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and metre; "harmony" the fixed relation of any high note to any low one; * "tune" the air given by the instrument; 'melody" the air given by the voice; "symphony" the concord of the voice with the instrument, or with companion voices; "diaphony" their discord; "antiphony" their opposition; and "heterophony" their change.

4. And it will do more for us than merely fasten the sense of the terms, if we now re-read in last Fors the passage (p. 237) respecting the symphony of acquired reason with rightly compelled affection; and then those following pieces respecting their diaphony, from an earlier part of the Laws, iii. 39, 8 (688), where the concordant verdict of thought and heart is first spoken of as the ruling virtue of the four cardinal; namely:

"Prudence, with true conception and true opinion, and the loves and desires that follow on these. For indeed, the Word † returns to the same point, and what I said before (if you will have it so, half in play) now I say again in true earnest, that prayer itself is deadly on the lips of a fool, unless he would pray that God would give him the contrary of his desires. And truly you will discern, if you follow out the Word in its fulness, that the ruin of the Doric cities never came on them because of cowardice, nor because their kings knew not how to make war; but because they knew not nobler human things, and were indeed ignorant with the greatest and fatallest of ignorances. And the greatest of ignorances, if you will

*The apparently vague use of the word "harmony" by the Greeks is founded on their perception that there is just as fixed a relation of influence on each other between high and low notes following in a wellcomposed melody as when they are sounded together in a single chord. That is to say, the notes in their assigned sequence relatively increase the pleasure with which each is heard, and in that manner act "harmoniously," though not heard at the same instant. But the definition of the mingled chord is perfect in ii. 539, 3 (665). "And to the order" (time) motion the name 'rhythm' is given, and to the mingling of high and low in sound, the name of harmony,' and the unison of both these we call 'choreia.'

"of

I write, "Word" (Logos) with the capital initial when it stands in the original for the "entire course of reasoning," since to substitute this long phrase would weaken the sentences fatally. But no mystic or divine sense is attached to the term " Logos" in these places.1

[The reference is to the much-discussed meaning of the word in the Greek Testament, John i. 1, and to the Neo-Platonists.]

have me tell it you, is this: when a man, judging truly of what is honourable and good, yet loves it not, but hates it, and loves and caresses with his soul what he perceives to be base and unjust,—this diaphony of his pain and pleasure with the rational verdict of his intellect, I call the last of ignorances; and the greatest, because it is in the multitude of the soul's thoughts." *

Presently afterwards though I do not, because of the introduction of other subjects in the sentence, go on translating this same ignorance is called the "out-of-tune-est" of all; there being scarcely a word in Greek social philosophy which has not reference to musical law; and scarcely a word in Greek musical science which has not understood reference to social law.

So that in final definition-ii. 562, 17 (673):

"The whole Choreia is whole child-education for us, consisting, as we have seen, in the rhythms and harmonies which belong to sound (for as there is a rhythm in the movement of the body, so there is a rhythm in the movement of sound, and the movement of sound we call tune). And the movement of sound, so as to reach the soul for the education of it in virtue (we know not how), we call Music."

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1

5. You see from this most important passage that the Greeks only called Music" the kind of sound which induced right moral feeling ("they knew not how," but they knew it did), and any other kind of sound than that, however beautiful to the ear or scientific in composition, they did not call "Music" (exercise under the Muses), but "Amusia,”—the denial, or desolation for want, of the Muses.2 Word now become of wide use in modern society; most accurately, as the Fates have ordained, yet by an equivocation in language; for the old French verb "muser, muser," "to

* Note David, of the contrary state

"In the multitude of my thoughts within me, Thy comforts delight my soul." 3

1 [Curiously these words are omitted in Jowett's version.]

2 [Compare "The Relation of National Ethics to National Arts," §§ 18, 19

(Vol. XIX. p. 176).]

3 [Psalms xciv. 19.]

think in a dreamy manner," came from the Latin "musso, "to speak low," or whisper, and not from the Greek word "muse. But it once having taken the meaning of meditation, "a-muser," "to dispel musing," became a verb very dear to generations of men whom any manner of thoughtfulness tormented; and, such their way of life-could not but torment: whence the modern "amusement amusement" has practically established itself as equivalent to the Greek "amusia." The Greek himself, however, did not express his idea fully in language, but only in myth. His "amusia" does not mean properly the opposing delightfulness, but only the interruption, and violation, of musical art. The proper word for the opposed delightful art would have been "sirenic";1 but he was content in the visionary symbol, and did not need the word, for the disciples of the Sirens of course asserted their songs to be Music as much as the disciples of the Muses. First, therefore, take this following passage respecting the violation of music, and then we will go on to consider its opposition:

(iii. 47, 10 (690).) "For now, indeed, we have traced such a fountain of seditions as well needs healing; and first consider, in this matter, how, and against what, the kings of Argos and Messene sinned, when they destroyed at once themselves and the power of the Greeks, marvellous great as it was in their time. Was not their sin that they refused to acknowledge the utter rightness of Hesiod in his saying that the half is often more than the whole'? For, when to take the whole is mischievous, but the half, a measured and moderated good, then the measured good is more than the unmeasured, as better is more than worse.

"The Cretan. It is a most right and wise saying.

"The Athenian. Whether, then, are we to think, of the kings, that it was this error in their hearts that in each several case destroyed them, or that the mischief entered first into the heart of the people?

"The Cretan. In all likelihood, for the most part, the disease was in the kings, living proudly because of luxury.

:

"The Athenian. Is it not evident, as well as likely, that the kings first fell into this guilt of grasping at more than the established laws gave them and with what by speech and oath they had approved, they kept no symphony in act; and their diaphony, as we said, being indeed the uttermost ignorance, yet seeming wisdom, through breaking of tune and sharp amusia, destroyed all those noble things?'

1

1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 90 (Vol. XVII. p. 211), and Vol. XIX. p. 177.]

6. Now in applying this great sentence of Plato's to the parallel time in England, when her kings "kept no symphony in act with what by word and oath they had approved," and so destroyed at once themselves and the English power, "marvellous great as it was in their time' -the "sharp amusia" of Charles I. and his Cavaliers was indeed in grasping at more than the established laws gave them; but an entirely contrary-or, one might technically call it, "flat amusia"-met it on the other side, and ruined Cromwell and his Roundheads. Of which flat or dead amusia Plato had seen no instance, and could not imagine it; and for the laying bare its root, we must seek to the truest philosopher of our own days, from whose good company I have too long kept the reader,-Walter Scott.

When he was sitting to Northcote (who told the story to my father, not once nor twice, but I think it is in Hazlitt's conversations of Northcote also), the old painter, speaking with a painter's wonder of the intricate design of the Waverley Novels, said that one chief source of his delight in them was that "he never knew what was coming."

"Nor I neither," answered Sir Walter.

Now this reply, though of course partly playful, and made for the sake of its momentary point, was deeply true, sense which Sir Walter himself was not conscious of. He was conscious of it only as a weakness,—not as a strength. His beautiful confession of it as a weakness is here in my bookcase behind me, written in his own hand, in the introduction to the Fortunes of Nigel. I take it

1 [Since Letter 67, Vol. XXVIII. p. 644 (except for passing references in Letters 73 and 82, above, pp. 23, 220).]

["I was much pleased with Sir Walter, and I believe he expressed a favourable opinion of me. I said to him, 'I admire the way in which you begin your novels. You set out so abruptly, that you quite surprise me. I can't at all tell what's coming.' 'No' says Sir Walter, 'nor I neither' (Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A., by William Hazlitt, 1830, p. 221).]

[Compare what Ruskin says, in his analysis of Redgauntlet, of the "subtle heraldic quartering" in the Waverley Novels: Letter 47, § 7 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 194).] [The manuscript remains at Brantwood; and the passages cited are here given in facsimile.]

reverently down, and copy it from the dear old manuscript, written as it is at temperate speed, the letters all perfectly formed, but with no loss of time in dotting is, crossing ts, writing mute es in past participles, or in punctuation; the current dash and full period alone being used. I copy with scrupulous care, adding no stop where stop is not.

"Captain" (Clutterbuck) Respect for yourself then ought to teach

caution

Author. Aye if caution could augment my title to success But to confess to you the truth the books and passages in which I have succeeded have uniformly been written with the greatest rapidity and when I have seen some of these placed in opposition with others and commended as more highly finished I could appeal to pen and standish that those in which I have come feebly off were by much the more labourd. I have not been fool enough to neglect ordinary precautions. I have laid down my work to scale divided it into volumes and chapters and endeavourd to construct a story which should evolve itself gradually and strikingly maintain suspense and stimulate curiosity and finally terminate in a striking catastrophe-But I think there is a dæmon which seats himself upon the feather of my pen when I begin to write and guides * leads it astray from the purpose Characters expand under my hand incidents are multiplied the story lingers while the materials increase-my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly and the work is done long before I have attained the end I proposed.

Captain. Resolution and determined forbearance might remedy that evil. Author. Alas my dear Sir you do not know the fever of paternal affection-When I light on such a character as Baillie Jarvie or Dalgety my imagination brightens and my conception becomes clearer at every step which I make in his company although it leads me many a weary mile away from the regular road and forces me to leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route again 1—†

If I resist the temptation as you advise me my thoughts become prosy flat and dull I write painfully to myself and under a consciousness of flagging which makes me flag-the sunshine with which fancy had invested the incidents departs from them and leaves everything flat and gloomy-I am no more the same author than the dog in a wheel condemnd to go round and round for hours is like the same dog merrily chasing his own tail and gamboling in all the frolic of freedom-In short I think I am bewitchd

Captain. Nay Sir if you plead sorcery there is no more to be said."

*The only word altered in the whole passage, and that on the instant. †The closing passage of the author's paragraph, down to "bewitchd," is an addition on the lateral leaf.

1 [For a reference to this passage, see Proserpina, Vol. XXV. p. 296.]