1922] on Gilbert and Sullivan 597 



ever beautiful. As it is, the words have just enough suggestive 

 beauty, and are always unerringly rhythmical, and this is just the 

 combination needed to enable the composer to display his astonishing 

 musical gift. I don't pretend to any musical knowledge whatever, 

 but it is not necessary to be a trained musician to recognise and to 

 feel the amazing powers of musical rhythmical invention which 

 Sullivan displays throughout these operas. His rhythmical inven- 

 tion seems to be inexhaustible and infinitely various. 



You have exquisitely funny and appropriate rhythm like his 

 setting to Ruth's song in the First Act of The Pirates of Penzance : — 



" When Frederic was a little lad he proved so brave and daring, 

 His father thought he'd 'prentice him to some career seafaring. 

 I was, alas ! his nurserymaid, and so it fell to my lot 

 To take and bind the promising lad apprentice to a pilot. 

 A life not bad for a hardy lad, though surely not a high lot. 

 Though I'm a nurse, you might do worse, than make your boy a pilot. 



" I was a stupid nurserymaid, on breakers always steering, 

 And I did not catch the word aright, through being hard of hearing ; 

 Mistaking my instructions, which within my brain did gyrate, 

 I took and bound this promising boy apprentice to a pirate. 

 A sad mistake it was bo make and doom him to a vile lot, 

 I bound him to a pirate — you — instead of to a pilot." 



Or the lilt of the rollicking duet in Ruddigore, " Oh, happy the lily 

 when kissed by the bee " ; or, perhaps most surprising of all, the 

 sad, endless tangle of the Lord Chancellor's nightmare in lolanthe, 

 as delirious as Tristan's fever : — 



" When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is 

 tabooed with anxiety," 



with its transition at the end in which the notes seem to smell of 

 dawn and dew : — 



" But the darkness has passed, 

 And it's daylight at last, 

 And the night has been long, 

 Ditto, ditto, my song, 

 And thank goodness, they're both of them over ! " 



But one need hardly say that the most salient and supreme of 

 Sullivan's gifts is that of tune ; the gift of pouring out a stream of 

 beautiful bubbling melodies. Most of these tunes are part of the 

 permanent furniture and limbo of our minds. They are on the 

 mouths of all and chiefly on the lips of the young. They rise in 

 the heart and gather on the lips unbidden. Let those who are 

 inclined to think Sullivan's melodies too facile listen on the gramo- 

 phone to the duet in Ruddigore, " The old oak tree," or turn up the 

 score of Princess Ida and play the quartette, " The world is but a 

 broken toy," or " Free from his fetters grim " in The Yeomen of 



