that time has not the power to injure; it is of all ages and all countries.”  There is doubtless much in Purcell, which, though quaint and antiquated, the musician may nevertheless admire; but excellence of this kind is necessarily lost upon a general audience.  Melody in his day was rude and unpolished; for there were no singers to execute, even if the composer had the ability to conceive.  Thus Percell’s melody, though often original and expressive, is nevertheless more often rude and ungraceful.  In the words of a recent writer on this subject, “We are often surprised to find elegance and coarseness, symmetry and clumsiness, mixed in a way that would be unaccountable, did we not consider that, in all the arts, the taste is a faculty which is slowly formed, even in the most highly gifted minds.”  We suspect that the pageant saved King Arthur; the scenic illusions by which contending armies were brought upon an extended plain, together with the numerous transformations, continually commanded that applause which the music alone failed to elicit.  With many, however, the mere spectacle was not all-sufficient; but Opinion was written down, and independently of the prestige attached to the name of Purcell, the press would have effectually put down all exhibition of disapprobation.  The theatre might be seen to become gradually deserted, and party after party, stunned by the noise and blinded by the glare, might be observed to glide noiselessly away as the performance proceeded, while an air of fatigued endurance, and disappointment, was plainly visible on the countenances of those that remained behind.  This opera has been frequently revived; how much of the success which it has met with may be attributed to what Rousseau, when speaking of the operas of that period, terms “a false air of magnificence, fairyism, and enchantment, which, like flowers in a field before the harvest, betokens an apparent richness,” may be matter of speculation; but it is recorded that even on its first introduction on the stage, it caused a heavy loss to the patentees, in consequence of which their affairs were thrown into Chancery, where they remained some twenty years.  Even Purcell’s fame is confined to our own shores, and we are not aware that his music was ever known upon the Continent.

Arne, who established his reputation as a lyric composer by the music of Comus in 1738, is the next composer whom we think it necessary to mention.  To this master belongs the singular glory of having composed an English opera—­a term by which, as will be seen hereafter, we mean a musical drama in which the whole of the plot is carried on without the intervention of spoken dialogue. Artaxerxes, the only work of the kind which we possess, was first produced in the year 1762.  Though the music is of a form now obsolete, this opera has seldom been long a stranger to our stage, having been from time to time revived for the debut of new and ambitious