"It would seem as if the view which Purcell had obtained of the powers and resources of his art, and his conviction of what it might hereafter accomplish, had led him to regard all that he had produced but as the efforts of a learner (and we are justified in this conclusion from his own words), fitted to give a brief and transient impulse to his art, and having accomplished this purpose, to be forgotten. It may be that he was right: it may be that we stand, as he stood, but at the threshold of music: it may be that in his 'clear dream and solemn vision' he saw further than his successors: nor will it be denied, that some of its recesses have been further explored by geniuses and talent like his own; but all the great attributes which belong to the true artist, all the requirements which make the true musician, we may yet learn of Purcell." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: John Milton the father of the poet was the author of a six-part madrigal, "Fayre Oriane in the Morne," printed in 1601, of four motets in Leighton's "Tears or Lamentacions" (1614), and of several Psalm tunes. He also composed an "In Nomine" in forty parts, for which he received a gold medal and chain from a Polish prince.] [Footnote 2: In a room behind Rutland House, Aldersgate Street.] [Footnote 3: "Instrumental and Cathedral music I have ever been wilfully ignorant of, because I have dearly loved them, and if I had learnt them to a perfection, this satiety might have bred a nauseous distaste and surfeit, as in other things, and then I had nothing to delight in. But alas! this conceit hath failed me, _for now all church music my highest terrene content is abandoned amongst us_."--PHILIP KING'S "Surfeit," 1656.] [Footnote 4: They acted together in "The Siege of Rhodes" in 1656.] [Footnote 5: His name appears in the cheque-book of the Chapel Royal as Henry _Purcill_, and from the same source we learn that he, in common with the other gentlemen of the Chapel, received (each of them), four yards of fine scarlet cloth for a gown to wear at the coronation.] [Footnote 6: George Dalham, a well-known organ builder. Dr. Rimbault says Father Smith built the organ erected in Westʳ Abbey at the Restoration, but this payment would suggest a doubt as to his accuracy.] [Footnote 7: Hill played the treble parts on the cornet in consequence of the difficulty previously mentioned, of obtaining efficient boys. He was buried in the cloisters of W. A., in 1667.] [Footnote 8: Christopher Gibbons, son of the celebrated Orlando Gibbons, was organist of Winchester Cathedral in the reign of Charles I., but on the breaking out of the civil war he became a soldier. He was admitted Doctor of Music at Oxford, by the special desire of Charles II.] [Footnote 9: Where the word "nil" now stands in the MS. there has evidently been an erasure of some figure or figures.] [Footnote 10: Harl. MSS. 1911.]