the line, pressed it up at the word “high” and down at “low,” and thus got an irregularly wavy line of tone or melody, solved the problem of spinning his continuous web of sound; and the fact that his web is beautiful and possesses this peculiar picturesqueness is his justification for solving the problem in this way.  After all, his way was the way of early designers, who filled their circles, squares, and triangles with the forms of leaf and flower.  And just as those forms were afterwards conventionalised and used by thousands who probably had no vaguest notion of their origin, so many of Purcell’s phrases became ossified and fell into the common stock of phrases which form the language of music.  It is interesting to note that abroad Pasquini and Kuhlau went to work very much in Purcell’s fashion, and added to that same stock from which Handel and Bach and every subsequent composer drew, each adding something of his own.

It was not by accident that Purcell, with this astonishing fertility of picturesque phrases, should also have written so much, and such vividly coloured picturesque pieces—­pieces, I mean, descriptive of the picturesque.  Of course, to write an imitative phrase is quite another matter from writing a successful piece of descriptive music.  But in Purcell the same faculty enabled him to do both.  No poet of that time seems to have been enamoured of hedgerows and flowers and fields, nor can I say with certitude that Purcell was.  Yet in imagination at least he loves to dwell amongst them; and not the country alone, the thought of the sea also, stirs him deeply.  There need only be some mention of sunshine or rain among the leaves, green trees, or wind-swept grass, the yellow sea-beach or the vast sea-depths, and his imagination flames and flares.  His best music was written when he was appealed to throughout a long work—­as “The Tempest”—­in this manner.  Hence, it seems to me, that quality which his music, above any other music in the world, possesses:  a peculiar sweetness, not a boudoir sweetness like Chopin’s sweetness, nor a sweetness corrected, like Chopin’s, by a subtle strain of poisonous acid or sub-acid quality, but the sweet and wholesome cleanliness of the open air and fields, the freshness of sun showers and cool morning winds.  I am not exaggerating the importance of this element in his music.  It is perpetually present, so that at last one comes to think, as I have been compelled to think this long time, that Purcell wrote nothing but descriptive music all his life.  Of course it may be that the special formation of his melodies misleads one sometimes, and that Purcell in inventing them often did not dream of depicting natural objects.  But, remembering the gusto with which he sets descriptive words, using these phrases consciously with a picturesque purpose, it is hard to accept this view.  In all likelihood he was constituted similarly to Weber, who, his son asserts, curiously converted the lines and colours of trees and winding roads and all objects