A GENERAL HISTORY ,OF MUSIC ' By Charles Burney Burney's histOry
of nnisic, 'first published at the 'end' of the eighteenth century, is a famous book, but a Useless one : useless, that is to say, from the point of view of the modern reader in search of reliable information about its subject. Our knowledge of music has been infinitely enlarged since the days when Burney wrote", and Burney's theories have dated badly. Yet, valueless though the book is as a work of refer- ence or instruction;the industry of Mr. Frank Mercer, who has prepared and annotated—with alas I countless miSprints—:, this new edition (Foulis, 315. ad.) has not been wasted. For Burney's work has an unquestionable' interest as a period piece. I3tirney was an intelligent, charming, and cultured man, very much a man of his age ; he was quite without scientific method—the plan and arrangement of his history must appal the modern reader-----and in writing he made all the assump- tions about culture common to an educated man of his time. Anyone who is interested in the tendencies of artistic thought at the end of the eighteenth century will find the time well repaid dipping into the eighteen hundred pages of this amiable, muddled, and sometimes profoundly revealing work.
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