Page:Shakespeare and Music.djvu/167

Rh the spheres sounded something concordant, because of the necessity of proportion, which never forsakes celestial beings.'

'Pythagoras, by musical proportion, calleth that a tone, by how much the moon is distant from the earth: from the moon to Mercury the half of that space, and from Mercury to Venus almost as much; from Venus to the Sun, sesquiple [i.e., half as much more as a tone]; from the Sun to Mars, a tone, that is as far as the moon is from the earth: from Mars to Jupiter, half, and from Jupiter to Saturn, half, and thence to the zodiac, sesquiple.'

'Thus there are made seven tones, which they call a diapason harmony, that is, an universal concent, in which Saturn moves in the Doric mood, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and in the rest the like.'

'Those sounds which the seven planets, and the sphere of fixed stars, and that which is above us, termed by them Antichton [opposite the earth], make, Pythagoras affirmed to be the Nine Muses; but the composition and symphony … he named Mnemosyne [Memory, the Mother of the Muses].'

Censorinus, a Roman Grammarian, 238, in his book De Die Natali, says—

'To these things we may add what Pythagoras