more modish melodies—so many copies from the
Italian—which fill Arne's Artaxerxes. There is
no trace of place or period in Ariel's song,
"Where the bee sucks," that delicate inspiration
which will keep its favour so long as young
voices are left to sing, and ears of all ages to
enjoy. With Caliban (a monster puzzling to all
musicians), Arne was less happy, having no
power, so far as may be judged, over rude,
brutal, vigorous passion. He could have made
nothing of Gay's Polyphemus. Nor does
his masque music for Juno and Ceres, if he
composed it, remain. That episode, though
more than once ingeniously treated, as by
Linley, and by Mr. Henry Smart, a few years
since, under Mr. Macready's management—has
never been worthily set till the other day, and
that, as we shall see, by one of the two youngest
composers, if we mistake not, who have ventured
to deal with Shakespeare.

Early in the last century, when German
theatrical music began to stir itself in quest of
individuality, the romantic plays of Shakespeare
began also to excite curiosity and admiration.
Tired enough must the poor composers of all
and sundry countries have been of Greek kings
and queens, of Gods and Goddesses—especially
after a certain Gluck, by his five imperishable
operas, had made further progress in classical
musical tragedy impossible. The Tempest,
however, fell into clumsy and feeble keeping among
the Germans. Rolle—one of the thousand
voluminous composers, who flourish respectably, and
write what by no means should be remembered—
had an opera on the subject. Another, a later
setting, figures in the list of works by a man who
enjoyed a wider reputation, and whose name is not
yet utterly forgotten—Winter. But that
meritorious person seems to have been born without
a grain of the picturesque in his genius. His
South American opera, The Interrupted Sacrifice,
still drowsily lingering in the German
theatre, has not a trace in it of colour or climate.
The scene might be as well laid in Brandenburg
or Holland, for any touch of warmth or barbaric
splendour which it possesses. Of all respectable
composers, Winter is among the most weakly
wearisome. Such a man's Tempest could only
live in the line of a dictionary. There could, by
no magic, have been any enchantment in it.

How strongly the legend tempted Mendelssohn
is too well known a story to require being dwelt
on at length. For years he was trying to work
on it in conjunction with Immermann (probably
even to the extent of sketching certain portions),
but the inherent difficulties of the legend, as one
to be exclusively conducted in music, may have
made themselves felt then—as they did later,
when a London manager ventured the length of
positively promising a Tempest opera from
Mendelssohn (advertising the cast, nay, too, giving
portraits of the artists in the principal scenes),
merely on the strength of the composer having
consented to look at an opera-book on his
favourite drama, after it had been arranged by
the adroit but unscrupulous Scribe. Two worse
assorted fellow-labourers could hardly have been
found. It might have been foreseen that no good
could come of the affair when the French party
to the contract was irreverent enough to spice
Shakespeare's too insipid play, by bringing into
visible prominence Caliban's odious persecution
of Miranda. The book was returned with
protest; and Mendelssohn died without having
realised one of the dearest plans of his musical
life.

Halévy's Tempesta, on M. Scribe's book, set
for London, and sung here by Sontag and
Lablache, has not had altogether fair measure
from any public. There is an incurable French
taint in the arrangement, with its superfluous
last act, which was quietly lopped away when
the opera was attempted in Paris. Yet some of
the music has elegance, and Lablache, the
incomparable, was furnished in it with fair
opportunity for his display and his discretion. That
old man's personification of Caliban (for Lablache,
when he personated Caliban, was old), the brute
force thrown by him into look, voice, and gesture,
and yet the admirable propriety with which
difficulties in the part, which might so easily
have become abominations, were managed and
concealed, should not be forgotten as one of the
most remarkable examples of might, versatility,
and subtle judgment, which have been seen on
the musical stage.—It should also be recorded,
as a curiosity, that the one encore gained during
the opera, was won by Mdlle. Parodi's spirited
singing of the Franco-Italianised version of
Stephano's song—

    The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,

which choice ditty has been, for the most part,
left alone in its coarseness by our home
musicians.

Besides the illustrations mentioned, a few
more modern ones still claim notice—a spirited,
but too long-drawn overture, by M. Benedict,
written in contemplation of the play being
revived, with complete music, by the same hand at
Munich—a scene for Miranda and chorus, by
that eccentric French student of Shakespeare,
whom we shall meet again, M. Berlioz—another
Shakespearian curiosity—for its uncouthness of
idea, its absence of melody, and the elaborate
oddity of its orchestral effects—a complete decking
of the play, by that meritorious and level
composer, Herr Taubert, of Berlin, spoken of
with temperate praise by German authorities, and
in which one of the most noticeable features is
said to be the spectral chase of Caliban and yet
another, that by our very young countryman,
Mr. A. Sullivan—which, besides being the
newest, is the best one extant—and which has
deservedly created a sensation in our musical
world, such as no first English appearance made
under such difficulties has done before.—Had
the boy been a man, he might have hesitated to
measure himself against Purcell and Arne, and
to enter a land of enchantment, the entering of
which involves certain conditions of colour and
form. A new storm, a new Ariel, were not easy
to conjure up; but the feat has been done. Mr.
Sullivan's music is not crude and boy-like; but