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Table of Contents
  • Audiet Pugnas vitio Parentum / Rara Juventus. Hor: Young men—the few who are left after the crimes of their fathers—will hear of battles. [School and College Latin Exercises]
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  • From A General History of Music, Vol. II (1782)
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  • General Rules of the Essex Head Club
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© 2023
From A General History of Music, Vol. II (1782)
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By Johnson, Samuel

Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

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From A General History of Music, Vol. II (1782)
We are now arrived at the Reformation, and middle of the sixteenth century; a period which seems favourable for closing this volume, already more bulky than the first. My original intention was, to comprise the whole work in two volumes; but I soon discovered, with some degree of shame and mortification, that to have bestowed no more pages on modern music, concerning which we have so much certain information, than upon the ancient, of which, so little can now be even conjectured, would be like allowing one volume, in a History of England, to the Heptarchy,1 and only one to all subsequent times.


Page 541

At first, imagining that there would be no need of compression, and, indeed, not seeing the whole compass of my subject, I ransacked antiquity2 for whatever materials it could furnish, relative to the music of the Greeks and Romans, of which the effects have been so splendidly described, and which have long remained, and, it is to be feared, ever will remain, enigmas to all who have the misfortune to be born too late for the strains of swans and sirens.3 When I quitted these enquiries, to survey the rest of my labours, I saw “Alps on Alps arise,”4 which it was impossible to ascend without great pains and perseverance; however, as only one could be assailed at a time, I still was obliged to work in detail at particular parts, without bestowing much attention on the whole: and in this manner a second volume has been produced. If I committed an error, in allotting too many pages of my work to the ancient music, it would have been ill-corrected, by bestowing too few on the modern. Thus, as one error produced a second volume, before the completion of my design, so will a second produce a third; which, soon after the close of the first, appeared inevitable, unless, all proportion of the whole, to its parts, had been sacrificed.
It has never been my wish, or intention, to be always in the press;5 or to keep memory and reflection on the rack,6 at the expence of every moment of leisure for enjoyment or amusement. My industry, in this undertaking, has not been stimulated by profit, and the reputation of an author becomes


Page 542

daily less alluring, as reflection shews it to be more uncertain. Yet, a repugnance to abandoning, unaccomplished, an enterprize, for which such pains and expence have been bestowed in procuring materials, would be still an incitement to new efforts, though every other should fail.
This apology, for the amplification of my original plan, seems due to my first subscribers. I have been obliged, extremely against my inclination, to depart from the letter of my proposals;7 but as it has been done with no selfish or sinister views, my wish being only to render my work more worthy the honour of their patronage, I venture to hope, that no great moral turpitude will be found in the addition, at some future time, of a third volume.8
Editorial Notes
1 The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, or rule of the seven kingdoms in Britain, ended in 829 with the ascendency of Wessex under King Egbert.
2 In his preface to Dictionary, SJ mentions “the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack” (Yale, XVIII.100).
3 The proverbial beauty of the dying swan’s song first appears in extant literature in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (ll. 1444–45) and Plato’s Phaedo (84e–85b), as Geoffrey Arnott reports in “Swan Songs,” Greece and Rome, 24.2 (October 1977), 149–53. Homer describes the sirens and their seductive music in the Odyssey (XII.37 ff.).
4 SJ quotes Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 232, the conclusion of an image that SJ called “perhaps the best that English poetry can shew” (Yale, XXIII.1200); SJ also makes uses of Pope’s image in the preface to his Dictionary (Yale, XVIII. 100–101).
5 Press: “The apparatus for inflicting the torture of peine forte et dure” (OED, I.1.b), along with, perhaps, the more usual meanings: a printing press, a publishing house, and the thick of battle.
6 In Rambler 77, SJ speaks of a writer as one who “tortures his fancy, and ransacks his memory” (Yale, IV.44).
7 The proposals, dated 20 April 1773, appeared in the front matter of volume II of some copies of Burney’s The Present State of Music in Germany (1773) and in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1773). They say, “the work shall be elegantly printed in two volumes quarto.” See Roger Lonsdale, Dr. Charles Burney (1965), pp. 137–38, and The Letters of Dr. Charles Burney, I.124, n. 4. The proposals were issued again on 10 January 1774 and reprinted in volume II of the second edition of The Present State of Music in Germany (1775).
8 Volumes III and IV appeared in 1789.
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Document Details
Document TitleFrom A General History of Music, Vol. II (1782)
AuthorJohnson, Samuel
Creation Date1777
Publ. DateN/A
Alt. TitleN/A
Contrib. AuthorBrowne, Charles
ClassificationSubject: Music; Subject: History
PrinterN/A
PublisherN/A
Publ. PlaceN/A
VolumeSamuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand
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