If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the
English have a genius for other performances of a much higher
nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment.
Would one think it was possible, at a time when an author lived that
was able to write the Phaedra and Hippolitus, for a people to be so
stupidly fond of the Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day's
hearing to that admirable tragedy? Music is certainly a very
agreeable entertainment: but if it would take the entire possession
of our ears; if it would make us incapable of hearing sense; if it
would exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the
refinement of human nature; I must confess I would allow it no
better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his
commonwealth.
At present our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do
not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported
with anything that is not English: so it be of a foreign growth,
let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing. In
short, our English music is quite rooted out, and nothing yet
planted in its stead.
When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at liberty
to present his plan for a new one; and, though it be but
indifferently put together, it may furnish several hints that may be
of use to a good architect.
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