education, and she alsoe did give him all
the Bookes of Musicke in generall, the Organ, the double spinett, the
single spinett, a silver tankard, a silver watch, two pair of gold
buttons, a hair ring, a mourning ring of Dr. Busby's, a Larum clock, Mr.
Edward Purcell's picture, handsome furniture for a room, and he was to
be maintained until provided for. All the residue of her property she
gave to her said daughter Frances."

Cummings also assails Hawkins's story that Purcell was dissipated and
caught his death from being locked out. But Runciman objects that if
Purcell had not been dissipated in those days, he would have been called
a Puritan, and says: "I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman,
a puissant, masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king of
men, ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to excel every
one of his time."

The love Frances Purcell bore her husband was kept green by her anxiety
for his fame. She was, in her littler way, a Cosima Wagner. In 1696 she
published a collection of harpsichord lessons by her husband; three
editions being sold quickly. The next year she issued ten sonatas and a
"Collection of Ayres." In 1698 she issued (or reissued) the "Orpheus
Britannicus." In all of these she wrote dedications breathing devotion
to her husband. In an ode printed in the second volume of the "Orpheus,"
in 1704, Purcell's personality is thus limned:

"Nor were his Beauties to his Art confin'd
So justly were his Soul and Body join'd
You'd think his Form the Product of his Mind.
A conquering sweetness in his Visage dwelt,
His Eyes would warm, his Wit like lightning melt.
But those must no more be seen, and that no more be felt.
Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye,
Himself as Humble as his Art was High."

Purcell died at the age of thirty-seven--being granted only two years
more of life than Mozart and only six years more than Schubert. He is
the moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and as
silvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations of
the moonbeams themselves. But unfortunately for English music this
beautiful moon, who is the most nearly great of all the composers
England has furnished the world, was speedily obscured in the blinding
glare of the sun of English music which came shouldering up from the
east, and which has not yet sunk far enough in the west to cease from
dazzling the eyes of English music-mak