T. A. Arne as an Inventor of Musical Form. 199 



on Arne by the Oxford University. In 1760, having 

 meanwhile produced a couple of oratorios which did not 

 achieve success, he wrote "Eliza," the overture to which 

 (Handelian in form) concludes with a minuet as delightful as 

 anything of the kind Mozart — who was then but two years 

 old — ever wrote, and then transferred his services from 

 Drury Lane, for which establishment he had hitherto been 

 writing, to the rival house, Covent Garden, and there 

 produced "Thomas and Sally," a work of little artistic 

 value. Probably his mind was already full of the subject 

 of "Artaxerxes," which he intended to be his masterpiece, and 

 which was brought to a hearing two years later. This is an 

 opera confessedly composed in the Italian style, and design- 

 edly intended to compete with Italian opera on its own 

 ground. It was the first attempt to write what is called 

 grand opera for the English stage, and contains much of 

 the bravura writing traditionally and inseparably associated 

 with Italian craftsmanship. It would have been better if Arne 

 had retained his national simplicity of style. That was 

 original. The other was but a clever imitation. One critic 

 has expressed surprise that the "father of a style more 

 natural and unaffected, more truly English than that of any 

 other master, should have been the first to deviate into 

 foreign finery and finesse, and desert the native simplicity 

 of his country," and a more bilious and unfair writer said : — 

 Let Tommy Arne, with usual pomp of style, 

 Whose chief, whose only merit's to compile, 

 "Who, meanly pilfering here and there a bit, 

 Deals music out as Murphy deals out wit, 

 Publish proposals, lines for taste prescribe, 

 And chant the praise of an Italian tribe. 

 Let him reverse kind nature's first decrees, 

 And teach e'en Brent a method not to please, &c. 



Miss Brent was a talented pupil of Arne, and took the 

 leading part in " Artaxerxes," which, notwithstanding all 

 this adverse criticism, held the stage for eighty years, and 

 would, I believe, even now be well worth reviving. The 



