Had it been by a young English composer, or an elderly English composer of the Hanwellian School, it would not have been tolerated for half an hour after its commencement. For ourselves, if of two penances we had to choose one, either to sit out a long, dull sermon in a stuffy church on an August afternoon, or to hear one Act of Tristan and Isolda, we should unhesitatingly select the former, where, at all events, there would be the certainty of a tranquil repose, from which no cruel drum, bassoon, or violoncello, but only the snoring of our own nose, could rouse us. That there are occasional snatches of melody is undeniable, but a snatch here and there is not the grasp of a master hand to hold an audience. Judicious selections will always be welcome; but that, taken as a whole, it is the embodiment of stupendous boredom, might be the verdict of all English opera-goers who delight in the Operas of Rossini, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, Balfe, Wallace, Bizet, and we are not afraid to add, even in these days of æsthetic mysticism, art-vagueness, and higher cultchaw – Bellini.

Punch then proceeds to "guy" the libretto and stage directions and continues: —

This sort of music can never, in our lifetime at least, thank goodness, become popular with the British public. It may, as Dr. Johnson said of the violoncello performance, be wonderful, but we only wish it were impossible. Wagner's lyrical-dramatic music requires no operatic vocalists at all. Let there be a first-rate orchestra, a book of the plot in hands of the audience, and tableaux vivants or dissolving views to illustrate it – as illustration is still necessary for the illiterate. To ourselves, speaking as mere laics in the matter, with a fondness for tune, harmony, and good dramatic situations, it seems that singing and acting are thrown away on such vocal music and such tedious and unsavoury libretti. Richard Wagner's Operas will be remembered when the Barbiere and a few more trifles are forgotten, but not till then.

And then Wagner inconsiderately went and died a few months later, and Punch, who was never given to indulging in war-dances over his dead enemies, printed not exactly a palinode, but a liberal acknowledgment that this "arch-revolutionist" of the brood of "Demiurgus militant" was a considerable figure. Given his temperament and aims, Punch asks: —

What wonder
He brought the sword into mild Music's sphere,
And in the clangour of the hurtling spear,
The clashing mail, and the loud battle-thunder,
Missed, sometime, of the finer harmony
The still small voice, known of the subtler ear,
Which outlives all War's clarions? Year on year
May pass ere he is measured. Yet we see
The work of a strong shaper, one whose part
Was with new light to show a newer way.
He stripped the gewgaw'd shams of Opera,
Lord of two spheres, he wedded Art with Art,
And Music, sunned in brighter, larger fame,
May date its nobler dawn from Wagner's mighty name.

"The Beggar's Opera" in 1878

The splendid Indian summer of Verdi's genius which gave us Aïda, Otello and Falstaff is only partially recognized. When Aïda was produced in 1876 Punch was more interested in Patti and Nicolini, the magnificence of the mounting and the chatter of the boxes, than in the music. In the finale "the brass was everywhere, the voices nowhere." Punch was happier in dealing with Carmen, in which Nietzsche, after he had abandoned Wagnerism, found the exemplification of his dictum "il faut Méditerraniser la musique," and which has won the allegiance of all schools. And it is interesting in view of the wonderful success recently achieved by the revival of The Beggar's Opera to read Punch's eulogies of Sims Reeves, when the famous tenor appeared at Covent Garden as Captain Macheath in 1878. But here again he is more interested in Sims Reeves's singing and acting than in the play or the music: —

It was a treat. But what a stupid play! What a set of sordid, squalid, ruffianly characters, all, except Polly Peachum, prettily played by Madame Cave-Ashton, who obtained more than one encore. The chorus of "Let us take the Road" was very effectively given. I should like to see The Beggar's Opera with a well remodelled plot, an efficient cast, to include, of course, Mr. Sims Reeves (it would be nothing at all without his Captain Macheath) and Madame Cave-Ashton, and produced under such careful stage-management as was shown by Mr. Hare in bringing out Olivia at the Court Theatre. However, for the present, The Beggar's Opera, which, I believe, was the result of a considerable amount of "collaboration," is, as played the other night at Covent Garden, good enough, by way of a musical treat, for Your Representative.

What Punch wished to see forty years ago has been achieved under the inspiring direction of Mr. Nigel Playfair, though not exactly on the lines indicated.

Cherishing an old-fashioned weakness for a tune, Punch naturally deplored the passing of Offenbach, one of the greatest tune-coiners of the century. The memorial lines in October, 1880, are an admirable summary of the qualities which made Offenbach the musical incarnation of the unbridled gaiety of the Second Empire. But it is rather a surprise to find an allusion to "Golden Schneider" in view of Punch's earlier castigation of that ultra-vivacious lady. For the rest Punch was still true to the tradition expressed in the avowal of the Philistine who said he would rather hear Offenbach than Bach often. Regret of a very different temper inspires the tribute to Jenny Lind, Punch's favourite singer, on her death in 1887. Forty years earlier he had christened her "the Nightingale that sings in Winter," and recognized her unfailing response to all charitable appeals: —

"Dear Jenny Lind!" So then his song addressed her
Who still is "Jenny Lind," and still is dear.
Though Genius praised, and Fashion's crowd caressed her,
She sank not, like some stars, below her sphere
Into those darkening mists
Whose taint the true and tender heart resists.
Her nature fame was powerless to soil,
Whom splendour hardened not, and puffery could not spoil.

How the crowd rushed and crushed, and cheered and clamoured,
Forty years syne, to hang upon her song!
Of La Sonnambula's heroine enamoured,
Thrilled by the flute-like trillings sweet as strong
Of their dear Nightingale.
Amina, Lucia, Alice, each they'd hail
With fervent plaudits, in whose flush and stir
Love of her silvery song was blent with love of her.

And each well earned! The crowd would press and jostle
To hear their favourite warbler, from whose throat,
Clear as the lark, and mellow as the throstle,
The limpid melody would soar and float.
Now like a shattered lute,
The Nightingale who sang in winter's mute;
But long remembered that pure life shall be,
To Music dedicate and vowed to Charity.

"By Mendelssohn, is it not, Miss Prigsby?"

"We believe so."

"One of the 'Songs Without Words'?"

"Possibly. We nevah listen to Mendelssohn."

"Indeed! You don't admire his music?"

"We do not."

"May I ask why?"

"Because there are no wrong notes in it!"

(Our gallant colonel is "out of it" again.)

Jean and Edouard de Reszke

The idols of the operatic world in Punch's earlier days were mainly Italian or trained in Italy. In the period which we have now reached no single nation retained a monopoly of "stars." Madame Nordica, who appeared in 1890, was an American, Madame Melba was Australian-born of Scottish descent, and the two de Reszkes, Jean and Edouard, the chief glories of many recurrent seasons at Covent Garden, were Poles. A hundred years earlier Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, a famous amateur and critic, declared that the French opera singers were excruciating to listen to. In the late 'eighties and 'nineties the best singing was heard from those who had been trained in Paris. The de Reszkes in particular helped to achieve what Punch had declared to be impossible – they made Wagner popular among the fashionable opera-goers by singing his later works as they had never been sung before, turning to them at the zenith of their powers and reputation, a service to art which more self-protective singers have sedulously avoided. Jean de Reszke was great in Faust, Roméo et Juliette, Aïda, Le Prophète, but he was greater as Siegfried and Tristan. And so with his brother Edouard, when his Mephistopheles or his Friar Laurence are compared with his Wotan, his Hagen or his King Marke. I have spoken elsewhere of the disastrous National Opera House scheme of Mapleson and the fiasco of the Royal English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue. Ivanhoe, Sullivan's solitary excursion into the domain of grand opera, which was written for the opening of the last-named building, did not achieve more than a succès d'estime. Punch's notice is friendly but not enthusiastic. When it gave place to the Basoche, he summed up the situation facetiously but shrewdly enough under the heading, "English Opera as She isn't sung": —

It seems impossible to support a Royal English Opera House with its special commodity of English Opera, that is, Opera composed by an Englishman to an Englishman's libretto, and played by English operatic singers. Ivanhoe, a genuine English Opera, by a genuine English Composer (with an Irish name), produced with great éclat, has, after a fair run and lots of favour, been Doylécarté, in order to make room for the Basoche, an essentially French Opera, by a French Composer and Librettist, done, of course, into English, so as to be "understanded of the people." The Basoche has "caught on," and our friends in front, including Composer, Librettist, and Middleman – Druriolanus, who bought it, and Doyly Carty, who bought it of Sir Druri – are all equally pleased and satisfied. Considered as a matter of business, what signifies the nationality as long as the spec pays? —tout est là.

"Druriolanus" was Punch's ingenious agnomen for Augustus Harris, who, beginning as a melodramatic actor, had blossomed into a manager and operatic impresario and was knighted in 1891. It was at the close of the same year that Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana was first produced in England, scored a success which the composer has never succeeded in recapturing, and established the tyranny of the "Intermezzo," which is not even yet overpast. Verga's powerful story of love and revenge, on which the libretto is based, counted for much, but the crude emotional vigour of the score is not to be denied. Punch adored the "Intermezzo," speaks of the "charm" of the music, but says nothing of the plot. The Italian Company in 1891 were only moderately good; Madame Calvé's marvellously tragic impersonation of Santuzza, in the season of 1892, is inseparably associated in the minds of middle-aged opera-goers with Mascagni's solitary triumph.

German Tenor warbles: —

"I'll not leaf zee, sow lone von,
To bine on ze Schtem!
Zins ze lôfly are Szchleebingk,
Coh! szchleeeb sow fiz dem!
Zos ghyntly I schgadder
Zy leafs on the bet,
Vair zy maids of ze karrten
Lie schentless and tet!"

Gilbert and Sullivan

When we turn from grand to comic opera, the names of Gilbert and Sullivan confront us throughout the entire period under review in a light that sheds a still undiminished lustre on native art. Of each of the two partners in this long and fruitful collaboration it may be said, in the often quoted phrase, that if not absolutely great he was great in his genre. Between them they created an entirely new type of light opera. Moreover, it was an entirely English or British product in its spirit and structure, and relied entirely on British performers. Punch welcomed the venture from the outset, and in 1880, in some verses modelled on the Judge's song in Trial by Jury, and anticipating Sullivan's knighthood in 1883, he happily summarizes the career of the composer, with whom, by the way, Burnand had been associated in Cox and Box in 1866: —

As a boy I had such a musical bump,
And its size so struck Mr. Helmore,
That he said, "Though you sing those songs like a trump,
You shall write some yourself that will sell more."
So I packed off to Leipsic, without looking back,¹³
And returned in such classical fury,
That I sat down with Handel and Haydn and Bach —
And turned out Trial by Jury.

But W.S.G. he jumped for joy
As he said, "Though the job dismay you,
Send Exeter Hall to the deuce, my boy;
It's the haul with me that'll pay you."
And we hauled so well, mid jeers and taunts
That we've settled, spite all temptations,
To stick to our Sisters and our Cousins and our Aunts —
And continue our pleasant relations.

In 1885, on the occasion of the production of the Mikado, which Punch bracketed with Pinafore as the best of all the series, there are some excellent observations on the dual autocracy exerted to admiration at the Savoy: —

Rarely, if ever, have Composer and Author produced piece after piece under conditions so favourable to success as have Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan at the Savoy. They are their own Managers, the theatre is practically theirs, the Members of the Company, from the soprano and tenor down to the latest novice in the chorus, or among the "extras," depend mainly, if not entirely, upon the Composer and Author for their engagements. This Beaumont and Fletcher of Eccentric Opera can order rehearsals when they choose, can command the scene-painters and property-men, and, what is much more to the point, be obeyed. They have jointly and separately the authority of the Centurion: the Author is the autocrat of the acting and the Savoy stage generally; the Composer is the autocrat of the music, vocal and instrumental.

The Savoy Autocrats

At other theatres an Author may try to assume the autocrat, but, unless he can be absolutely independent, and able to take his piece out of the theatre without damaging his chance of earning a livelihood, the attempt is only a ridiculous and palpable failure. True that times have changed, considerably for the better, since Albert Smith said that "there was only one person in the theatre lower than the call-boy, and that was the Author," yet, in spite of much improvement, a young Dramatist will still sympathize with the spirit of Albert Smith's observation; and, ordinarily, the most experienced Playwright, if not, as I have said, absolutely independent, has, in almost every instance, to accommodate himself to the exigencies of the theatre, and to the tempers of the Actors. From the moment he has a piece in rehearsal, there is no peace for him on the Stage. He is promised what he will never obtain; he has to accept just what he can get; he has to humour the ideas of others and sacrifice his own; he has to make the best of unintentional mistakes and deliberately intentional alterations; he has to accede to the Manager's date for producing the piece, and its first night of public performance is, in the majority of cases, really and truly only a dressed rehearsal, and, in some cases, it is the first real rehearsal the piece has had.

Now nothing of this sort ought to take place at the Savoy. There Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan have only themselves to please, only themselves and their piece to consider; they are monarchs of all they Savoy – I should say "survey" – they are masters of the situation, and if they allow any piece of theirs to be produced in a hurry, with incomplete appointments, with inappropriate scenery, faulty dresses, or after insufficient rehearsal, on their own heads be it and on no one else's. The Actor-singers are only intelligent puppets in their Showman's hands, and the more faithfully they carry out the instructions given them by their masters, the greater their individual and collective chance of success.

It delights me to see the precision of the action on the Stage of the Savoy, the result of a carefully-thought-out plan and well-regulated drill. The principals have been judiciously selected for the work, and they are suited by the two clever fellow-workers who, having taken their measure to a nicety, give them just what they can do, and no more; and who insist on their original conceptions being executed exactly according to their ideas. The result is that the ensemble is about the most effective thing in London – or in Paris for that matter – because the individuality of the Actor-singer is not destroyed, but is judiciously made use of, and worked up, as valuable material for the character he has to represent.

Patience in 1881 specially appealed to Punch because it was aimed against the æsthetes. His general appreciation of the Savoy Operas was, however, tempered by criticism. For example, he pronounces Iolanthe in 1882 to be "not within a mile of Pinafore and not a patch upon Patience." The Gondoliers in 1890 is placed third in order of excellence after the Mikado and Pinafore. The unfortunate temporary estrangement between the collaborators which led to the severance of their partnership in the same year, and which was alleged to have grown out of a dispute over a carpet, is treated in "A Chapter of Dickens up to Date," with Gilbert as Mrs. Gamp and Sullivan as Mrs. Prig. Punch's view of the merits of the dispute may be gathered from the fact that he gives the last word to Mrs. Prig, who, after alluding to a tempest in a teapot, observes: "Wich I don't believe there's either rhyme or reason in sech an absurd quarrel!" Yet when the Court Circular of March 9, 1891, recorded the performance at Windsor Castle of The Gondoliers, "a Comic Opera composed by Sir Arthur Sullivan," with full details of the programme, performers, etc., but no mention of Gilbert at all, Punch rubs in this conspicuous absence in his most sarcastic vein.

Mr. D'Oyly Carte, it seems, was presented to the Queen after the performance, and Punch goes on: —

Did R. D'Oyly think of mentioning that "the words" were by W.S.G.? And then it is told how D'Oyly refused to take any payment for the performance. Noble, generous-hearted, large-minded and liberal D'Oyly! Sir Arthur Courtly Sullivan's name was to the Bill, and so his consent to this extra act of generosity may be taken for granted. But what said Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert? By the merry-maskins, but an he be not pleased, dub me Knight Samingo! Will D'Oyly be dubbed Knight? And what sort of Knight? Well, remembering a certain amusing little episode in the more recent history of the Savoy Theatre, why not a "Carpet Knight"?

If Punch kept most of his friendships in good repair, it must be admitted that he also displayed on occasion a positive genius for impish malice.

Liszt, Rubinstein, Pachmann

Among the musical celebrities who visited us in these years Punch had a special word for Joachim, to whom England was almost a second home, and Madame Schumann, whose portrait with that of the great violinist appears in 1881. M. Pachmann's performance at a concert in 1883 is described with more fidelity than reverence: —

Then came a M. Vladimir de Pachmann, who, in consequence of his long hair, and a bulkiness about his waist and coat-tails suggestive of concealed fish-bowls, to be presently produced from under a handkerchief, I at first set down as a Conjurer. He wasn't, however, being a Pianist of considerable skill, with an overpowering propensity for getting the most out of every note, and listening in rapt admiration to its dying away in the distance, and then slowly raising his left hand as if pronouncing a blessing on the instrument as he went along.

Liszt and Rubinstein (who once said that compared with Liszt all other pianists, including himself, were mere wood-choppers) both visited England in 1886 – Rubinstein still in the full possession of his powers, which he displayed in his remarkable cycle of seven historical recitals; Liszt, full of years and honours, but claiming attention as a composer, not as a performer, though he did play once or twice in private. The mention of the performance of his oratorio St. Elizabeth in St. James's Hall comes home to the present writer, who was a humble member of the chorus. Punch's notice is an adroit blending of facetiousness and respect. In his Postscript he observes, "How tired Liszt must be of hearing his own music! Fancy Pears being treated for a whole week to nothing but his own Soap!" I wonder whether Punch knew, what was the fact, that Liszt fell asleep in the performance of his own oratorio. Three months later he died at Bayreuth, having never recovered from the exhaustion caused by the lionizing hospitality of his English admirers. Rubinstein survived his visit for eight years. Punch was not far out in describing him in 1886 as the first player in the world. He was then fifty-seven, and his playing of Beethoven's Op. 57 – the Appassionata Sonata – beggared description. Rubinstein used to say that in these recitals he played enough wrong notes to make a symphony; he was at times violent and extravagant and took strange liberties with the text. But here he was Titanic, and Punch's welcome was well deserved, though the critic erred in ranking Rubinstein the composer on the same plane with Rubinstein the performer. It is amusing to read, in the reference to the last recital, that the programme included works by

– such small contemporary deer as Liadoff, Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and César Cui. My gracious! What names! Familiar, too, don't they seem? In the same category the patronymic of Tschaikowski rings refreshingly as that of an old friend.

The spelling of foreign musicians' names had always been a stumbling block to Punch, and I have revised his versions of two of the composers mentioned above, but by 1886 he had at least learned to spell Liszt correctly.

Hans Richter had shared the duties of conductor at the Wagner Festival of 1877 with the great composer himself. The concerts which made his name a household word in the musical world began in 1879. His leonine appearance and Olympian calm, his wonderful memory, which enabled him to conduct the great masterpieces, classical and modern, without a score; and the dignity and authority of his interpretations soon gained for him an admiration which survived his repudiation in 1914 of all the honours and distinctions conferred on him by the country in which for many years he had made his home. There are still a good many orchestral players amongst us who have a warm corner in their hearts for the "Doctor," and a profound respect for his mastery of the high art of conducting. His quaint sayings are legion, and ought to be collected. One of the best is his rebuke of his band at a rehearsal of the Venusberg music: "Gentlemen, you play it as if you were teetotallers, which you are not."

Punch acclaimed him as a master in 1886, and his tribute is all the more remarkable because it is coupled with an unexpected acknowledgment of the genius of Brahms, whose Fourth Symphony, a very tough nut to crack in those days, is contrasted with the "howling balderdash" of other moderns. Paderewski, who made his first appearance in the spring of 1890, is handsomely extolled. His first concert, which the present writer attended, only attracted a meagre audience, but the effect on his hearers was electrifying and the crescendo of popularity was immediate and abiding. Punch, of course, made puns on his name, but in these years he was so consistent an offender that he might very well have appropriated the old doggerel confession: —

If for every pun I shed
I were to be punishèd,
I could not find a puny shed
Wherein to hide my punnish head.

The Plague of Prodigies

London has never been free from the plague of prodigies, but the epidemic was acute in 1888, and Punch treated the matter in a style which has a strangely familiar ring – when allowance is made for the usual puns: —

That there is a regular flood of these musical prodigies threatening to sweep over every concert-hall platform, there is not a doubt; and while the public rush in applauding crowds to welcome them, it is not easy to see where it is to stop. As long as the fever lasts, their parents, whatever their weight, may be counted upon to keep hurrying them to the "scales," and set them down to the key-board practising till they are often literally laid on their Bachs. Meantime, while the infants struggle, it is becoming a serious question for the regular adult performers, who will find their occupation gone, and certainly not know what to do with themselves, if the former are to have it all their own way. For them, whatever the public may think of it, the matter will undoubtedly be no mere "child's play," and they will surely hail any signs indicating that this recent determined invasion of the concert-room by the nursery is at all on the wane, with every expression of unfeigned delight.

The subject is handled more judiciously in one of the admirable "Voces Populi" series; best of all in Du Maurier's "Happy Thought": —

Mrs. Triplets: "And how is your concert getting on, Herr Pfeiffer?"

Eminent Violinist: "Pudiful, as far as de Brogramme is goncerned – Beethoven – Schumann – Brahms! But ze dickets don't zell!! Ach! Py ze vay, Mrs. Triplets, you don't happen to haf zoch a zing as a Moozicalish Infantile Venomenon apout you zat you could lend me for ze occasion. Ja? Gonzertina! Pantscho! Pones! Gomb! Anyzing vill blease ze Pritish Boblic, if ze berformer is onter vife years olt!"

Punch was in his element when Eduard Strauss – son of Johann the elder, and brother of the most famous of all the Viennese Waltz-Kings, Johann Strauss of the Blue Danube and the Fledermaus– brought his band to the Inventions Exhibition in 1885. In these days waltzing was still popular, and on the page overleaf I give two phases in its evolution as recorded by the pen of Du Maurier. Eduard Strauss wrote many delightful waltzes, and was an inspiring if somewhat exuberant conductor. Punch, who had sat under Jullien in his boyhood, compares the methods of the two, and pronounces the performance of dance-music by Strauss's band to be a revelation. "It unvulgarizes even the polka, and, from time to time, imparts an elevating tone to that ungraceful and prosaic dance." Finally Punch rewrites C. F. Adams's "Leedle Yawcob Strauss" in honour of the Waltz-King: —

He hops und schumps und marks der time,
Und shows such taste and nous,
Dot dere's to equal him no vun,
Mine clever Eduard Strauss.

He dakes der viddle in his hands,
Und he schust blay it, too!
He dake der schtick to beat der time,
Mine gracious, dot vos drue.

Und ven der beeble hear dot band
Dey at each oder glance,
Den vag deir heads, den move deir veet,
Und vish dot dey might dance.

Und ven dey blay der "Danube Blue,"
Vich vos vor an encore,
Dey velcome it as zomtings new,
Und call for it vonce more.

Der beeble listen as dey blay
As guiet as a mouse,
Dere's none vor dance tunes any day
Like leedle Eduard Strauss.

The cult of Berlioz, started by Hallé at Manchester in 1880, was now in full swing, and his Faust figures constantly in the programmes of choral concerts and festivals, with Henschel and Santley (who had abandoned opera for oratorio), Mary Davies and Edward Lloyd in the principal rôles. Punch did not overlook the provincial festivals in the days when the standard quartet was made up of Mmes. Albani and Patey – whose likeness to Handel was noted by Samuel Butler – Edward Lloyd and Santley. He was present at Leeds in 1886 when Sir Arthur Sullivan conducted his Golden Legend, and Stanford his exhilarating Revenge. Sullivan is saluted as "the English Offenbach," a somewhat two-edged compliment, though meant sincerely. At Gloucester, in 1889, Punch praises the music of Parry's Judith, but damns the libretto: "Punch and Judith can never agree." No subject, sacred or profane, was secure from Punch's puns. The Golden Legend and The Prodigal Son, both by Sullivan, were included in the programme at Gloucester, and are turned to characteristic account in the following comment: —

The Golden Legend is a traditional tale of a fortune amassed at Gloucester by an hotel-keeper during the Festival week; while The Prodigal Son is the sad story of a young man who, in spite of his father's warnings, lived an entire week at a Gloucester Inn.

Distinguished Foreigner: "Voulez-vous me faire l'honneur de Danser cette Valse avec moi, Meess Matilde?"

Miss Matilda (an accomplished waltzer): "Avec plaiseer, Monsieur. Quelle est voter Forme – le 'Lurch de Liverpool,' le 'Dip de Boston,' ou le 'Kick de Ratcliffe Highway'?"

(We have feebly tried to represent the "Ratcliffe Highway Kick," which at present is only danced in the very best society, and confers a great air of distinction on the performers.)

This is not an example of the Struggle for Existence – it is merely "The Valse," as we have lately seen it danced at Suburban Subscription Balls, etc.

The Royal College of Music was founded in 1882. George Grove, the first director, the "dear 'G'" of countless friends in all walks of life, was an old ally, and the venture, in which the Prince of Wales took from the very outset an active and energetic part, received Punch's benediction, though an element of genial chaff is not absent in the picture of the Prince conducting his orchestra of royal and noble minstrels, with the Duke of Edinburgh as first violin. Punch showed a truer insight into the potentialities of the new institution when he suggested that it might help to solve the problem of National Opera. By its annual operatic performances so admirably directed for some thirty years by Sir Charles Stanford, and by the training of first-class instrumentalists and singers, the R.C.M. has done an amount of spade-work which has more than fulfilled Punch's prediction.

Popular Songs

On the educative value of the music-halls Punch in earlier years had maintained an attitude of scepticism, not to say hostility. He had been careful to draw invidious distinctions between the vulgarity of music-hall comedians and the entertainments provided by the German Reeds and Corney Grain, in whom he recognized "one in ten thousand" and a true follower of John Parry, the father and perhaps the greatest of all musical entertainers, whose vis comica, allied to unfailing good taste and reinforced by remarkable musicianship, had won the admiration of Lablache and Malibran. I have noted elsewhere Punch's disparagement of the efforts to improve the music-halls. He displays a certain lukewarm approval of the prospectus of the "Coffee Music Hall Company, Limited," issued in 1879 under the auspices of Lord and Lady Cowper, Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, Sir Charles Trevelyan and Canon Duckworth; the names of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed and Sir Jules Benedict, however, inspired him with more confidence than their aristocratic co-patrons.

13. The title of one of Sullivan's most popular songs.