. The light of English music had gone
out, though few at the moment realised it, for Dr. Blow and Eccles and
others went on composing music which was thought very good. But the
light had gone, and it was not Handel who extinguished it. Handel did
not come to England for fifteen years, and during that fifteen years not
a single composition worthy of being placed within measurable distance
of Purcell's average work fell from an English pen. Purcell was by no
means forgotten all at once. The four-part sonatas were issued in 1697,
the _Harpsichord Lessons_ in 1696; the _Choice Ayres for the
Theatre_--selections from the stage music--came out in 1697; the first
book of the _Orpheus Britannicus_ appeared in 1698, and a second edition
of it in 1706; the second book of the same appeared in 1702, and a
second edition in 1711; while a third edition of both books was
published as late as 1721, when Handel had been settled in England some
years. The fame of our last great musician survived him for quite a
long time, as things go. That the re-issue of his works was not due
alone to the energy of his widow is clear, for she died in 1706.

It is indeed mournful to contemplate the havoc disease and death play
with the might-have-beens of men and of causes. Pelham Humphries, an
unmistakable genius, was carried away at twenty-seven; Henry Purcell,
one of the mightiest of the world's masters of music, died at the age of
thirty-seven, only two years older than his peer in genius, Mozart. Yet
he left a glorious record, and his days must have been glorious. Men
like Purcell do not create music such as theirs by blind instinct, as a
cat catches mice. A mighty brain and mightier heart must have worked
with passionate energy, the fires must have burnt at an unbroken white
heat, to produce so much unsurpassable music in so short a time. The
qualities we find in the music were in him before they got into the
music; all that we can enjoy he enjoyed first. He had, too, a high
destiny to work out, and he knew it. Thomas Tudway said he was ambitious
to exceed everyone of his time. To the last he laboured unceasingly, and
if he died, as has been suspected, of consumption, there is no trace of
the fever of ill-health nor any morbidness in his creations. They are
charged with energy--often elemental, volcanic energy that nothing can
resist; and at its lowest, the energy is the energy of robust health and
a keen appetite. That energy carried him far beyon