Cummings also assails Hawkins's story that Purcell was dissipated and caught his death from being locked out. But Runciman objects that if Purcell had not been dissipated in those days, he would have been called a Puritan, and says: "I picture him as a sturdy, beef-eating Englishman, a puissant, masterful, as well as lovable personality, a born king of men, ambitious of greatness, determined, as Tudway says, to excel every one of his time." The love Frances Purcell bore her husband was kept green by her anxiety for his fame. She was, in her littler way, a Cosima Wagner. In 1696 she published a collection of harpsichord lessons by her husband; three editions being sold quickly. The next year she issued ten sonatas and a "Collection of Ayres." In 1698 she issued (or reissued) the "Orpheus Britannicus." In all of these she wrote dedications breathing devotion to her husband. In an ode printed in the second volume of the "Orpheus," in 1704, Purcell's personality is thus limned: "Nor were his Beauties to his Art confin'd So justly were his Soul and Body join'd You'd think his Form the Product of his Mind. A conquering sweetness in his Visage dwelt, His Eyes would warm, his Wit like lightning melt. But those must no more be seen, and that no more be felt. Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye, Himself as Humble as his Art was High." Purcell died at the age of thirty-seven--being granted only two years more of life than Mozart and only six years more than Schubert. He is the moon of English music and his melodies are as exquisite and as silvery and as full of enamoured radiance as the tintinnabulations of the moonbeams themselves. But unfortunately for English music this beautiful moon, who is the most nearly great of all the composers England has furnished the world, was speedily obscured in the blinding glare of the sun of English music which came shouldering up from the east, and which has not yet sunk far enough in the west to cease from dazzling the eyes of English music-makers. But of Händel as a lover, we must postpone the gossip till we have mouthed one of the most delicious morsels in musical scandal, a choice romance that is said to have affected Purcell very deeply. The story concerns the strenuous career of Alessandro Stradella, and when you read it you will not wonder that it should have made a great success as an opera, or that it gave Flotow his greatest popularity next to "Martha," even though its conclusion was made tamely theatrical. CHAPTER VI. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF STRADELLA