224 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE OPERA IN LONDON. 



mental and bodily powers, the young artist studied with enthusiasm 

 the noble models of genius left by the composers of a by-gone age, 

 at the same time that he was favoured by the personal friendship of 

 their equally great successors, Hasse and Jomelli, whose works then 

 held the first place in public estimation. With these models and 

 in this society, engaged also in composing an Italian opera for na- 

 tive artists, his ardent temperament could not fail to be deeply im- 

 pressed by the melodies, so congenial to his feelings, which he heard 

 constantly floating around him : in short, they became a part of his 

 being, modified by his immense stores of learning, tinged with the 

 pensive cast of northern art, and rendered more lovely and fresh by 

 his consummate skill in suiting the music to the passions, nay, to the 

 minutest shades of the characters he pourtrayed. He created a new 

 era in the art by so blending the two styles as to form a school of 

 his own more excellent than either ; characterised also by attention 

 to truth and nature, rather than fettered by conventional rules. 

 Hence, as a dramatic composer, he excels alike his predecessors and 

 his followers ; others may have written works irreproachable when 

 considered in the abstract, but they are deficient in that nice adapta- 

 tion indispensable to correct delineation of character. Mozart is the 

 Shakspeare of music. To our countrymen, who are too much 

 inclined to regard music in the light of a merely sensual gratifica- 

 tion, an intimate acquaintance with his works cannot fail to impart, 

 both as regards composition and performance, more just and elevated 

 conceptions respecting operatic excellence. While, then, we dili- 

 gently study Mozart and follow out the principles on which he 

 wrote, let us not regard him as a mere musician, but as a dramatic 

 poet whose language is music. 



Don Giovanni has been performed over the whole civilized world ; 

 volumes have been written analyzing its merits, arrangements have 

 been published for every instrument, its songs have furnished mo- 

 tivos for piano forte writers and performers of every grade ; this in- 

 satiable repetition and imitation, these innumerable parodies, would 

 have exhausted a more trivial work, while this master-piece still re- 

 mains the highest treat which can be offered to the lovers of drama- 

 tic music. In whatever point of view we regard it, whatever may 

 be our own individual taste or theory, we must be in no small de- 

 gree fastidious if it fulfil not our idea of perfection. The " sublime, 

 the beautiful, and the ornamental," are here found in due propor- 

 tion ; lovely and vocal melodies, ingenious instrumentation, contra- 

 puntal corrrectness, and modern freedom, combined with so much 

 grandeur of conception and exquisite finish in the execution, that it 



