remarks that "Queen Mary died of small-pox, and the memory of her
goodness was felt so universally," etc. Born in 1658, Purcell lived in
Pepys' London, and died in 1095, having written complimentary odes to
three kings--Charles the Second, James the Second, and William the
Third. Besides these complimentary odes, he wrote piles of
instrumental music, a fair heap of anthems, and songs and interludes
and overtures for some forty odd plays. This is nearly the sum of our
knowledge. His outward life seems to have been uneventful enough. He
probably lived the common life of the day--the day being, as I have
said, Pepys' day. Mr. Cummings has tried to show him as a seventeenth
century Mendelssohn--conventionally idealised--and he quotes the
testimony of some "distinguished divine," chaplain to a nobleman, as
though we did not know too well why noblemen kept chaplains in those
days to regard their testimony as worth more than other men's. The
truth is, that if Purcell had lived differently from his neighbours he
would have been called a Puritan. On the other hand, we must remember
that he composed so much in his short life that his dissipations must
have made a poor show beside those of many of his great
contemporaries--those of Dryden, for instance, who used to hide from
his duns in Purcell's private room in the clock-tower of St. James's
Palace. I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman, a puissant,
masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king of men,
ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to exceed every
one of his time, less majestic than Handel, perhaps, but full of
vigour and unshakable faith in his genius. His was an age when genius
inspired confidence both in others and in its possessor, not, as now,
suspicion in both; and Purcell was believed in from the first by many,
and later, by all--even by Dryden, who began by flattering Monsieur
Grabut, and ended, as was his wont, by crossing to the winning side.
And Purcell is no more to be pitied for his sad life than to be