fectly natural in his conceptions of his author, displaying a manly sensibility and energy in expression, yet without the least inflation or pomposity, (no slight drawback in many bases) his easy but feeling interpretation makes its way to the good sense of his hearers, while there seems a pudor ingenuus that wins for him every where the reception which that quality alone obtains. Yet he has no slight versatility, but turns "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," with an equal air of nature and truth. His execution is free and flowing—not indeed particularly remarkable for facility, nor is his tone as finished by many degrees as we conceive it will become by study and practice. It takes we know not how many years before a singer clearly apprehends what he may attempt and what he can do well. Mr. Phillips in this respect is in an infant state, and stands in need of all the science, experience, and tact of his very experienced and skilful master to direct him to make the best present use of his talents and acquirements. He can the more easily expand hints into perfect knowledge, because he is well grounded in the technical parts of music, and has by this time heard much and studied through a pretty extensive course of the best pieces, of the best composers, German, Italian, and English. Indeed part of his reputation was obtained by his singing in the character of Caspar, in Der Freischutz-not less in the part he sustained in the Italian operas given at Bath, while at the Ancient Concerts and at the meetings, his singing Handel (e. g. Lascia Amor and The Lord worketh wonders) and Arne's ballad, has confirmed him in the good opinion of the admirers of the sound English school.

We have thus given the best portraiture we can of Mr. Phillips. If he be not already a great singer, as we cannot admit that he is, if he still wants polish and force, he has youth and his recent introduction into the profession to plead for him, and perhaps no circumstance will declare his title to merit so distinctly as the fact, that he has done more to gain a name and a place in the first orchestras in the kingdom than any of the candidates who have appeared since Mr. Bartleman, and who indeed may be said to have just risen like bubbles upon the surface, burst and vanished. We of course except Mr. Bellamy. He had a rank and standing near to Mr. Bartleman before his death. That rank he has most respectably maintained and still maintains, though he is no longer

a young man. What Mr. Phillips has most to dread perhaps is the admixtnre of theatrical with orchestral manner-two very incompatible things-for the concerts offer no adequate support, and most of those who have been able to keep out of the theatre have been propped by situations in the choirs of London and Windsor, and by the aid of extensive teaching. At present Mr. Phillips is in great request, and from all we have heard and seen both of his public exertions and private deportment and character, we shall be most happy to know that his merits continue to command the success they so much deserve.

VOL. VII. NO. XXVIII.-DEC. 1825.

20

A Morning and Evening Service, and two Anthems, by Edward Hodges, Mus. Doct. of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Organist of St. James' and St. Nicholas' Churches, Bristol; to which is prefixed a Sermon on the Melody of the Heart, by the Rev. T. T. Bidulph, M.A. Minister of St. James', Bristol, and late of Queen's College, Oxford. For the Author, by Goulding, D'Almaine, and Co.

A periodical writer of the day says archly, "We live in an enlightened age, at least we are always saying so, and really many people believe it." Doubtless we ought to qualify this compliment to our times grano salis, and if we can, transmit to Prince Posterity, our modesty with our amelioration. In this enlightened age units, tens, thousands, and tens of thousands, are swept away, mutilated, and lodged in Bedlam and the King's Bench, by Joanna Southcotes, Prince Hoenlohes, Toms and Jerrys, Jockos, and Jack Puddings. In this enlightened age Spain is enfranchised; all our play-houses are possessed with mad demisemis, and legions of German devils; and this brings us to our thesis, or pretty near it, for we are now to consider how the art to which these pages are dedicated, is illuminated by the beams before which the lustre of antiquity is to fade away.

That piano fortes, flutes, fiddle bows, horns, &c. are vying in excellence with the skill of their masters, let no one be hardy enough to deny; or that the vocal art has not attained the "cielo settimo" of improvement. But in musical composition too the fugal and canonical stilts of our ancestors have disappeared, and science condescended to let us have occasionally a glimpse at nature and common sense, must be readily admitted; but audialteram partem. Hear! hear! from the opposition benches.

Dr. Johnson says that the booksellers are the best patrons of authors: they are so, and so are the music-sellers of composers; but what bibliopole, or vender of music, ever" rescued a Chat

To this potentate and his descendant see an allusion at page 31, vol. 7, of the Quarterly Musical Review.

ti. e. Frenchified.

See Kelly's Reminiscences.

terton from laudanum ?"* An ascendant name is your only Mæcenas, and were an unknown Handel now to hawk his Messiah round the trade, he had better take it to the butter shop at once. If it were performed too before amateurs polite, they would probably stare at one another, and look up to their prompters for the cue to applause or silence; or at farthest, content themselves with the usual verbiage of barren sympathy, e. g." what a pity it is not known!" Professors are all engaged from morning to night in teaching, and really have no time to attend to any thing but pocketing half-guineas-un pocos pas o menos; and the patrons of music are listening once more to "Di tanti palpiti," or "O Nanny," harmonized; or it may be to the hacknied strains of Handel dead-no recommendation to patronage like death. In a word, the higher a composer soars, the colder the region he enters the more pains he takes the less encouragement he meets with; and inspired strains are only welcome in their native realms. A few exceptions, here and there, just enable two or three scattered composers of this elevated class to defray the expences of printing by subscription; while sing-song, nambypamby nonsense, is nauseating the classic ear, annoying the profession, and enriching the trade. We live in an enlightened age! Bah!

nature.

The publication before us is apparently an attempt to amalgamate theology with music, on the authority of scripture and the obvious hypothesis, that the principles of resonance are divine emblems of the Trinity, a mystery which we leave in the hands we find it; but that the sublime in music, or any other fine art, is altogether unearthly, and above all that is gross and little, there are indelible proofs in those hearts that are an honour to human "It then must follow as the night the day," that the sublime in musical composition is of "essence uncreate;" and that all which the hand can execute, the heart inspirit, or the brain conceive, short of sublimity, is of an earthly, subordinate, and irrelative caste. In these lower departments of the art Handel has been excelled; eclipsed if you will. In the sublime he is yet where he was. His operas, his concertos, and his other terrestrial strains, are meteors, occasionally appearing and disappear

* Quarterly Musical Review, vol. 5, page 124.

ing; but his oratorios and anthems are fixed stars, the immortal emanations of Him who said, "let there be light.

No one can feel the sublime in music, or any other refinement of humanity, without enjoying a vision of immortality. He that sees not God in music, in poetry, in painting, in the mathematics, or any human medium of the sublime, may talk of Heaven, or divine grace, or what he will, but his notions are all earthly— merely earthly, and nothing more.

When a composer therefore enters on this distinct and supreme department of the art, he does well, be his talents what they may, provided his motives are as pure as human motives can be. The requisites for excellence in this exalted course are indeed limited to the gifted few, for how few are great in genius, great in science, great in meditation; but yet a sufficiency of science, with musical feeling, sincerity, and piety, is no uncommon attainment we hope; and which he that possesses need not despair of exerting effectively on this elevated ground of mental exertion. The house of many mansions is unquestionably open to every species of moral merit and good taste, and the composer who succeeds in one pious effusion, need not envy the applause of nations thundered on every other species of musical excellence. He may say calmly of candidates for such "mouth-honour," "verily they have their reward;" and so has he too, even "here on this bank and shoal of 'time."

That the world ever has duly appreciated, or ever will, the highest objects of music, let no man hope, till knowledge, experience, fine feeling, and reflection, become common properties.Paltry passions, petty business, debility of mind and body, and "all the ills that flesh is heir to," rise up against the realizing of any Utopia that a Plato, a More, an Owen, or any other human theorist can conceive, or experimentalist attempt to establish.— Superior minds must at present be contented to disseminate those principles of improvement in art, in science, and in virtue, that may imperceptibly carry on the work of human reformation by the gradual advances of irresistible accumulation.

*We crave permission here to produce en passant, a translation we formerly attempted of Pope's couplet on Newton :

Naturæ leges noctis latuere tenebris:

Sit Newton Deus inquit, et omnia luce beantur.