eadfully tiresome, and
unintelligible in its plan. I hope it is the last opera I shall ever
go to."

"_Semiramis_ would be to me pure misery. I love music very little. I
hate acting. I have the worst opinion of Semiramis herself, and the
whole thing seems to me so childish and so foolish that I cannot abide
it. Moreover, it would be rather out of etiquette for a Canon of St.
Paul's to go to the opera; and, where etiquette prevents me from doing
things disagreeable to myself, I am a perfect martinet."

After a Musical Festival at York he writes to Lady
Holland:--

"I did not go once. Music for such a length of time (unless under
sentence of a jury) I will not submit to. What pleasure is there in
pleasure, if quantity is not attended to, as well as quality? I know
nothing more agreeable than a dinner at Holland House; but it must not
begin at ten in the morning, and last till six. I should be incapable
for the last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating
Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's[163] attack upon the
Church."

Yet, in spite of these limitations, he took lessons on the piano, and often
warbled in the domestic circle. In 1843 he writes--"I am learning to sing
some of Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great perfection," His
daughter says, with filial piety, that, when he had once learnt a song, he
sang it very correctly, and, "having a really fine voice, often _encored
himself_." A lady who visited him at Combe Florey corroborates this
account, saying that after dinner he said to his wife, "I crave for Music,
Mrs. Smith. Music! Music!" and sang, "with his rich sweet voice, _A Few Gay
Soarings Yet_." In old age he said;--

"If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time to music. All
musical people seem to me happy; it is the most engrossing pursuit;
almost the only innocent and unpunished passion."

When we turn from the aesthetic to the literary faculty, we find it a good
deal better developed. That he was a sound scholar in the sense of being
able to read the standard classics with facility and enjoyment we know from
his own statements. In the early days of the _Edinburgh Review_ he
perceived and extolled the fine scholarship of Monk[164] and Blomfield[165]
and Maltby.[166] The fact that Marsh[167] was a man of learning mitigated
the severity of the attack on "Persecuting Bishops." His glowin