Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/66

 the pipe or the dulcimer. All might have been composers, as the negroes and Indians are to-day, but on a higher plane.

What popular music might be now but for that unlucky Philarmonia discovery is suggested by an extract from the writings of Thomas Morley, an Englishman who became a great amateur and introducer of Italian madrigals in his own country. In the year 1597 he wrote that, on a certain evening, in England,—

In those days a person who could not sing, and sing well, was regarded as a freak, and was required to fit himself to join in the universal di-