Part 2 — From Henry Purcel to Dr. Blow.

Dear Friend,

TO tell you the truth, I send you this letter on purpose to undeceive you; I know that the upper world has a notion, that these infernal shades are destitute of all harmony, and delight in nothing but jarring, discord, and confusion; upon the word of a musician, you are all mistaken, for I never came into a merrier country, since I knew a whimsy from a fiddle-stick; every body here sings as naturally as a nightingale, and at least as sweet. Lovers sit perch’d upon bows by pairs, like murmuring turtles in a rural grove, and in amorous ditties sing forth their passionate affections; all people on this side the adamantine gates have their organs perfect, and I burn, I burn, I burn, which some persons thought a critical song upon earth, is here sung by every scoundrel: the whole infernal territory is infested with such innumerable crowds of poets and musicians, that a man can’t stir twice his length, but he shall tread upon a new ballad; and as for musick, ’tis so plenty amongst us, that a fellow shall be scraping upon a fiddle at every garret-window, and another tinkling a spinet, or a virginal, in every chimney-corner; flutes, hautboys and trumpets are so perpetually tooting, that all the year round the whole dominion is like a Bartholomew-Fair; and as for drums, you have a set of them under every devil’s window, rattling and thumping like a consort of his majesty’s rat-tat-too’s at an English wedding: we have such a glut of all sorts of performers, that our very ears are surfeited; and any body may hire a consort for a day, large enough to surround Westminster-Abbey, for the price of an hundred of chesnuts; yet every minstrel performs to admiration. Every cobler here that dispatches a voluntary whilst he’s waxing his thread, shall out-sing Mr. Abel, and a carpenter shall make better musick upon an empty cupboard strung with five brass-wires, than Baptist can upon the harpsichord; every trumpet that attends a botkin lottery, sounds better than Shore; and not a porter here plies at the corner of a street, but with his stubbed fingers, can make a smooth table out grunt the harmony of a double curtel. We have catches too in admirable perfection: Fish-women sit and sing them at market, instead of scolding as they do at Billingsgate; hymns and anthems are as frequent among us as among you of the upper world; for to every church God Almighty has on earth, here the devil has a chapel.

You are sensible I was a great lover of musick before I departed my temporal life, but now I am so surfeited with incessant sound, that I would rather chuse to be as deaf as an adder, than be plagu’d with the best ayre that ever Corelli made, or the finest sola or sonata that ever was compos’d in Italy: for you must know the laws of this country are such, that every man, for sins in the other world, shall here be punish’d with excess of that which he there esteem’d most pleasant and delightful. Lovers, that in your region would hang, or drown, or run thro’ fire like a couple of salamanders for one another’s company, are here coupled together like the twins Castor and Pollux, pursuant to their own wishes upon earth, and have all the liberty they can desire with one another, but must never be separated whilst eternity endures. This sort of confinement, tho’ ’tis what they once coveted, makes them so sick of one another in a little time, that they cry out, O damnable slavery! O diabolical matrimony! and are always drawing two several ways with all imaginable hatred, endeavouring, to break their fetters, and pursue variety; thus every one is wedded to what they like best, and yet every person’s desires teminate in their own misery, which sufficiently shews there is no other justice to punish us for our follies, than the objects of our own loose appetites and inclinations; for that which we are apt to covet most when we are in the upper world, generally, if obtain’d, proves our greatest unhappiness; therefore, since experience would not teach us to bridle our inclinations on the other side the grave, the pleasures we pursued when we were living, are, after death, appointed to be our punishments.

Dr. Stag——s, is greatly improved since he arrived in these parts, and has more crotches flow thro’ his brains in one minute, than he can digest into musick in a whole week; he had not been here a month, but his bandylegs stepp’d into a very good place, and his business is to compose Scotch tunes for Lucifer’s bag-piper. Honest Tom Farmer has taken such an antipathy against musick, upon hearing a French barber play Banister’s ground in Bmi, upon a jews-trump, that he swears that the hooping of a tub, and filing of a saw, makes the sweetest harmony in christendom; Robin Smith, is still as love-mad as ever he was; hangs half a dozen fiddles at his girdle, as the fellow does coney-skins, and scours up and down hell, crying a Reevs, a Reevs, as is the devil was in him. Poor Val Redding too, is quite tired with his lyre-way-fiddle, and has betaken himself to be a merry-andrew to a Dutch mountebank; and the reason he gave for it was this, That he was got into a country where he found fools were more respected than fiddlers. Dancing-masters are also as numerous in every street, as posts in Cheapside, there is no walking but we must stumble upon them; they are held here but in very slight esteem, for the gentry call them leg-livers, and the mob from their mighty number, and their nimbleness, call them the devil’s grass-hoppers. Players run up and down muttering of old speeches, like so many madmen in their own soliloquies; and if any beau wants a bridge to bear him over a dirty channel, a player lies down instead of a plank, for him to walk over upon; the reason why they were doom’d to that piece of scandalous servitude, was, because they were as proud upon the stage as the very princes they represented; and as humble in a brandy-shop, as a scold in a ducking-stool; therefore were fit for nothing when they had done playing, but to be trampled upon. I have nothing further at present to impart to you, so begging you to excuse this trouble, I rest,

Your Humble Servant, Henry Purcel.