praised as a conventionally idealised Mendelssohn. His life was brief,
but not tragic. He never lacked his bread as Mozart lacked his; he was
not, like Beethoven, tormented by deafness and tremblings for the
immediate future; he had no powerful foes to fight, for he did not bid
for a great position in the world like Handel. Nor was he a romantic
consumptive like Chopin, with a bad cough, a fastidious regard for
beauty, and a flow of anaemic melody. He was divinely gifted with a
greater richness of invention than was given to any other composers
excepting two, Bach and Mozart; and death would not take his gifts as
an excuse when he was thirty-seven. Hence our Mr. Cummings has
droppings of lukewarm tears; hence, generally, compassion for his
comparatively short life has ousted admiration for his mighty works
from the minds of those who are readier at all times to indulge in the
luxury of weeping than to feel the thrill of joy in a life greatly
lived. Purcell might have achieved more magnificent work, but that is
a bad reason for forgetting the magnificence of the work he did
achieve. But I myself am forgetting that the greatness of his music is
not admitted, and that the shortness of his life is merely urged as an
excuse for not finding it admirable. And remembering this, I assert
that Purcell's life was a great and glorious one, and that now his
place is with the high gods whom we adore, the lords and givers of
light.


III.

Before Purcell's position in musical history can be ascertained and
fixed, it is absolutely necessary to make some survey of the rise of
the school of which he was the close.