I told him,
that it affected me to such a degree, as often to agitate my nerves
painfully, producing in my mind alternate sensations of pathetick
dejection, so that I was ready to shed tears; and of daring resolution,
so that I was inclined to rush into the thickest part of the battle.
'Sir, (said he,) I should never hear it, if it made me such a fool.'
Much of the effect of musick, I am satisfied, is owing to the
association of ideas. That air, which instantly and irresistibly excites
in the Swiss, when in a foreign land, the _maladie du pais_, has, I am
told, no intrinsick power of sound. And I know from my own experience,
that Scotch reels, though brisk, make me melancholy, because I used to
hear them in my early years, at a time when Mr. Pitt called for soldiers
'from the mountains of the north,' and numbers of brave Highlanders were
going abroad, never to return[563]. Whereas the airs in _The Beggar's
Opera_, many of which are very soft, never fail to render me gay,
because they are associated with the warm sensations and high spirits of
London. This evening, while some of the tunes of ordinary composition
were played with no great skill, my frame was agitated, and I was
conscious of a generous attachment to Dr.
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