ripe, fresh, and with a modest mastery shown in
setting forth delicate fancies—bespeaking as
much real artistic training as feeling. In particular
may his masque music for Juno and Ceres
(including the festive and gracious overture to
the fourth act), and the prelude to the fifth, where
Prospero dissolves the enchantment, be specified
as so many pages which any composer of
any country, of any age, might well have been,
or be too glad to sign.—Mr. Sullivan is firmer
and brighter as an orchestral colourist than any
of his countrymen, past or present. He has
brought from Germany the best of its science,
without its pedantry, or the vagueness which, at
the time being, is making such a confusion in art.
He thinks poetically, and in the tune of English
poetry. It is no light praise to say, that
Shakespeare's lovely dream, which during so many a
year exercised such a fascination over the greatest
Shakespearian composer who ever lived,
Mendelssohn—has suffered no dishonour from
England's Mendelssohn scholar.

Beyond question, the most perfect musical
illustration of Shakespeare that the art has
produced is that to the Midsummer Night's Dream,
by FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY. That a
mere boy—for he was a mere boy when the music
of Beethoven and Weber was in what may be
called the fulness of its unwasted glory—should
strike out so incomparable a prelude as was his
Overture—in the fashioning of which no influences
of Beethoven or Weber had the slightest
share—is one among the marvels of genius. It
is true, that though Mendelssohn remained to
be a child till the last, he was a man from the
first—a man with a vigorous individuality,
which owed much to conception, much to study,
nothing to models, and which set aside the
fashions of the day, at home and abroad, in his
own works, without disdaining them in the
person of others. It is not too much to say
that Zelter's pupil and Goethe's friend (for his
friend he was, in spite of the disparity in their
ages) revelled in Shakespeare. His passion for
poetry, his intense sense of humour, distinguishing
him from any other German that I have
ever known, his marvellous knowledge of
languages, his English sympathies, all aided the
charm. His choice of this play, too, was decided
by the predominance of the fantastic element
in it. Oberon and Titania were more tempting
to him than Romeo and Juliet. His overtures—
that to Ruy Blas excepted—are landscape
pictures, animated by figures, rather than such
foreshadowings of passion as are to be found in
Beethoven's Leonora, Coriolan, and Egmont
overtures. But his first (that to the faëry masque) is
his best. There is a riot of rich and new fancy in
it; a clear characterisation of the three distinct
groups of elfin beings, boors, and noble lovers,
wrought out by an employment of science
exquisite in its ease. One could fancy the work
thrown out at one jet, without misgiving or
retouching. The novelty of it is startling, without
the least affectation or eccentricity. No
wonder that it burst out like a new revelation,
which set its bright, fascinating boy-creator
among the mighty and mature masters of his art
in Europe.

This Overture lay, for some dozen years or
more, solitary in its perfection, till it pleased
the late King of Prussia—an amateur monarch,
who was always occupying himself with experiments
and inventions, and who at that time was
making great efforts to attach the best geniuses
of Germany to his court—to command a revival
of the faëry play and its overture, with added
music by the same master-hand.—Nothing could
be pleasanter than to hear Mendelssohn talk of
his delight in this commission, or the trouble
and the triumph which ensued. There is idea
enough in the overture to furnish a large part
of the material for the scenic illustrations. But
the new matter is equal, and more, to the old;
perfectly corresponding, too, in tone. The
intermezzo, or "curtain tune," that preludes the
second act; the roundel and the faëry song, "Ye
spotted snakes" (already happily set as one of
our best English glees by Stevens), with its
lullaby burthen and the notturno, where the
lovers sleep in the wood, made it clear that the
original inspiration had not been weakened by
time and experience. As a whole, it is one of
Mendelssohn's two most perfect works—to
range in its world as high as does his Elijah
among oratorios.

The Berlin pedants and critics came out with
unusual strength (for even Berlin) on the occasion.
Louis Tieck, whose readings of Shakespeare
enjoyed an European reputation, had the charge
of putting the drama on the stage: and by way of
making the performance as correct as possible
to its author's intentions (compelled to overlook
the showy innovations of the painter's
art), he—the author of the Phantasus—
conceived the sublime idea of making the
Athenians wear Spanish dresses, because so it was
in the good old times! How Mendelssohn used
to crow with laughter when he told this; and
after, recalled the compliment of the Stick in
Waiting, who came to him at the close of the
first performance at court—are things pleasant to
recollect. "Charming, delicious music you have
made, doctor," said the Stick, "but what a
wretched, stupid play it is!" "So you see," the
artist added, "we are not without our Bottoms
and Quinces at his Majesty's court."

It would be difficult to draw out a list of the
many settings of passages selected from the
play; some of them retained during its stage
revivals in England. Bishop's are the best:
his canzonet, "By the simplicity of Venus'
doves," sung with so much taste and tenderness
by Miss Stephens, is a faultless English
song. Horn set "I know a bank" prettily as a
duet; and who shall forget Shield's wonderful
comprehension of his author in the glee,

Your eyes are loadstars, and your tongue's sweet air!

which used to be the delight of part-singers
having sickly predilections. We had a Francis
Flute, then, assuredly among our musicians!
Now-a-days, such a piece of slovenly misunderstanding