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 £40 "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; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had—at second hand we must admit—Carissimi's methods and new impulse; and, at the very least, he saved Purcell the trouble of a journey to Paris. It was a misfortune for English music that he died so early. These Restoration geniuses had a way of dying early. He distinctly had genius, a very different thing from the plodding industry of Dr. John Blow, who succeeded him in 1674. Dr. Blow afterwards claimed to have been Purcell's master, and, as Purcell was certainly his pupil, there seems no reason for doubting him. Purcell was, of course, sixteen years of age when Humphries died, and no longer a mere choir-boy; but he remained attached to Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. According to the records of the "King's Musick," on June 10, 1673, there is a "warrant to admit Henry Purcell in the place of keeper, maker, mender, repayrer and tuner of the regalls, organs, virginalls, flutes and recorders and all other kind of wind instruments whatsoever, in ordinary, without fee, to his Majesty, and assistant to John Hingston, and upon the death or other avoydance of the latter, to come in ordinary with fee." So late as 1683, when Purcell had been organist of Westminster Abbey for about three years, he was appointed to be "organ-maker and keeper in the place of Mr. Hingston, deceased." The conjecture of Rev. Henry Cart de Lafontaine, editor of these records (published by Novello) seems to be correct: Purcell must have been apprenticed to Hingston and afterwards succeeded him. In later warrants he is authorised to buy wood, metal and Heaven knows what else—he can buy what he likes as long as he keeps the instruments in order and in tune. Charles II. had a good ear. In 1676 Purcell was appointed "copyist" of Westminster Abbey, whatever post that may have been. In 1677 "Henry Purcell" is "appointed composer in ordinary with fee for the violin to his Majesty, in the place of Matthew Lock, deceased." I fancy that his tuition from Dr. Blow must have been mainly in organ-playing, in which art Dr. Blow was an esteemed master. At the same time, we must not forget that we have Purcell's own word for it that Blow was one of the greatest masters of composition in the world. Purcell spoke of Dr. Blow's technical mastery of the tricks of canon-writing, which Purcell himself was much addicted to, and greatly enjoyed. Dr. Blow may have taught Purcell something of the older technique; that of Lulli and the Italians he must have learnt from Humphries, for Dr. Blow knew next to nothing about it. Dr. Blow was born in 1648, and was one year younger than Humphries, and ten older than Purcell. In 1669 he became organist of Westminster Abbey. He, like Humphries, and, indeed, all the foremost musicians of the period, was a bloated pluralist, and held other positions. It is said that he resigned Westminster Abbey in 1680 in Purcell's favour. Whether the resignation was voluntary or not, Purcell assuredly took his place at that date. After Purcell's death in 1695 Dr. Blow took the position again, and retained it until his own death, in 1708. It is also said that he resigned another place to make way for another pupil, Jeremiah Clarke. This apparent passion or mania for resigning posts in favour of gifted pupils might easily have led to a pernicious custom amongst organists. However, since Dr. Blow's time the organist of Westminster Abbey has always been a more business-like person, though rarely, if ever, a fine artist. Dr. Blow, living amongst men of such genius, caught a little—a very little—of Humphries' and Purcell's lordly manner in the writing of music; but no sweet breath of inspiration ever blew his way. Burney, unfortunate creature, found fault with his harmonies, and these have been defended as "spots on the sun." As a matter of fact, the harmonies are good enough. There are no spots—only there is no sun. His claim to have taught Purcell is a claim for such immortality as books give. Purcell's teacher will be remembered long after the composer of anthems has been crowded out of biographical dictionaries.

I have said that our knowledge of Purcell consists very largely of speculations, hypotheses and inferences. These have led the biographers into wasting some highly moral reflections on Purcell's early doings. We are told, for example, that he composed music for the theatre until he became organist of Westminster Abbey, after which date he applied his energies wholly to the service of the Church. Had the biographers not kindly followed the blind Hawkins and Burney, and hearsay generally, those reflections might have been saved for a more fitting occasion. It was long held that Purcell wrote the incidental music for Aureng-Zebe, Epsom Wells, and The Libertine about 1676, when he was eighteen, because those plays were performed or published at that time. It used to be said that the music, though immature, showed promise, and was indeed marvellous for so young a man. But unless one possesses the touchstone of a true critical faculty and an intimate acquaintance with Purcell's music and all the music of the time, one should be cautious—one cannot be too cautious. The music for these plays was not composed till at least fifteen years later. The biographers had also a craze for proving Purcell's precocity. They would have it that Dido and Aeneas