ah, in his Lectures on the History of Modern
Music, 'the first Englishman to demonstrate the possibility of a
national opera. No Englishman of the last century succeeded in
following Purcell's lead into this domain of art; none, indeed, would
seem to have understood in what his excellence consisted, or how his
success was attained. His dramatic music exhibits the same qualities
which had already made the success of Lulli. ... For some years after
Purcell's death his compositions, of whatever kind, were the chief, if
not the only, music heard in England. His reign might have lasted
longer, but for the advent of a musician who, though not perhaps more
highly gifted, had enjoyed immeasurably greater opportunities of
cultivating his gifts,'

Handel, who had also the advantage of being born thirty years later.]

[Footnote 4: John Baptist Lulli, a Florentine, died in 1687, aged 53. In
his youth he was an under-scullion in the kitchen of Madame de
Montpensier, niece to Louis XIV. The discovery of his musical genius led
to his becoming the King's Superintendent of Music, and one of the most
influential composers that has ever lived. He composed the occasional
music for Moliere's comedies, besides about twenty lyric tragedies;
which succeeded beyond all others in France, not only because of his
dramatic genius, which enabled him to give to the persons of these
operas a musical language fitted to their characters and expressive of
the situations in which they were placed; but also, says Mr. Hullah,
because

'Lulli being the first modern composer who caught the French ear, was
the means, to a great extent, of forming the modern French taste.'

His operas kept the stage for more than a century.]

[Footnote 5: that he]

[Footnote 6: not]

* * * * *

No. 30. [1] Wednesday, April 4, 1711. Steele.

'Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore Focisque
Nil est Jucundum; vivas in amore Jocisque.'

Hor.

One common Calamity makes Men extremely affect each other, tho' they
differ in every other Particular. The Passion of Love is the most
general Concern among Men; and I am glad to hear by my last Advices from
_Oxford_, that there are a Set of Sighers in that University, who have
erected themselves into a Society in honour of that tender Passion.
These Gentlemen are of that Sort of Inamoratos, who are not so ver