Chapter Mungo to Musketeer of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

they fought, and Musgrave fell. Lord Barnard then cut off the two breasts of his wife, and left her to bleed to death.—Percy: Reliques, series iii. bk. 1, xi.

Music. Amphion is said to have built the walls of Thebes by the music of his lyre. Ilium and the capital of Arthur’s kingdom were also built to divine music. The city of Jericho was destroyed by music (Josh. vi. 20).

They were building still, seeing the city was built
To music.

Tennyson.

The Father of Music, Giovanni Battista Pietro Aloisio da Palestrina (1529–1594).

The Father of Greek Music, Terpander (fl. B.C. 676).

Music and Madness. Persons bitten by the tarantula are said to be cured by music. (See Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, ii. 2, 1624.)

Music and Men of Genius.

(1) The following had no ear for music: Byron, Hume, Dr. Johnson, and si. Walter Scott.

(2) The following were actually averse to it: Burke, Fox, Daniel O’Connell, sir Robert Peel, Pitt, and Southey.

(3) To Rogers the poet it gave actual discomfort; and even the smooth-versifier Pope preferred a street barrel-organ to Handel’s oratorios.

Music’s First Martyr. Menaphon says that when he was in Thessaly he saw a youth challenge the birds in music; and a nightingale took up the challenge. For a time the contest was uncertain; but then the youth, “in a rapture,” played so cunningly, that the bird, despairing, “down dropped upon his lute, and brake her heart.”

This beautiful tale by Strada (in Latin) has been translated in rhyme by R. Crashaw, in his Delights of the Muses (1646). Versions have been given by Ambrose Philips and others; but none can compare with the exquisite relation of John Ford, in his drama entitled The Lover’s Melancholy (1628).

Musical Small-Coal Man, Thos. Britton, who used to sell small coals, and keep a musical club (1654–1714).

Musicians (Prince of), Giovanni Battista Pietro Aloisio da Palestrina (1529–1594).

Musidora, the dame du cœur of Damon. Damon thought her coyness was scorn; but one day he caught her bathing, and his delicacy on the occasion so enchanted her that she at once accepted his proffered love.—Thomson: Seasons (“Summer,” 1727).

Musidorus, prince of Thessalia, in love with Pamela. He is the hero whose exploits are told by sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia (1581).

Musketeer, a soldier armed with a musket, but specially applied to a company of gentlemen who were a mounted guard in the service of the king of France from 1661.

They formed two companies, the grey and the black; so called from the colour of their hair. Both were clad in scarlet, and hence their quarters were called the Maison rouge. In peace they followed the king in the chase to protect him; in war they fought either on foot or horse-back. They were suppressed in 1791; restored in 1814, but only for a few months; and after the restoration of Louis XVIII. we hear no more of them. Many Scotch gentlemen enrolled themselves among these dandy soldiers, who went to war with curled hair, white gloves, and perfumed like milliners.