The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864, page 69 by Various Authors
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wn taste, have been inclined rather to have given a place to these extraordinary musicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet sounds, imagined by old Jeremy Collier, (Essays, 1698, part ii., On Music,) where, after describing the inspiriting effects of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring despair and cowardice and consternation." "'T is probable," he says, "the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might go a great way in this invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to classic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was anti-music with a vengeance,--a whole Pan-Dis-Harmonicon in a single lungs of leather!
But I keep you trifling too long on this asinine subject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem Boyer, my schoolmaster:--
"Ass in præsenti seldom makes a WISE MAN in futuro."
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Lamb not only had a passionate fondness for old books and old friends, but he loved the old associations. He was no admirer of your modern improvements. Unlike Dr. Johnson, he did not go into the "most stately shops," but purchased his books and engravings at the stalls and from second-hand dealers. In his eyes, the old Inner-Temple Church was a handsomer and statelier structure than the finest Cathedral in England; and to his ear, as well as to the ear of Will Honeycomb, the old familiar cries of the peripatetic London merchants were more musical than the songs of larks and nightingal