379 



tations in music began to grow out of fashion, 

 about the time that terraces and avenues were 

 demolished; but the improvements in modern 

 music have a very different character from those 

 in modern gardening, for no one can accuse 

 Haydn or Paesiello of tameness or monotony. The 

 passion for strict fugues in music, and for exact 

 symmetry in gardens, had been carried to excess ; 

 and when totally undisguised and unvaried, it cre- 

 ated in both arts a dryness and pedantry of style : 

 but the principle on which that passion is founded 

 should never be totally neglected. Some of the 

 greatest masters of music in later times, among 

 whom Handel claims the highest place, have done 

 what improvers might well have done ; they have 

 not abandoned symmetry, but have mixed it, (par- 

 ticularly in accompaniments,) with what is more 

 wild and irregular. Among many other instances 

 there is part of a chorua of Handel's in the Ora- 

 torio of Jephtha, which strongly illustrates all that 

 I have been dwelling upon. It is that which be- 

 gins 



" No more to Amnion's God and King," 



a chorus which Mr. Gray, (by no means partial to 

 Handel) used to speak of with wonder. The first 

 part, though admirable, is not to my present 

 purpose ; the second opens with a fugue on the 

 words, 



" Chemosh no more 

 t( Will we adore, 

 to With timbrell'd anthems to Jeovah due/' 



