protracted shake, he landed safely on the key-note, when Handel called
out in a voice loud enough to be heard in the remotest parts of the
theatre, "Welcome home, welcome home, Mr. Dubourg."

Dubourg's name is the first on record in connection with the
performance of a concerto in an English theatre.

John Clegg, a pupil of Dubourg, was a violinist of great ability, whom
Handel placed at the head of the opera band, but his faculties became
deranged by intense study and practice, and he died at a comparatively
early age, in 1742, an inmate of Bedlam.

Another very promising young English violinist was Thomas Linley, who
exhibited great musical powers, and performed a concerto in public when
eight years old. He was sent to Italy to study under Nardini, and
through the mediation of that artist he became acquainted with Mozart,
who was about the same age. Linley's career was prematurely closed, for
at the age of twenty-two he was drowned through the capsizing of a
pleasure-boat.

This completes the list of English violinists of note who were born
previous to the nineteenth century. The later ones we shall find in
their place in succeeding chapters, but there have been very few
violinists of English birth who have followed the career of the
"virtuoso." Even Antonio James Oury, who made a series of concert tours
lasting nine years, during which he occasionally appeared in conjunction
with De Bériot and Malibran, is hardly known as a "virtuoso," and was
not all English. But there are pathetic circumstances in regard to the
career of Oury. He was the son of an Italian of noble descent, who had
served as an officer in the army of Napoleon, and had been taken