On Ancient Greek Mnsic. 441 I do not deny: but surely the results of the one course of study are mean and insignificant when compared with those of the other ; and this will more especially appear if we con- sider, that the effects produced on those who hear astonishing specimens of harmonical skill tend vmiversally to produce admiration of the composer ; whereas in listening to beau- tiful strains, we forget the artist, and are acted on by the admiration of beauty — to accomplish which is the true end of all art. The musician in the former case seems to me to resemble a sculptor, who, because the position of every statue must agree with the laws of statical equilibrium, should so frame his group as that the wonder should be how the whole was supported ; whereas in the latter case the artist throws all subordinate things into the background (no matter how much of his labour and skill may be thus lost on his specta- tors), and studies to make beauty, and beauty alone, appear in his performance. Let us then examine the Grecian music in this point of view. Of the effects vmiversally ascribed to the ancient Greek music it will be needless to speak at any length, for they are well known, and recorded as well by judicious and sober histo- rians^ as by authors who might have been inclined to magnify them. I shall therefore content myself with one quotation from the remaining musical works of Euclid, which tends par- ticularly to shew of what nature those eff*ects were, and how they were produced^. ^ See especially the digression on the Cynsetheans in the fourth book of Polybius. ^ Out of about thirty Greek musical treatises enumerated by Fabricius, only seven have come down to us. Among these, it is true/ we have three of the principal and most valued : that of Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, that of Euclid the geometer, and that of Nicomachus the Pythagorean. The first person who collected these very valuable works, and brought their text to a readable degree of purity, was the learned Meibomius, who flourished in Sweden in the middle of the 17th century. The opening of Meibomius's preface is worth quoting : "I have endeavoured to restore in these authors the ancient music, which from its very name and its antiquity deserves our veneration. Whoever admires the profound contemplation of the ancients and their divine inventions in the other arts^ may here look for new specimens of the same, I am well aware that the very title of my work will deter from the perusal the common herd of musicians, who seek not ancient authors on music, but new ones : and find, in sooth, enough of them— enough patchers together of new-fangled errors and monstrous opinions— which particularly appears when they
