as it even is of its own element—the 
philosophy of sound. 
To whom, then; shall we’ resort for 
light on the question respecting the 
nature of the Greek music?’ For intel- 
ligenee on the ancient state of the 
science, must we travel out of the 
science? “Yes—to legislators and phi- 
losophers we must apply. From them 
we Shall learn, that music was the most 
dignified when she was the most simple; 
that as nature is superior to art, so the 
plain, uncomplex compositions of the 
Greeks, whether they were harmonical, 
Or 
