rsally and surrounded by a newly acquired radiance. In this manner
the tale of Romeo and Juliet, graciously and tenderly narrated by the
old Italian story-teller, was transfigured by Shakespeare and enshrined
in all the splendours of Elizabethan poetry; the figure of Psyche,
delicately graceful in the little romance of Apuleius, reappeared,
enlarged and glorified by the hand of Raphael, on the walls of the
Farnesina; and thus also our Cherubino, the fanciful and brilliant
creature of Beaumarchais, is known to most of us far less in his
original shape than in the vague form woven out of subtle melodies
to which Mozart has given the page's name. Mozart has, as it were,
taken away Cherubino from Beaumarchais; he has, for the world at
large, substituted for the page of the comedy the page of the opera.
Beaumarchais could give us clear-spoken words, dialogue and action, a
visible and tangible creature; and Mozart could give only a certain
arrangement of notes, a certain amount of rhythm and harmony, a vague,
speechless, shapeless thing; yet much more than the written words do
those notes represent to our fancy the strange and fascinating little
figure, the wayward, the amorous, the prankish, the incarnation of
childishness, of gallantry, of grace, of fun, and of mischief, the
archetype of pages--the page Cherubino. What could music do for
Cherubino? of what means could it dispose to reproduce this type, this
figure? and how did, how should music have disposed of those means?
About this fantastic and brilliant little jackanapes of a page centres a
curious question of artistic anomaly, of artistic power, and of artistic
duty.

The part of Cherubino: the waywardness, the love, the levity, the
audacity, the timidity, the maturity and immaturity of the page's
feelings, are all concentrated by the admirable ingenuity of the
Venetian D'Aponte, who arranged Beaumarchais's play for Mozart's music,
into one air, the air sung by Cherubino in that very equivocal interview
with the Countess and Susanna, so rudely to be broken by the thundering
rap of the Count at the door. The air is "Voi che sapete"--Cherubino's
description, half to the noble and sentimental lady, half to the
flippant and laughing waiting-maid, of the curious symptoms, the
mysterious hankerings, and attractions which the boy has of late begun
to experience--symptoms of which he is half ashamed, as calculated to
bring down laughter and boxes on the ear, and half proud, m