Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, September 05, 1746

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

165

text excerpt

I seldom hear an agreeable air but it recalls to my mind almost every pleasing occurrence of my life, and gives me a new enjoyment of it. Every body I either love or admire, every conversation that struck me with peculiar pleasure, and every fine passage of a favourite author, the powerful magic of Mr. Handel conjures up to my thoughts. One sometimes finds an effect like this in a solitary evening walk, from a calm sky and a beautiful view of rural scenes, but the images arising from these are more faint and languid, and at best lull one into a kind of waking insensibility. On the contrary, music at the same time that it impresses a thousand vivid phantoms on the mind, gives one spirits to attend to all their varieties without fatigue. After all, what connection is there between fine prospects and harmonious sounds and the very remote ideas they summon up. One may perhaps in some measure account for these strange effects by supposing that the mind cannot rest satisfied with the confused sensations of a mere mechanical pleasure, and therefore at the same time that it finds itself affected with agreeable impressions, calls in some species of moral good to explain and support them.

excerpt from 'Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, September 05, 1746' pp. 165 (209 words)

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