“....  But this magic I here abjure; and when I have required Some heavenly music (which even now I do) To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff—­ Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, I’ll drown my book.”

A bright English critic, whose style is as charming as his judgments are good, says, in his study of the Donizetti music:  “I find myself thinking of his music as I do of Domenichino’s pictures of ‘St. Agnes’ and the ‘Rosario’ in the Bologna gallery, of the ‘Diana’ in the Borghese Palace at Rome, as pictures equable and skillful in the treatment of their subjects, neither devoid of beauty of form nor of color, but which make neither the pulse quiver nor the eye wet; and then such a sweeping judgment is arrested by a work like the ‘St. Jerome’ in the Vatican, from which a spirit comes forth so strong and so exalted, that the beholder, however trained to examine, and compare, and collect, finds himself raised above all recollections of manner by the sudden ascent of talent into the higher world of genius.  Essentially a second-rate composer,* Donizetti struck out some first-rate things in a happy hour, such as the last act of ‘La Favorita.’”

     * Mr. Chorley probably means “second-rate” as compared with
     the few very great names, which can be easily counted on the
     fingers.

Both Donizetti and Bellini, though far inferior to their master in richness of resources, in creative faculty and instinct for what may be called dramatic expression in pure musical form, were disciples of Rossini in their ideas and methods of work.  Milton sang of Shakespeare—­

     “Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
     “Warbles his native wood-notes wild!”

In a similar spirit, many learned critics have written of Rossini, and if it can be said of him in a musical sense that he had “little Latin and less Greek,” still more true is it of the two popular composers whose works have filled so large a space in the opera-house of the last thirty years, for their scores are singularly thin, measured by the standard of advanced musical science.  Specially may this be said of Bellini, in many respects the greater of the two.  There is scarcely to be found in music a more signal example to show that a marked individuality may rest on a narrow base.  In justice to him, however, it may be said that his early death prevented him from doing full justice to his powers, for he had in him the material out of which the great artist is made.  Let us first sketch the career of Donizetti, the author of sixty-four operas, besides a mass of other music, such as cantatas, ariettas, duets, church music, etc., in the short space of twenty-six years.

Gaetano Donizetti was born at Bergamo, September 25, 1798, his father being a man of moderate fortune.*