attained in the Italian operatic school.

"Piccini," says M. Genguèné, his biographer, "was under the middle size,
but well made, with considerable dignity of carriage. His countenance
was very agreeable. His mind was acute, enlarged, and cultivated. Latin
and Italian literature was familiar to him when he went to France, and
afterward he became almost as well acquainted with French literature. He
spoke and wrote Italian with great purity, but among his countrymen
he preferred the Neapolitan dialect, which he considered the most
expressive, the most difficult and the most figurative of all languages.
He used it principally in narration, with a gayety, a truth, and a
pantomimic expression after the manner of his country, which delighted
all his friends, and made his stories intelligible even to those who
knew Italian but slightly."

As a musician Piccini was noticeable, according to the judgment of his
best critics, for the purity and simplicity of his style. He always
wished to preserve the supremacy of the voice, and, though he well knew
how to make his instrumentation rich and effective, he was a resolute
opponent to the florid and complex accompaniments which were coming into
vogue in his day. His recorded opinion on this subject may have some
interest for the musicians of the present day: "Were the employment
which Nature herself assigns to the instruments of an orchestra
preserved to them, a variety of effects and a series of infinitely
diversified pictures would be produced. But they are all thrown in at
once and used incessantly, and they thus overpower and indurate the
ear, without presenting any picture to the mind, to which the ear is
the passage. I should be glad to know how they will arouse it when it
is accustomed to this uproar, which will soon happen, and of what new
witchcraft they will avail themselves.... It is well known what occurs