CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FAMILY. 145 



LETTER XXXV. 



TO MARY WHITE. 



Selborae, Jan. 22, 1783. 

 DEAR MARY, 



IT is full time that I should acknowledge your late obliging 

 letter, and return you and your mother and sister my best 

 thanks for the agreeable visit that you made me in the 

 autumn. I have only to regret that you could not, con- 

 sistently with the respect that was due to other relations, 

 extend it out to a much greater length. 



As to music, your lessons and those of your sister gave me 

 wonderful delight. I retain still a smattering of many pas- 

 sages on my memory, which I sing to myself when I am in 

 spirits. Indeed I am often too much affected with musical 

 harmony, especially of late years. The following curious 

 quotation strikes me much by so well representing my own 

 case ; and by describing what I have so often felt, but never 

 could so well express. " * * * Prsehabebat porro vocibus 

 humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis, musicam illam avium : 

 non quod alia quoque non delectaretur, sed quod ex musica 

 humana relinqueretur in animo continens quasdani, attentio- 

 nemque, et somnum conturbans, agitatio ; dum ascensus, ex- 

 census, tenores et mutationes ilia? sonorum et consonantium 

 euntque redeuntque per phantasiam; cum nihil tale relinqui 

 possit ex modulatione avium, quse, quod non sunt perinde a 

 nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde internam facultatem com- 

 movere " *. When I hear fine music I am haunted with pas- 



* [One might almost fancy that this passage from Gassendi must have 

 been in Izaak Walton's mind when he wrote his exquisite description of 

 the nightingale's song, which I cannot forbear quoting. ft The Nightin- 

 gale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud musick out of 

 her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think mira- 

 cles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps 

 securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, 

 the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might 

 well be lifted above earth, and say, ' Lord, what musick hast thou pro- 

 vided for the Saints in Heaven, when thou affordest bad men such musick 

 on Earth.' " Such hold had the passage from Gassendi taken of Gilbert 



VOL. II. L 



