Only a few years ago the heroes of the music-hall menaced the Boers with
unspeakable castigations when only they could be persuaded to leave off
unaccountably thrashing our generals; and when Purcell wrote "Come if
you Dare," and many another martial ditty, the time had not long passed
when Van Tromp sailed up the Thames with a broom at his mast-head. All
the same, "Come if you Dare" is a fine song; "Fairest Isles, all Isles
excelling," is one of Purcell's loveliest thoughts, and the words are
more boastful than ferocious; "Saint George, the Patron of our Isle," is
brilliant and the words are innocuous. The masque element is not dumped
into _King Arthur_ altogether so shamelessly as in other cases; the
whole play is a masque. Although there is a plot, the supernatural is
largely employed, and nymphs, sirens, magicians, and what not, gave the
composer notable chances. In the first act, the scene where the Saxons
sacrifice to Woden and other of their gods, is the occasion for a chain
of choruses, each short but charged with the true energy divine; then
comes a "battle symphony," noisy but mild--a sham fight with blank
cartridge; and after the battle the Britons sing a "song of victory,"
our acquaintance "Come if you Dare, the Trumpets Sound." The rest of the
work is mainly enchantments and the like. More fairy-like music has
never entered a musician's dreams than Philidel's "Hither this way," and
the chorus which alternates with the solo part is as elfin,
will-o'-th'-wispish, as anything of Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn is
Purcell's only rival in such pictures. At the beginning of the
celebrated Frost Scene, where Cupid calls up "thou genius of the clime"
(the clime being Arctic), we get a specimen of Purcell's
"word-painting":

[Illustration]

This "word-painting," it must be noted, is of the very essence of