into a secular vocal work. It says much for Gibbons' skill that he is able to write very effective and flowing Viol parts and to introduce so many examples of the old Cryes, quite untrammelled by the Plainsong persistently played by one of the Viols. The copy from which this interesting work is taken is a MS. written by Thomas Myriell in 1616, so the Fancy was composed before that date. The copyist who preserved this work for us was the Rector of St Stephen's, Wallbrook, the church adjoining the Mansion House. Between 1612 and 1622 must have been published the best known Fantasies by Gibbons, for the collection is dedicated to Edward Wray as one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber, and Wray was dismissed in 1622. _Fantasies of Three parts composed by Orlando Gibbons, Batchelor of Musick, and late organist to His M. Chapel Royal in Ordinary_. Cut in Copper, the like not here-to-fore Extant. The word "late" is rather surprising, when he is not recorded to have resigned his position at the Chapel Royal. He was appointed Organist of Westminster Abbey in 1623. {39} These Fantasies were published by The Musical Antiquarian Society in 1843; and in some respects this publication has been the cause of a good deal of ignorance as to the real progress which Instrumental music made in the early years of the 17th century. They are undoubtedly somewhat dull when placed by the side of Fancies by Byrd and others. No doubt the veneration for Gibbons and the rightful appreciation of his fine Cathedral music made the members of the old and valuable Musical Antiquarian Society more ready to edit his Fancies than to select from less eminent Church writers. But one cannot have much respect for Burney's judgment when he pronounces Orlando Gibbons to have been "utterly contemptible in his productions for instruments." He must be judged alongside of other 16th century composers; for, although he indeed lived through the first quarter of the _seventeenth_ century, his instrumental music is characteristic of the _sixteenth_. In common with other composers of his day, Gibbons shows in his Clavier works an earlier and more successful attempt at a true Instrumental style than he does in his music for Strings. The Viols were later in forsaking the vocal polyphonic style than the keyed {40} instruments, simply because the vocal style suited the bowed instruments so much better than the Clavier. So we find composers for the Clavier borrowing the rhythmic features of folk-songs and dance-tunes much earlier than they found it desirable or necessary to do in Viol music.