The root of the mischief I take to be that the composer--for all his great and imposing powers, his fine taste, his profound and varied learning--is wanting in sureness of touch and consequently in the ability to establish that correspondence between form and idea without which a work of art cannot properly be said to exist. Mr. Fuller Maitland claims for Parry and his group that they "have far more extensive resources in the different styles of music" than, for example, the modern Russians, and this brings us back to the point of the reproach conveyed in the epithet "academic." To musicians bent on the holding of official posts and on success in a worldly career it is of the first importance to "show extensive resources in the different styles of music," and in the large body of Parry's compositions I find far more evidence of desire to show such extensive resources than of the artistic impulse to make music that is absolutely genuine. Sullivan, with his much lower aims and ideals, is for me a better balanced personality and a truer artist. Much of his music in the comic operas is quite to the point. The outward form corresponds to the inward idea in a certain absolute and final manner which there is no mistaking. Hence the clearness of Sullivan's musical individuality or physiognomy. He was not intent on showing resources, but on modelling his material into conformity with his idea, and, because at his best he had the power of doing that, his physiognomy is clear to us and his art vital. It thus appears that such commercialism as Sullivan's does less mischief than such academic tendencies as Parry's.