anything more is supposition—­that is, the whole affair is supposition; but this supposition has one merit:  it cannot be very widely wrong.  Pepys knew Henry the elder, and refers to him in his Diary; and it may be remarked in passing that those who wish to grow familiar with the atmosphere in which Purcell was brought up, and lived and worked, must go to Pepys, who knew all the musicians of the period, and the life of Church, Court, and theatre.  Thomas Purcell, brother of Henry the elder, was also a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal.  He succeeded Henry Lawes as Court lutanist, and held other positions, and evidently stood high in favour.  This Thomas certainly adopted Henry the younger at the death of Henry the elder, and afterwards he wrote of him as “my sonne.”  Young Henry seems to have become a choir-boy as a mere matter of family custom.  He joined as one of “the children” of the Chapel Royal, with Captain Cooke as his master.  Cooke must have been a clever musician in spite of the military title he had gained while fighting on the Royalist side in the Civil War.  He had an extraordinarily gifted set of boys under him, and he seems to have trained them well.  When some of them tried their infantile hands at composition he encouraged them.  Pepys heard at least one of their achievements, and records his pleasure.  And it must be remembered that Pepys was a composer and connoisseur—­he would go many miles to hear a piece of music.  Cooke died in 1672, and Pelham Humphries became master of “the children.”  He was born in 1647, and therefore was eleven years older than Purcell; he, too, had been a child of the Chapel Royal.  In 1664 Charles sent him abroad to study foreign methods.  In the accounts of the secret-service money for 1664, 1665, and 1666 stand sums of money paid him to defray his expenses; yet in 1665 the accounts of the “King’s Musick” show that Cooke received L40 “for the maintenance of Pelham Humphryes.”  In less than a year’s time he was appointed musician for the lute—­in the “King’s Musick”—­in the place of Nicholas Lanier, deceased.  Two months after this entry the appointment is confirmed by warrant.  He undoubtedly did go abroad.  He got, at any rate, as far as Paris, and came back, says Pepys, “an absolute monsieur”—­very vain, loquacious, and “mighty great” with the King.  Most of the musicians of the time were vain.  Cooke must have been intolerable.  Perhaps they learnt it from the actors with whom they associated—­many of them, in fact, were actors as well as musicians.  Humphries had worked under Lulli.  It is not known that he had any other master in Paris or in Italy, or whether he ever got as far as Italy.  Up to that date no opera of Lulli’s seems to have been produced, but he was none the less a master of music, and he could hand on what he had learnt of Carissimi’s technique.  Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to England knowing all Lulli could teach him.  He had not Purcell’s rich imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh melody;