The condescension with which your Majesty has been pleased to permit your name to stand before the following history, may justly reconcile the author to his favourite study, and convince him, that whatever may be said by the professors of severer wisdom,2 the hours which he has bestowed upon music have been neither dishonourably, nor unprofitably spent.

The science of musical sounds, though it may have been depreciated, as appealing only to the ear, and affording nothing more than a momentary and fugitive delight, may be with justice considered as the art that unites corporal with intellectual pleasure, by a species of enjoyment which gratifies sense, without weakening reason; and which, therefore, the great may cultivate without debasement, and the good enjoy without depravation.3

Those who have most diligently contemplated the state of man, have found it beset with vexations, which can neither be repelled by splendor, nor eluded by obscurity; to the necessity of combating these intrusions of discontent, the ministers of pleasure were indebted for that kind reception, which they have perhaps too indiscriminately obtained. Pleasure and innocence ought never to be separated; yet we seldom find them otherwise than at variance, except when music brings them together.

To those who know that music is among your Majesty’s recreations, it is not necessary to display its purity, or assert its dignity. May it long amuse your leisure, not as a relief from evil, but as an augmentation of good; not as a diversion from care, but as a variation of felicity. Such, Madam, is my sincerest wish, in which I can however boast no peculiarity of reverence or zeal; for the virtues of your Majesty are universally confessed; and however the inhabitants of the British empire may differ in their opinions upon other questions, they all behold your excellencies with the same eye, and celebrate them with the same voice; and to that name which one nation is echoing to another, nothing can be added by the respectful admiration, and humble gratitude of,