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Untitled Article
ren < nnni without knowing one another better than by name : nor would it be impossible that Rossini never read a page of Walter Scott , and that the latter never heard ( excepting from barrelorgans in the streets of London or Edinburgh ) a single arietta of the magician of Pesaro . This being- granted , the following
proposition , which is to form the basis of the present dissertatien , may appear still more strange than it really is ; but it is only an opinion of mine ; and as in the matter of opinion every one must be allowed to have his own , so the courteous will not be enraged against me if , as is exceedingly probable , the one which I am about to unfold should not obtain from him the favour
of a hearty adoption . Here then is my proposition : Walter Scott is the Rossini of literature ; and Rossini the Walter Scott of music . There exists not a cobbler boasting a pair of ears to his skull ,
who has not been malgre lui fascinated by the melody of Rossini's notes , and who has not whistled them in his stall by way of accompaniment to his stitching and waxing ; so likewise , there is not a chandler's boy , blessed with the school-knowledge that two and two make four , who lias not at least half-a-dozen times
fallen upon some romance of Walter Scott . In a word , the successes of these two popular geniuses partake of the marvellous : " c ' est un engouemcnt" say the French , adding , with a trifling but expressive phrase , " Rossini and Walter Scott are the coqueluche of all nations : " in fact , the worship rendered to them amounts almost to idolatry and madness . * But , as it happened even to Trajan and to Titus , the best and most beloved among- princes , the reign of the two sublime characters concerning whom we are now treating , is not without some opposition . Amidst the crowd of adorers , there is not
wanting , now and then , some detractor who exclaims against usurpation—against bad taste ! who prognosticates through their means the decline of art , the dawn of mannerism , the age of Marihi ! It is not my intention either to examine the strictness of these charges or the extent of the danger which , according to these gloomy prophets , threatens the two fields in which grow the dearest joys of civilized life ; others have done this ; others
have demonstrated the irrationality , I might almost say the absurdity of such fears . But in order to come to what I have taken upon myself , I must needs say some little about these dangers , and particularly something respecting the nature of Rossini ' s music and Walter Scott ' s writings . As I am not learned in the science of music , the reader will please to content himself by my taking for my guide an excellent article
• It teems hardly a compliment to identify them either with the " hooping cMtogti of the pageds of fanatics ; but we suppose that it is necessary to allow something for the eccentricity and grandiloquence of the ingenious Italian ?— - Em
Untitled Article
658 Rossini and Walter Scott .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 558, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/34/
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