sank into miserable circumstances; and by the end of 1687 was dead.
James II.--who was a much more honest paymaster than his
brother--apparently paid up all arrears the Court owed him. His
impudence must have been boundless; for he dared to measure himself not
only against thorough workmen like Banister, but even men of genius like
Humphries and Purcell. His audacity carried him in the end no further
than a debtor's prison; and had he been paid only the value of his
services, he might have died there.

Before making some general observations on the stage music, I wish to
give a few instances of Purcell's power of drawing pictures and creating
the very atmosphere of nature as he felt her. Let me begin with _The
Tempest_. The music is of Purcell's very richest. Not even Handel in
_Israel in Egypt_ has given us the feeling of the sea with finer
fidelity. Unluckily, to make this show Shakespeare's play was ruthlessly
mangled, else Shakespeare's _Tempest_ would never be given without
Purcell's music. Many of the most delicate and exquisite songs are for
personages who are not in the original at all, and no place can be found
for their songs.

Two of Ariel's songs are of course known to everybody--"Full fathom
five" and "Come unto these yellow sands," both great immortal melodies
(in the second Shakespeare's words are doctored and improved). The
first I have mentioned as a specimen of Purcell's "word-painting":
there, at one stroke of immense imaginative power, we have the depths of
the sea as vividly painted as in Handel's "And with the blast," or "The
depths have covered them." Another exquisite bit of painting--mentioned
in my first chapter--is repeated several times: the rippling sea on a
calm day. It occurs first in Neptune's song, "While these pass o'er the
deep"--