singers.  One of these revivals has recently taken place; the piece, however, was performed for a few nights only, and perhaps popularity may be, at length, deserting Artaxerxes.  This “standard work of the English school” appears to be of more than doubtful parentage.  Arne is stated to have crowded the airs, those of Mandane in particular, with all the Italian divisions and difficulties of the day, and to have incorporated with his own property all the best passages of the Italian and English composers of his time.  With the exception of Comus and Artaxerxes, none of his pieces or operas met with great success; and he seems to be principally remembered by those compositions which were the least original.  “Rule Britannia,” by the combined effect of the sentiment of the words and the spirit and vivacity of the music, now become a national song, does not possess the merit of originality.  Long before it was nationalized—­if one may use such a word—­by Englishmen, it was observed that in an Italian song, which may be seen at page 25 of Walsh’s collection, the idea—­nay, almost all the passages—­of this melody might be found.  In the well-known song, “Where the bee sucks, there lurk I,” passages occur taken almost note for note from a cantabile by Lampugnani.  According to Dr Burney, Arne may also claim the glory of having, by his compositions and instructions, formed an era in the musical history of his country.  The former relates that music, which had previously stood still for near half a century, was greatly improved by Arne in his endeavours “to refine our melody and singing from the Italian;” and that English “taste and judgment, both in composition and performance, even at the playhouses, differed as much from those of twenty or thirty years ago, as the manners of a civilized people from those of savages.”  Dr Busby, on the other hand, remarks, that “it is a curious fact that the very father of a style, more natural and unaffected, more truly English, than that of any other master, should have been the first to deviate into foreign finery and finesse, and desert the native simplicity of his country.”  But it is by the compositions in which this degeneracy may be most particularly remarked, that Arne’s name as a musician has been preserved.  This fact has undoubtedly a double aspect.  We may therefore, indeed, be permitted to ask,

     “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?”

Either the public taste has erred, or the bastard Italian was superior to the genuine English.  Either way there is something wrong, and it matters little whether we elevate the composer at the expense of the public, or whether we commend the national taste while we depreciate and decry the excellence of the music or the merit of the musician.