11)22] on Gilbert and Sullivan 59 



and only Sullivan could have composed. An instance of the kind is, 

 I think,' the quintette in the Second Act of the Sorcerer : — 



" I rejoice that it's decided 



Happy now will be his life, 

 For my father is provided 



With a true and tender wife. 

 She will tend him, nurse him, mend him, 



Air his linen, dry his tears, 

 Bless the thoughtful fates that send him 



Such a wife to soothe his years." 



No poet except Gilbert would ever have thought of the phrase, " Air 

 his linen, dry his tears." No composer could have clothed the words 

 more appropriately or more exquisitely. But it is, perhaps, in 

 Iolanthe that Gilbert and Sullivan display, if not their highest, their 

 most peculiar qualities. Iolanthe is, I think, the most Gilbertian of 

 all the operas, and the music is peculiarly characteristic of Sullivan, 

 Nobody but Gilbert could have imagined the Arcadian shepherd, who 

 is half a fairy— a fairy down to the waist ; but his legs are mortal — 

 and is engaged to a ward in Chancery ; the susceptible Lord 

 Chancellor ; the chorus of peers ; the philosophical sentry who thinks 

 of things that would astonish you, and the final departure of peers 

 and fairies to fairyland : — 



" Up in the sky 



Ever so high 

 Pleasures come in endless series. 



We will arrange 



Happy exchange, 

 House of Peers for House of Peris." 



In this opera we are in the centre and capital of the cloud 

 cuckoo-land of Gilbert's invention, the headquarters of his fantastic 

 fairyland. That Gilbert lived in fairyland, or rather that he created 

 a fairyland of his own, is a fact that is often overlooked. He is 

 credited with the honours, the supreme honours, of topsy-turvydom, 

 so that whenever anything peculiarly contrary to common sense 

 happens in the public life or the Government of the country, we 

 call it Gilbertian, but he is not as a rule credited with the glamour 

 of magic. And yet that he possessed the secret key which unlocks 

 the doors of thai tantalising country is proved by the verdict of 

 those who are the sole and only judges, namely, children. Children 

 know that the land of Ruddic/ore, of The Gondoliers, of The Mikado, 

 Iolanthe, and Patience is fairyland — the real thing. Only a few 

 months ago I had the opportunity of comparing the opinions of some 

 children who had been taken to see first Jack and the Beanstalk at 

 the Hippodrome and then Iolanthe. Their verdict was that Iolanthe 

 was a real pantomime, and that Jack and the Beanstalk in its modern 

 shape, interlarded with political allusions and music-hall tags, was not. 



Yol. XXIII. (No. 116) 2 u 



