Purcell's secular music undoubtedly frequently suffered from the worthless trash he had to accept as poetry; too often it was not only devoid of literary merit, but still worse, indecent; that was, however, the fault of the age, and pervaded most of the dramatic literature then in vogue. Even the well-known and estimable Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, Dr. Aldrich, condescended to set music to such words as shame would not permit us to print at this day. Tom D'Urfey was a notorious offender against good taste, and for him Purcell composed very largely. "Oh! who can view without a tear Great Pindar's muse and D'Urfey near? Whose soaring wit ne'er higher flew Than to endite for Barthol'mew, Setting, for sots at country fairs, Dull saucy songs to _Purcell's_ airs."[54] D'Urfey's verses were so uncouth and irregular in their construction, that a writer of the last century said, "The modern Pindaric Odes which are humorously resembled to a comb with the teeth broken by frequent use are nothing to them." D'Urfey wrote some especially rugged lines which he challenged Purcell to set to music; the challenge was accepted and the composer triumphed, but he confessed that it cost him more trouble than the composition of a _Te Deum_. The ballad in question was called "The Parson among the Peas," and was printed with Purcell's music in D'Urfey's _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, 1719. At the present day music has become such an extensively developed science, particularly as regards orchestration, that it is difficult to apprehend the state of things which existed in Purcell's time; but to estimate his genius fairly we must recall the condition of the musical artistic world in which he lived. In so far as orchestration is concerned he had no models, nor had he any instrumental performers to suggest or incite his creative powers. Purcell was familiar with the family of stringed instruments called viols, and although Charles II. introduced violins from France, yet the instrument was not regarded with favour by musicians or by the people generally. Doubtless this arose from the fact that there were no remarkable players. Anthony Wood of Oxford, speaking of the year 1657, says:-- "Gentlemen in private meetings, which A. W. frequented, played three, four, and five parts with viols--as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon joined to them; and they esteemed a _violin_ to be an instrument only belonging to a _common_ fiddler, and could not endure that it should come among them, for feare of making these meetings to be vain and fiddling." The first musician to introduce violin playing proper was Thomas Baltzar, who played at Oxford in 1658, and A. W. "saw him run up his fingers to the end of the finger-board of the violin, and run them back insensibly, and all with great alacrity and _very good tune_, which he nor any one in England saw the like before."