SEBASTIAN BACH AND HIS WORKS. 



9 



him, bul requesting the same readiness on his part. Marchand 

 having accepted the terms, and the time and place having been ar- 

 ranged, a large company, of both sexes and of the hi^hest rank, as- 

 sembled. Bach did not keep them long wailiny:, but JMarchand 

 failed to appear. On inquiry, it was ascertained that he had left 

 Dresden that morning, without taking leave of any one. The 

 whole of the performance, therefore, devolved on Bach, who excited 

 the astonishment and admiration of all who heard him. Volumier's 

 intention, however, to show in a striking manner the superiority of 

 German art, was frustrated, though certainly the cause of that frus- 

 tration was far from discreditable to Bach's powers and reputation. 



In the year 1723 he was appointed music director to St. Thomas's 

 School at Leipsig, where he remained till his death. Whilst in this 

 situation he received the title of chapel master to the Duke of 

 Weissenfels, and in the year 1736 that of court composer to the 

 King of Poland. 



The indefatigable diligence with which, particularly in his earlier 

 years, he had frequently passed days and nights without intermis- 

 sion in the study of his art, had weakened his sight. This weakness 

 continuallv increased towards the close of his life, till at length it 

 terminated in a painful disorder of the eyes. Having been persuad- 

 ed to apply to an oculist who had arrived in Leipsig from Engknd, 

 he submitted to an operation, which, twice proving unsuccessful, 

 not only wholly deprived him of sight, but, conjoined with the pro- 

 bably noxious medicines which he took, completely undermined his 

 hitherto vigorous constitution. For more than half a year after this 

 he continued to decline, when, on the tenth morning before his 

 death, he suddenly regained his sight. This, however, was only 

 the last flicker of the dying flame : within a few hours he was 

 seized with an apoplectic fit, followed by an inflammatory fever ; 

 and his enfeebled frame being unable to bear up under such a com- 

 plication of disorders, he shortly after breathed his last, on the 30th 

 of July, in the 66th year of his age. 



Such was the life of this truly great man— a standing rebuke to 

 many pseudo-musicians of the present, and it is to be feared of all 

 times, who, by Nature endowed with a certain degree of talent, 

 imagine that all the rest may be left to chance ; who go through a 

 certain— generally unprofitable— routine of study, and think they 

 have done all that is necessary towards acquiring a mastery of the 

 art ; whose ideal, if they have any, consists in what they feel them- 

 selves competent to produce, not in what they feel they ought to 

 produce ; and who are not ashamed of sending forth to the world 



VOL. VII., NO. XXI. ^ 



