sound of an instrument. For there is a musick wher-
ever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus
far we may maintain "the musick of the spheres:" for
those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though
they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understand-
ing they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatso-
ever is harmonically composed delights in harmony,
which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those
heads which declaim against all church-musick. For
myself, not only from my obedience but my particular
genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern-
musick which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound
contemplation of the first composer. There is some-
thing in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is
an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole
world, and creatures of God,--such a melody to the ear,
as the whole world, well understood, would afford the
understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that
harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God.
I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but
harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick:
thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours
the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though
indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This
made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall upon
a verse;* and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaim-
ing for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a

* "Urbem a Romam in principio reges habuere."