sic. Grabut was more ingenious
as a business man than as a musician, but not all his ingenuity served
to prevent the English discovering that he could not write pleasing
tunes and that Purcell could.[1] Whether Dryden felt any difference
whatever between good and bad music I cannot say: he may have been like
many of the poets, music-deaf (analogous to colour-blind). They are said
to have been good friends, which I can well believe; and Dryden, when
pursued by duns and men with writs and such implements of torture, is
said to have stowed himself secretly in Purcell's room in the
clock-tower of St. James's Palace, which one may believe or not,
according to the mood of the moment. Anyhow, he seems to have been happy
to work with Purcell, and for the spectacles in _King Arthur_ they laid
their two heads together and arranged some dazzling things which no one
would care to see nowadays. _King Arthur_ is almost as brilliant as
_Dioclesian_, and contains some exceedingly patriotic songs. The stage
in England always threatens most bloodshed to England's foes when those
foes might seem to an impartial observer to be having the better of it.
Only a few years ago the heroes of the music-hall menaced the Boers with
unspeakable castigations when only they could be persuaded to leave off
unaccountably thrashing our generals; and when Purcell wrote "Come if
you Dare," and many another martial ditty, the time had not long passed
when Van Tromp sailed up the Thames with a broom at his mast-head. All
the same, "Come if you Dare" is a fine song; "Fairest Isles, all Isles
excelling," is one of Purcell's loveliest thoughts, and the words are
more boastful than ferocious; "Saint George, the Patron of our Isle," is
brilliant and the words are innocuous. The masque element is not dumped
into _King Arthur_ altogether so shamelessly as in other cases; the
whole play is a masque. Although there is a plot, the supernatural is
largely employed, and nymphs, sirens, magicians, and what not, gave the
composer notable chances. In the first act, the scene where the Saxons
sacrifice to Woden and other of their gods, is the occasion for a chain
of choruses, each short but charged with the true energy divine; then
comes a "battle symphony," noisy but mild--a sham fight with blank
cartridge; and after the battle the Britons sing a "song of victory,"
our acquaintance "Come if you Dare, the Trumpets Sound." The rest of the
work is mainly enchantments and the li