Page:An Essay on the Opera's After the Italian Manner.pdf/20

 in all other things. And I depend upon thoe great Qualities, upon their exquiite Dicernment, their exact Jutice, and their magnanimous Spirit of Liberty, when I preume to oppoe a popular and prevailing Caprice, and to defend the Englih Stage, which together with our Englih Liberties has decended to us from our Ancetors, to defend it againt that Deluge of Mortal Foes, which have come pouring in from the Continent, to drive out the Mues, its Old Inhabitants, and eat themelves in their tead; that while the Englih Arms are every where Victorious abroad, the Englih Arts may not be vanquih’d and oppres’d at home by the Invaion of Foreign Luxury.

There is no Man living who is more convinc’d than my elf of the Power of Harmony, or more penetrated by the Charms of Muick. I know very well that Muick makes a coniderable Part both of Eloquence and of Poetry; and therefore to endeavour to decry it fully, would be as well a foolih, as an ungrateful Task, ince the very efforts which we hould make againt it, would only erve to declare its Excellence, it being impoible to ucceed in them, but by upplies which we hould borrow from its own Harmony. Muick may be made profitable as well as delightful, if it is ubordinate to ome nobler Art, and ubervient to Reaon; but if it preumes not only to degenerate from its ancient Severity, from its acred Solemnity; but to et up for itelf, and to grow independant, as it does in our late Opera’s, it becomes a meer enual Delight, utterly incapable of informing the Undertanding, or of reforming the Will; and for that very Reaon utterly unfit to be made a publick Diverion, and then the more charming it grows, it becomes the more pernicious. Since when it is once habitual, it mut