to Lully, and then in many cases to Carissimi, on whom Lully avowedly formed his style.

In Humphrey's anthem "O Lord my God" is a passage which will at once illustrate my meaning, and give you an opportunity of judging whether my estimate of Humphrey's genius is too high. Many of his modulations and turns of melody have, since his day; been much hackneyed; but they must have been very striking when first heard. The plan of the movement too, if not original, is at least uncommon.

FROM THE ANTHEM "O LORD MY GOD."

But Humphrey, and every other English composer of his epoch has, as I have said, been eclipsed by the nearer form of Purcell; the musician who has been regarded by all musical historians as the representative of English music, and the type of English composers. Though considerably more extended than that of Humphrey, Purcell's life likewise was a short one. He lived only thirty-seven years; from 1658 to 1695. As with most other great musicians, the powers of Purcell are as remarkable for their variety as for their extent. Specimens of

every form practised in his day are to be found in his numerous works; Church Anthems and Services, Latin Motets, Operas, Cantatas, detached Songs, Duets and other vocal pieces, and a prodigious quantity of instrumental music; Sonatas for stringed instruments, and what was then termed Curtain Music, played in theatres between the acts of plays.

Purcell was the first Englishman to demonstrate the possibility of a national opera. His essays of this kind may still be studied with advantage as models; models which unfortunately till of late years, have remained without imitation. No Englishman of the last century succeeded in following Purcell's lead into this domain of art; none indeed would seem even to have understood in what his excellence consisted, or how his success was attained. His dramatic music exhibits the same qualities which had already made the success of Lully; qualities which, near a century later, made the success of Gluck, and in our own time have made that of Meyerbeer,-more or less of musical invention and musical science (as the case may be) but these gifts and acquirements kept in subordination, and exclusively devoted to one object, the carrying on and giving effect to the business of the drama.

For some years after Purcell's death (in 1695) his compositions, of whatever kind, were the chief, if not the only, music heard in England. His reign might have lasted longer, but for the advent of a musician who, though not perhaps more highly gifted, had enjoyed immeasurably greater opportunities of cultivating his gifts, and who (during this Period everything) was born nearly thirty years later.

I speak of George Frederick Handel, so large a portion of whose life was spent in England, and so large a portion of whose works owe their origin to English suggestion, that not only we ourselves but foreigners, hardly excepting even his own countrymen, look upon him as more than half an Englishman.

Whatever good influences we may have had in giving a

direction to Handel's genius, however much he may have owed to his long residence among us, Handel was by birth a German, and by education a citizen of the world. Music (let us never forget it) is a universal language, and Handel had the advantage of studying it wherever, for the time being, it was most and best spoken.

No musical biography is so generally known and so easily accessible as that of Handel. I will not take up your time by the recital of what many of you must know already, but content myself with recalling a few particulars which bear immediately on what I shall have to say about his writings.

He was born in the year 1685, at Halle, in Saxony. Having exhibited the usual precocity of musical genius, he was placed early under the instruction of Zachau, then organist of Halle Cathedral. At the early age of fourteen, the death of his father, a man of whom enough has been recorded to account for some of Handel's subsequent success, threw him on his own resources. He made his way to Hamburg, then at the height of its commercial prosperity, and obtained a place as violinist in the opera orchestra, at that time under the direction of Keiser, one of the greatest musicians then living. In 1705 (ætat. 20) he produced, at Hamburg, his first opera, "Almira," which he followed shortly by three others; these four being the only operas (almost the only works) with German words he ever set. After three years' residence in Hamburg, Handel found himself able to realize the object of every young musician's ambition at this epoch, a visit to Italy.

A glance at the chronological tables will exhibit better than any description, however complete, what temptations the warm South was able to hold out, at the beginning of the last century, to a young Saxon musician more conversant with the necessaries than the luxuries of his art, and who, however conscious of his strength, must have felt and known his weakness in respect to that grace which, when not inborn, is rather a subtle