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Untitled Article
words , to which he married some of his immortal melodies . This too 9 was no doubt partly owing to the same corrupting influence , patronage . But there must have been the appropriate weakness in himself , or no imaginable inducement could have bowed his genius to the foul degradation . Events had not been such as to generate political principle in him ,, and so he ministered in turn to the aims and pleasures of either faction or dynasty . And events had failed to inspire his heart with that surest safeguard for refined and delicate taste—a pure love for a worthy object ; and so he debased himself to attune the vilest
strains of physical licentiousness . Man that is born of a woman ' never ought to have enwreathed such foulnesses with melody ; and man that really loved a woman never could have done it . But heaven ,, that showered down other gifts so liberally on Purcell , denied him this inspiration . He had the common lot to which those of his temperament , of either sex , seem destined by some perverse fatality . He was linked with a ' low-minded termagant , " who , after harassing his life and degrading his tastes , cut short his
existence by the ingenious process of locking him out of his own house because he came home after midnight . The inclemency of the night brought on fever , his death soon followed , and his afflicted widow found some consolation in the profits of the * Orpheus Britannicus / which she forthwith published , with a lachrymose dedication concerning * her dear lamented husband . ' This posthumous affection in print was a bad way of balancing the account . She did not die of it , widows never die of their
* dear lamented husbands , ' they are the silent griefs that cut the heartstrings . ' For mourners who cant after death over those whom they plagued though life , we would have Sheridan ' s ballad I have a silent sorrow here A grief 111 ne ' er
impartmanufactured ( in the same way as many other soliloquies have been pluralized by the exquisite taste of mechanical composers ) into a duet and chortis , with full accompaniment , and executed over the grave . It would be an excellent and appropriate funeral anthem .
And now , after what we said at the outset of the editing of this noble work , what does the reader think of the encouragement which the editor has received ? There is a list , —we can scarcely write the fact for burning shame , —there is a list of subscribers , amounting to Sixty-six ! Most of them are organists ; two or three professional singers ; about as many music sellers ; and one member of the aristocracy , Lord Darnley . This is bad enough , but there is something worse behind . This is bad enough ; but it seems not to have been heeded by the singlehearted Editor whose pure enthusiasm for his art will carry him through almost anything ; even he , however , could not but mark what the Church did , and it is to be marked , and re-marked , and
Untitled Article
Henry Pur cell . 295
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 295, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/7/
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