A Treatise on the Art of Music - In Which the Elements of Harmony and Air Are Practically Considered, and Illustrated by an Hundred and Fifty Examples in Notes #249197

I l'hould therefore be happy if I could perfuade myfelf that the following {beets will have any effect in promoting a Tafle for the bell kind of Molic, from which we reem to have been departing daily of late years. There is a falhion, to the Power of which the wifelt are {abject in fome degree, in Mulie as in other things and a love of novelty will tempt us to prefer the worfc to the better, as we prefer an inconvenient unnatural falhion in our drefs, and really come to think it handfome, only becaul'e we have it continually before our Eyes. But in the imitative Arts, there certainly is a True Sublime, which cannot vary as the humour of the world does, but is founded in Nature and Reafon and has the fanflion of experience. Why has not Virgil grown old in fevcnteen hundred years, but becaufe his Work is founded in Nature, and is carried on according to the hell and {tricked Rules of Art? Yet to a School-boy it is drudgery to read him; and all-his beauties pars by unohferved and neglected, till the tafle is formed by habit and practice to untlcrlland and enjoy them.