the stern and uncompromising temper of the island nation had been widely
recognized with exaggerations in Continental Europe. "I should not be
mistress of my own will," she said, "and whenever I might have a fancy
not to sing, the people would insult, perhaps misuse me. It is better
to remain unmolested, were it even in prison." She, however, changed her
mind, and her experiences in London were such as to make her regret that
she had not stood firm to her first resolution.


III.

Among the remarkable male singers of Gabrielli's time was Caffarelli,
whom his friends indeed declared to be no less great than Farinelli.
Though never closely associated with La Cuochet-tina in her stage
triumphs (a fact perhaps fortunate for the cantatrice), he must be
regarded as one of the representative artists of the period when she was
in the full-blown and insolent prime of her beauty and reputation. Born
in 1703, of humble Neapolitan parentage, he became a pupil of Porpora at
an early age. The great singing-master is said to have taught him in a
peculiar fashion. For five years he permitted him to sing nothing
but scales and exercises. In the sixth year Porpora instructed him in
declamation, pronunciation, and articulation. Caffarelli, at the end of
the sixth year, supposing he had just mastered the rudiments, began to
murmur, when he was amazed by Porpora's answer: "Young man, you may now
leave me; you are the greatest singer in the world, and you have nothing
more to learn from me." Hogarth discredits this story, on the ground
that "none but a plodding drudge without a spark of genius could have
submitted to a process which would have been too much for the patient
endurance even of a Russian serf; or if a single spark had existed at
first, it must have been extinguished by so barbarous a treatment."