libelled, not more in blame than in the praise which is given him, it
seems worth while making a first faint attempt to break through the
net of tradition that has been woven and is daily being woven closer
around him, to see him as he stands in such small records as may be
relied upon and not as we would fain have him be, to understand his
relation to his predecessors and learn his position in musical
history, to hear his music without prejudice and distinguish its
individual qualities. This is a hard task, and one which I can only
seek to achieve here in the roughest and barest manner; yet any manner
at all is surely much better than letting the old fictions go
unreproved, while our greatest musician drifts into the twilight past,
misunderstood, unloved, unremembered, save when an Abbey wants a new
case for its organ, an organ on which Purcell never played, or a
self-styled Purcell authority wishes to set up a sort of claim of part
or whole proprietorship in him.


II.

Hardly more is known of Purcell than of Shakespeare. There is no
adequate biography. Hawkins and Burney (who is oftenest Hawkins at
second-hand) are alike rash, random, and untrustworthy, depending much
upon the anecdotage of old men, who were no more to be believed than
the ancient bandsmen of the present day who tell you how Mendelssohn
or Wagner flattered them or accepted hints from them. Cummings' life
is scarcely even a sketch; at most it is a thumbnail sketch. Only
ninety-five pages deal with Purcell, and of these at least ninety-four
are defaced by maudlin sentimentality, or unhappy attempts at
criticism (see the remarks on the Cecilia Ode) or laughable sequences
of disconnected incongruities--as, for instance, when Mr. Cummings