existence but when she is looked upon.

Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of a country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own walks and gardens.  Her husband, who is her bosom friend and companion in her solitudes, has been in love with her ever since he knew her.  They both abound with good sense, consummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another.  Their family is under so regular an economy, in its hours of devotion and repast, employment and diversion, that it looks like a little commonwealth within itself.  They often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to one another; and sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country life.  By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their children, adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or rather the delight, of all that know them.

How different to this is the life of Fulvia!  She considers her husband as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good housewifery as little domestic virtues unbecoming a woman of quality.  She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in the ring, the playhouse, or the drawing-room.  She lives in a perpetual motion of body and restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one place when she thinks there is more company in another.  The missing of an opera the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death of a child.  She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls every woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited, unpolished creature.  What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself, and that she grows contemptible by being conspicuous!

I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has very finely touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the character of Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.  The poet tells us, that after having made a great slaughter of the enemy, she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple.  “A golden bow,” says he, “hung upon his shoulder; his garment was buckled with a golden clasp, and his head covered with a helmet of the same shining metal.”  The Amazon immediately singled out this well-dressed warrior, being seized with a woman’s longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with:

—Totumque incauta per agmen,
Fæmineo prædæ et spoliorum ardebat amore.

Æn., xi. 781.

      —So greedy was she bent
On golden spoils, and on her prey intent.

Dryden.

This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the poet, by a nice concealed moral, represents to have been the destruction of his female hero.

THE ITALIAN OPERA.

—Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana.

Hor., Ep. ii. 1, 187.

But now our nobles too are fops and vain,
Neglect the sense, but love the painted scene.

Creech.

It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual progress which it has made upon the English stage; for there is no question but our great-grandchildren will be very curious to know the reason why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand.

Arsinoë was the first opera that gave us a taste of Italian music.  The great success this opera met with produced some attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation.  This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware; and therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as such to this day, “That nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”

This maxim was no sooner received, but we immediately fell to translating the Italian operas; and as there was no great danger of hurting the sense of those extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune.  Thus the famous swig in Camilla:

“Barbara si t’ intendo,” &c.

“Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,”

which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was translated into that English lamentation,

“Frail are a lover’s hopes,” &c.

And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with a spirit of rage and indignation.  It happened also very frequently, where the sense was rightly translated, the necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other.  I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:

“And turned my rage into pity;”

which the English for rhyme’s sake translated:

“And into pity turned my rage.”

By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity in the translation.  It oftentimes happened, likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in the sentence.  I have known the word “and” pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious “the;” and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon “then,” “for,” and “from,” to the eternal honour of our English particles.

The next step to our refinement was the introducing of Italian actors into our opera; who sang their parts in their own language, at the same time that our countrymen performed theirs in our native tongue.  The king or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian, and his slaves answered him in English.  The lover frequently made his court, and gained the heart of his princess, in a language which she did not understand.  One would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dialogues after this manner without an interpreter between the persons that conversed together; but this was the state of the English stage for about three years.

At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera; and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown tongue.  We no longer understand the language of our own stage; insomuch that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us names, and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since we put such an entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they may do it