I will admit that the passage on the body-guard of National Scouts is very fine, but then, precisely in proportion as it is effective _quâ_ literature, it fails to impress when accompanied by music, though the author of the score was wise enough to set it to a somewhat monotonous recitative. If the student will read the lines slowly to himself, first with, and then without, the notes, he will see what I mean. “And who more fit than they Whose better judgment led them to betray An aged leader and a failing cause Because-- Because they found it pay.” Mr. Daniel Witton did not write that word “because” twice over in his original manuscript. He put it in twice to please the musician (whose ignorance of the English tongue was a great handicap throughout), and, as I at least think, he made an error in so doing. All that passage where the great politician “ ... taking off his hat,” comes into the palace at Pretoria, where “ ... in awful state alone, Alone, the scientific Monist sat, Who guards our realm, extends its narrow bounds, And to achieve his end, Is quite prepared to spend The inconceivably imperial sum of twice three hundred times five hundred thousand pounds,” shows the grave difficulty of wedding the verse to the music. The last line is intolerably clumsy, when read without the air accompanying it; and the whole illustrates very well my contention that music should be the chief thing in the composition of an ode, and that the libretto should be entirely subservient to it. A still better example is found in the great chorus “Pretoria,” which begins-- “Pretoria with her hundred towers Acknowledges his powers,” and “Johannesburg,” which ends-- “Heil! heil! hoch! heil! du ubermenslich’ wohl-gebornen Graf von Chamberlein, While underground, While underground, Such rare and scattered Kaffirs as are found Repeat the happy, happy, happy, happy sound.” And of course the lyric at the end-- “All in his train de luxe Reading selected books, Including Conan Doyle’s ingenious fiction And popular quota- Tions, verses by the way For which he has a curious predilection, And Mr. Werther’s work Called ‘England shall not shirk,’ Or ‘The Cape to Cairo, Kairouan and Cadiz,’ And ‘Burke,’ and ‘Who is Who,’ And ‘Men and Women’ too, And ‘Etiquette for Gentlemen and Ladies,’” Et cetera, et cetera. All that lyric depends entirely for its effects upon the little Venetian air taken from Sullivan, who himself took it from Verdi, who got it from a Gondolier. The words by themselves have no beauty whatsoever.