596 Hon. Maurice Baring [June 2, 



the native airs of their country. Now it is extremely doubtful 

 whether we should ever have been enriched with this precious legacy 

 of English music if Sullivan had never met Gilbert. It is to this 

 marvellously fortunate conjunction and collaboration that we owe 

 this 'exuberant and entrancing revival of English dance, rhythm, 

 and song. 



It was Gilbert's rhythms, Gilbert's wit and fancy, Gilbert's fun 

 and quaint mockery, Gilbert's whimsical poetry that played the part 

 of the blue-paper packet of the composite Seidlitz powder, and when 

 mingled with the white-paper packet of Sullivan's music produced 

 the enchanting effervescing explosion. It is this which makes it 

 impossible in talking of these operas to dissociate Gilbert from 

 Sullivan, and to judge either, as far as the comic operas are con- 

 cerned, separately. 



The Gilbert of the operas has been compared to Aristophanes ; 

 and the comparison has been said to be a wild one. To place Gilbert 

 in the same rank as Aristophanes, it is said, would mean he should 

 have written lyrics as beautiful as those of Shakespeare. But to 

 compare Gilbert and Sullivan with Aristophanes is not, I think, a 

 wild comparison, for the lyrical beauty which is to be found in the 

 choruses of the Greek poet, is supplied, and plentifully, by the 

 music of Sullivan. I once heard Anatole France say that, speaking 

 in an exaggerated way, the texts we possessed of the plays of 

 Aeschylus were in reality librettos of operas of which the music was 

 lost, as if, for instance, we only had an operatic libretto of Hamlet 

 or Faust. If the Greek music was as good as the words we must 

 have lost a good deal ; but we can't tell. It has perished. Fortu- 

 nately, Sullivan's music has not perished and Gilbert's text is 

 complete. It does not for its purpose need to be any better. For 

 its purpose not even Aristophanes could have improved on it, because 

 the point about Gilbert's lyrics and Gilbert's verse is that it is just 

 sufficiently neat, lyrical and poetical, besides being always cunningly 

 incomparably rhythmical, to allow the composer to fill in the firm 

 outline he has traced with surprising and appropriate colour. 



Take these four lines of a trio from the First Act of The Mikado : — 



" To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock 

 In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, 

 Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock 

 From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block." 



There is nothing very remarkable about this happy jingle, but 

 Sullivan's handling of it makes one think of Bach. 



If Gilbert had been a great verbal poet, a poet like Shelley or 

 Swinburne, there would have been no room for the music ; the words 

 would have been complete in themselves ; their subtle overtones and 

 intangible suggestions would have been drowned by any music, how- 



