Since I have recently shown the first proofs of your pages on music to the Messieurs G., well-informed lovers of all fine arts, I think I should tell you about the result of my conversation with them.

There is no doubt that these Scottish tunes, which you commend so highly, are excellent in their kind and perfectly suited to the words of those ancient ballads, such as your Chevy-chase, which was praised so highly in two issues of the Spectator. There is also no doubt that most of your English musicians, as well as musicians from many other nations, have incurred well-deserved reproach for compositions that are noisy, lacking theme or expression, and full of absurdities. But on the other hand, it does not seem reasonable, and it is surely not your intention, to restrict musicians to a single kind of music, or to confine them within a narrower circle that that encompassed by their art. When lifted by genius and directed by taste they cannot possibly be too free in their efforts. In music, as in poetry and painting, one must know how to give and clear expression to all objects, all sentiments, and all passions, whatever they may be: one must not use the same tones to represent a cabin, a shipwreck, a village wedding, or the apotheosis of Hercules; one must not pile up everything in confusion, but make a judicious choice, and assign palaces and huts, heroes and shepherds to their proper places. A great musician must know how to produce a pleasing melody from sweet sounds, a charming harmony from beautiful chords; he must know how to diversify and expand upon a simple, pleasant theme in his execution of it; how to display, at the right moment, grace and force, the tender and the threatening, the naive and the sublime. All of his compositions should be so suited to their theme that they are capable of pleasing everyone, but each one should also be able to give special delight to a certain class of persons. Thus in a ballad, or vaudeville intended for the universal amusement of the public, the musician should keep to very simple modulations, all of whose harmonies are easy to grasp; but in an opera, or a ballet which is to be performed before connoisseurs and experts, endowed with a refined taste and a trained ear, the musician should bring together more harmonies, combine a greater number of notes, and even seek out what is novel, provided he never deviates from what is true. But it must be admitted that there are few musicians, painters and poets, who are so favored by nature, and whose talent has been so perfected by art and purified by taste, that they are capable of letting themselves be deeply penetrated by these great principles, of following them consistently, and eventually rendering them even greater, as you, like us, would surely desire. I have the honor to be, etc.