Mistake me not, reader, -- nor imagihat I am by nature destitute of those exterior tendages, hanging ors, and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me. -- I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those duits; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exaess, in those ingenious labyrinthine is -- those indispensable side-intelligencers.
her have I incurred, or done any thing to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which strained him to draw upon assurance -- to feel "quite unabashed," and at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the pass of my destiny, that I ever should be.
When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will uao mean -- for music. -- To say that this heart never melted at the course of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel. -- "Water parted from the sea" never fails to move it strangely. So does "In Infancy." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentle-woman -- the ge, sure, that ever merited the appellation -- the sweetest -- why should I hesitate to name Mrs. S----, ohe blooming Fanheral of the Temple who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that abs se, which was afterwards destio overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W----n.
I even think that seally I am disposed to harmony. But anically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "God save the King" all my life; whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary ers; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.
I am not without suspi, that I have an undeveloped faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild way on my friend A.s piano, the other m, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor, -- on his return, he leased to say, "he thought it could not be the maid!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspis had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, snatched a superior refi, soon vinced him that some being, -- teically perhaps defit, but higher informed from a principle on to all the fis, -- had swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less-cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a proof of my friends peion, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny.
Stifically I could never be made to uand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how oe should differ from another. Much less in voices I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thh bass I trive to guess at, from its being superemily harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarow what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as juring as Baralipton. It is hard to stand alone -- in an age like this, -- (stituted to the quid critical perception of all harmonious binations, I verily believe, beyond all preg ages, si