CHAPTER VIII.

_The Narrative is resumed and concluded. A learned Lecture upon Harmony, by which the unlearned hearer is not greatly edified._

Since you make so polite a tender of your patience, said De Lancaster, to me, who have already put it to so hard a trial, I must resume my narrative from the landing of Brute and his Trojans, when my ancestors established themselves on this very spot, I do not say in this very castle, under Camber, the second son of the aforesaid Brute. Lud-Hurdibras was the grandson of Camber, and King Bladud was the son of Hurdibras: he built, as is notorious to all the world, the city of Bath, and was the projector of those salubrious baths, that _William of Malmsbury_ would fain ascribe to Julius Cæsar, which I pronounce to be an egregious anachronism, and you may take it _meo periculo_.

I take it at my own peril, said the colonel; for I have seen Bladud himself with these very eyes standing centinel over the bath of his own making, and I never met with any body hardy enough to dispute his title to it.

Let it pass then! He was a benefactor to mankind by the institution of those baths, and might have been more eminently so, had his opinion upon the practicability of men’s flying in the air been established upon experiment. I confess there is much plausibility in the project, but I am also aware of some difficulties attending it, which merit consideration. I do not say it may not be achieved, but I am not prepared to recommend the undertaking to any friend, whose life is of immediate consequence to his family.

It would be a famous lift, said the wooden-legged warrior, to people in my mutilated predicament; and though I am not quite disposed to the experiment myself, any body else, who is so inclined, will have my good wishes.

That was exactly the language, cried De Lancaster, of King Bladud’s courtiers, and the learned men of the time. They unanimously declared that many notable discoveries might be struck out in astrology, which was the reigning study of the day, if men would fly up high enough to look after them; but they were not impatient to be amongst the first to fly upon those discoveries. My ancestor however, who was then about the person of the king, and an enthusiastic admirer of the sublime and beautiful, went a step beyond them all, and actually contrived a very ample and becoming pair of artificial wings, which in the judgment of the very best mechanics then living promised all possible success to the experiment. Upon their exhibition in presence of the sovereign and of a committee specially appointed, so charmed was King Bladud with the skill displayed in their construction, that he was graciously pleased to authorize and empower the inventor himself to make trial of his own pinions, with free leave to fly as far and as high as he saw fit, and to perch at discretion wherever it might suit him, the chimney tops and lattices of the chambers even of the maids of honour not excepted.

Happy man! cried Wilson; this was a roving commission of a most tempting sort, and I hope your ancestor had too much gallantry to hesitate about embracing it.

I beg your pardon, replied De Lancaster, my ancestor was not a man of that forward character as to aspire to situations, that ought to be above the ambition of a subject, but when this flattering offer was with all becoming thankfulness most modestly declined, King Bladud himself (as my ancestor no doubt foresaw) had the aforesaid wings fitted to his royal shoulders; ascended the roof of the temple of Apollo (at that time the loftiest edifice in the city of Troy-nouvant) and launching himself into the air confidently, as became a prince so sagacious and philosophical, committed his sacred person to the protection of Apollo and the artificial supporters, which promised him so delicious an excursion. Whether the fault was in the wings themselves, or in King Bladud’s want of dexterity in the management of them, is not for me to determine; but history puts it out of doubt that the attempt was fatal to the adventurous monarch. He fell headlong on the steps of the temple, (as you see in the picture fronting you) and was dashed in pieces in the twentieth year of his reign, and the two hundred and twentieth from the landing of Brute. All the world believed my ancestor a lost man, but Lear, son of Bladud and heir to his kingdom, being a prince of a most noble nature, and sensible to whom he was indebted for his so early elevation to the throne, rewarded the artificer of his father’s pinions by empowering him to affix them to his armorial bearing of the harp, and from that hour to this the harp of the bard between the wings of Bladud has been the proper and distinguishing shield of the De Lancasters, as not only the records of the herald’s office, but the head of every spout appertaining to the castle, can testify and evince.

The spouts alone would satisfy me, said the colonel, but the heralds and the spouts together are authorities incontestible; but since you have named Lear, I should wish to know if he is that very Lear, who, according to the drama of our poet Shakespear, having parted his kingdom between his two ungrateful daughters Gonerill and Regan, ran mad upon the reflection of his own folly for having done it.

For his madness, replied De Lancaster, there is no authority. He bestowed his eldest daughter Gonerill in marriage to Henuinus, Duke of Cornwall, and Regan to Maglanus, Duke of Albania. His youngest daughter Cordelia, who was justly his favourite, married Aganippus, prince of Gallia, and succeeded to the crown at Lear’s death, being the first of her sex, who had ever borne the title of queen absolute and governess of Britain. After the decease of Aganippus she fell a victim to the malice of her nephews Cunedagius and Morgan, sons of her unworthy sisters, and being thrown into prison by them, died, after a reign of only five years, by her own hand. The usurpers, who at first agreed to divide the empire, soon rose in arms against each other, and Morgan was slain in Cambria by Cunedagius, where the place of his death is yet called Glen-Morgan, or Morgan’s Land, now in the possession of the friend, to whom we meditate to-morrow’s visit.--But I am hastening to release you, and conclude my narrative--The line of Brute, the Trojan, ended in the year 3476 with Ferrex and Porrex, sons of old King Gorbodug, who swayed the sceptre through a period of sixty and two years. During the whole time of the Pentarchy, that took place upon the decease of the abovenamed sons of Gorbodug, my family appear to have kept close in their Cambrian retirement, till the reign of Mulmutius Dunwallo, immediately subsequent to the Pentarchy. It was then that a learned ancestor of mine assisted Mulmutius in compiling that incomparable code of laws, which being turned into Latin from the British language by Gildus Priscus, was in time long after translated into English by the great King Alfred, and by him incorporated amongst his famous statutes.--And now, my good friend, as I have always determined to have nothing to do with modern history, I here wind up my long detail, congratulating myself that those, from whom I trace my blood, had the good sense to keep close in their quarters in Cambria upon the landing of the Romans, never deigning to mix or intermarry either with them or the Picts, who came with Roderic A. D. 73, or with the Saxons, who first entered the land A. D. 390, or with the Danes in the time of Egbert, much less with the Normans in a more recent period, but remained pure and unadulterated from the days of Samothes, the grandson of Noah, to the present moment, in which I have the honour of thanking you for the attention, you have been pleased to bestow upon a detail, which I fear has been extremely tedious and unentertaining to you throughout.

Assure yourself, my good sir, replied Wilson, that the attention I have bestowed on your narrative has been amply repaid by the entertainment I have received from it. You have given me a history of my native country, which in many parts was perfectly new to me, and if it had had no concern whatever with your genealogy, still it would have been interesting to me, who have never thought, nor had the curiosity to enquire, about the annals of a time so very distant. That you have authorities for what you have narrated I cannot doubt, for I am sure you are incapable of a voluntary fiction, which, if any such there is, must rest with others, not with you. As for the gratification you may derive from the persuasion, that you can trace your descent from the son of Noah, and by consequence, through Noah, even from Adam himself, grace forbid I should attempt to lessen it, persuaded as I am, that you have too much consideration for Moses to enlist with the Pre-Adamites. At the same time I am free to own, that my respect for you, being founded on the virtues of your character, receives little addition from the circumstances of your pedigree; let me not however be considered as an abettor of plebean sentiments; I acknowledge a degree of prejudice for a well-born gentleman, and so long as you display the wings of King Bladud only on the shoulders of King Bardus’s harp, I look with respect upon your ancient banners; and henceforward when blind David Williams shall make your castle hall resound with his melodious harp, I shall recollect with pleasure that you have not only a natural delight, but also an hereditary interest, in that noble instrument. I am myself a lover of music; but it is a love without knowledge, for I neither know the practice, nor ever studied the theory of it. I like this tune, and I can’t tell why; I don’t like that, and can assign no reason for it. If music only creates surprise in me by the wonderful execution of a performer, I scarcely wish to hear it above once; if it moves my passions, and elicits (as it sometimes will) my tears, I could listen to it, as I may say, for ever; no repetition can exhaust the charm. What this is I cannot define, and for that very reason I suppose it to be nature; for art admits of explanation, but there is no logic, that applies to instinct.

This was an unlucky remark, and the colonel stepped a little out of his natural character when he risqued it: had he kept clear of definitions, and said nothing about instinct, he might have escaped a lecture on the Harmonics, which now became unavoidable, and he heard himself addressed as follows--

You discern correctly, my good colonel, as to effect, not so as to cause. You say there is no logic, that applies to instinct; I say there is no instinct, that applies to rationality: the brute creation is submitted to it, and directed by it; man must not offer to degrade his virtues, or defend his vices, by a reference to instinct: the plea of impulse will not save the criminal; for there are no propensities, which reason may not conquer. From what you tell me I perceive that you understand as much of music as ninety-nine in a hundred, who affect to profess it, and more than many, who profess to teach it, forasmuch as you feel it: now as there can be no effect without a cause, depend upon it, there is a reason why you feel exactly in the manner you describe, and in no other, though to investigate that reason, and intelligibly describe it to you, cannot be done without a more intimate knowledge of the constituent properties and powers of music, than falls to many people’s lot to attain. To descant upon these at present would take up more time than either of us would perhaps find convenient to devote to it. I will postpone it to a better opportunity, when I flatter myself I shall be able to relate to you so many striking instances of the astonishing powers of harmony, as will set that sacred science in a stronger and a clearer light, than you may be as yet aware of. Believe me, it is one of the sublimest studies, that the human faculties can embrace. The systems, that have come down to us from the Greek and Roman harmonists, as well as all that has been written by the moderns on that subject, are above measure difficult, elaborate and recondite--

Then I shall never understand them, said the colonel, nor desire to have any thing to do with them.

Pardon me! resumed De Lancaster: If leisure now served, I could give you specimens of the pains I have taken in the way of illustration, not only with the learned treatise of _Vincentio Galilei_, a noble Spaniard, published in the year 1581, but also with the Satyricon of _Martianus Capella_, as edited and illustrated by the celebrated Grotius in his early years. Permit me to say that I could give you the scale, and mark out to you the distinct semitones of _Quarlino_, _Giovanni Bardi_, and _Pierro Strozzi_. This would be demonstration, that could not fail to edify, and at the same time I would adduce such evidence, as should prove to you that my ancestorial harp was the very prototype of that, which _Epigonus_ of _Ambracia_ was said to have played upon with forty strings, when he first taught the Sicyonian minstrels to lay aside the plectrum, and employ their fingers in the place of it: when _Julius Pollux_ therefore gives this new-constructed harp the name of Epigonium in honour of Epigonus, it is a mere trick, after the custom of the Greeks, to arrogate all originality to their countrymen, and defraud my ancestor of his prior title to give name to his own invention. In like manner I can detect their plagiarism, when they ascribe the invention of the double-headed plectrum to Sappho, whilst I have models still in my possession, that prove it to have been the very identical plectrum in general use, when my ingenious ancestor struck out a better practice. I am therefore very naturally interested to prevent my ancestorial harp from being confounded with the seven-stringed lyre, ascribed by Homer to Mercury, of which the testudo formed the sounding-board; much less would I have it mistaken for that delineated by _Hyginus_ with crooked arms, and least of all with the suspicious model in the museum of the Medici.

All this, my dear sir, said the colonel, I should be extremely delighted with, were I capable of understanding it; but alas! how should I, who was never accustomed to admire any thing above the crash of a regimental band, comprehend a single word of what you have been saying to me? That I am capable of preferring one tune before another is all I pretend to, but to assign any reason for that preference is what I do not pretend to.

Yet there is a reason, resumed De Lancaster, and that reason is not inscrutable to all, because not enquired into by you. That _tones_ have power over the human feelings will not be disputed; but tones have different properties, and of course different operations: the one, entire, full and legitimate _tone_ contains within itself a variety of divisional parts, by the expression and application of which various passions may be excited, and various effects produced. The full tone may be resolved into the half-tone, or _hemitonium_; the half-tone into the quarter-tone, or _diesis_; neither does its divisibility stop here, for the diesis may be again resolved, first, into its proper quarter-tone, or _tetartemoria_, which be pleased to observe, is also called _enarmonios_; secondly, into its third of a tone, or _tritemoria_, (which by the way is the true chromatique) and thirdly and lastly, into a tone, which involves a third part of a full tone and half a third, and this is called _hemiolia_--And now, my good friend, having given you some insight into the various combinations and resolutions of musical tones, according to the system of the Greek writers on the harmonics, (which, though briefly stated, cannot fail to be perfectly clear to your comprehension) I think I may trust you to discover the reason, why certain modulations and assortments of tones are pleasing to you, and others not. These are the elements of all harmony, and as you are now fully possessed of the definition of them, you cannot possibly find any difficulty in the application.

I am under no difficulty at all, cried the colonel, in finding out when I am pleased, and that being the only discovery I have any concern in, I will trouble you no further to explain to me why I am pleased, but take your word for having given me the true reason, and be content.

Here the lecture ended as many lectures do: the expounder was perfectly satisfied with the instruction he had imparted, and the disciple was entirely reconciled to remain in ignorance of what he did not wish to understand.

At this moment Cecilia opportunely entered the room, and the recollection of Sir Owen’s proposal instantly occuring to her father, he desired to have a little private talk with her, and Wilson on the hint withdrew.