recommendation of Dr. Arnold, will chiefly rest on his admirable glees, catches, and canons. he succeeded to several valuable engagements as a teacher, In 1787 the Catch Club admitted him as an honorary member, and he sent in nearly one hundred compositions as candidates for the prizes. On that occasion only two pieces, a canon and a glee, were successful; but in consequence of this extraordinary influx of compositions, it was resolved that the pieces presented should be limited to three of each description. Complying with this new regulation, in 1789 Callcott offered only twelve pieces, but all the four medals were assigned him,-a circumstance unparalleled in the history of the Catch Club. In the same year he was chosen joint-organist of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. From 1789 to 1793 (after which year the Catch Club ceased to offer prizes) he never failed annually to obtain distinction, but the chief part of his time was occupied with teaching. Amongst the projects which he entertained, was one of compiling a musical dictionary, but he never lived to do more than accumulate material. He died on the 15th of May 1821, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. Callcott's compositions were very numerous, and his printed works are by no means equal in extent to those which still remain in manuscript. Many of these consist of anthems, services, odes, etc.; but his fame DR. CROTCH, Of all the instances of musical precocity that history has recorded, Dr. Crotch was perhaps the most remarkable. His talents, when a child, were so extraordinary, that his parents rather wished to conceal them than otherwise, from a fear of drawing too much of the public attention upon them; but the fact soon transpired, and Mr. Crotch's house was so crowded that he was obliged to limit the child's exhibition of his wonderful powers to fixed days and hours. When a year and a half old, he would leave his food to listen to music. At two years he would strike the two or three opening notes of the tune he wished his father to play to him. At two years and three months he could play a great part of God save the King' with one hand. In a day or two he mastered the whole of it, and in a few months more he could play Hope, thou_nurse of young desire,' from Love in a Village. The first voluntary he heard with attention was performed at his father's house, when he was two years and four months old, by Mr. Mully, a musicmaster. As soon as he was gone, the child got to the organ, and playing in a wild and different manner from that to which his mother was accustomed, she asked him what he was doing. He replied, 'I am playing the gentleman's fine thing;' and Mr. Mully, who afterwards heard it, acknowledged that the child had remembered several passages, which he played correctly. Being present at a concert where a band of gentlemen performers played the overture in Rodelinda, he was so delighted with the minuet that the next morning he hummed part of it in bed, and by noon, without any further assistance, played the whole on the organ. and good performers are unable to distinguish by the car, at the opera or elsewhere, in what key any air or piece of music is executed.' When, as often was the case, in consequence of the numerous visitors he attracted, he became tired of playing on an instrument, and his musical faculties seemed wholly blunted, he could be provoked to attention, even though engaged in any new amusement, by a wrong note being struck in the melody of any well-known tune; and if he stood by the instrument when such a note was designedly struck, he would instantly put down the right one, in whatever key the air was playing. The maturity of age in Dr. Crotch confirmed the precocity of his youth, and as a serious composer, as well as a practical performer, he long held the first rank in this country. A just compliment was paid to him in nominating him Principal of the Royal Academy of Music,—an institution commenced under such favourable auspices as to promise, if it has not performed, the greatest benefit to music in this country. Dr. Burney, who, at the request of Sir John Pringle, drew up an account of the child, which is printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1779, was at particular pains to put the talents of the infant Crotch to the test. 'I examined,' said he, his countenance when he first heard the voice of Signor Pacchiarotti, the principal singer of the Opera, but did not find that he seemed sensible of the superior taste and refinement of that exquisite performer. However, he called out very soon after the air was begun, "He is singing in F" This is one of the most extraordinary properties of his ear, A relish for simple melody that he can distinguish at a has with most individuals been great distance from any instru- the first step in the attainment ment, and out of sight of the of musical taste, and a percepkeys, any note that is struck. tion of the pleasure of harmony In this I have repeatedly tried has been a slow and gradual him, and never found him mis- acquirement. In a few intaken, even in the half-notes,- stances, however, where an exa circumstance the more extra-traordinary ear for music has ordinary, as many practitioners | been early manifested, the power of discriminating harmony has which he had recently caught BALFE. Of the musical career of Balfe the following able notice by Mr. H. F. Chorley appeared in the Athenæum towards the close of 1870:— 'Balfe was born in Dublin on the 15th of May 1808, richly endowed with that spontaneous genius, the presence of which has so peculiarly marked the musicians and melodists of Ireland, from the days of its harpers to our own. He received his first musical instruction, we are told, from a Wexford bandmaster, subsequently from that sweet and original melodist Charles Horn, and from his father. His studies appear to have been miscellaneous, and what may be called roving rather than special and complete. 'He became early remarkable as the possessor of a tuneable voice, and is said to have sung as a boy in concerts and oratorios. Like his countryman Vincent Wallace, he was a fair violinplayer, and as such ventured to present himself to the public in one of Viotti's concertos. 'There is no trace of his having ever betaken himself seriously to learning counterpoint or harmony; and the want of solidity in this necessary structural basis of all music that is to last-no matter whether it be grave or gay, no matter whether the fancy be ever so affluent was one of the many obvious qualities which contributed to make perishable his popularity. . . . In the year 1824 (to quote a contemporary, Men of the Time) Balfe appeared at Drury Lane Theatre in Der Freischutz. In the year 1825 he went to Rome; in 1826 he wrote for La Scala the music to a ballet Perouse; and later in the same year Signor Balfe sang, at the Italian Opera in Paris, as Figaro in Il Barbiere. The success did not justify the temerity of his attempt; for those were the glorious days when there were such artists abroad as Sontag, Malibran, Davide, Galli, and Lablache. 'Balfe returned into Italy. In the year 1830 he was singing at Piacenza; he went down into Sicily, again tried the stage at Palermo, and there gave his first opera, I Rivali. During five subsequent years he was singing and composing in Florence, Milan, and Venice, flinging out carelessly sundry operas of no worth or value; among which his Enrico Quarto al passo della Marna is the only work worth naming, as having been written for the prima donna Mdlle. Lina Roser, whom he married. . . . 'From the year 1835, when his Siege of Rochelle was produced at Drury Lane, on the same libretto as Ricci's Chiara di Rosemberg, with a dashing success, the career of Balfe was one, during many years, of unexampled popularity. If ever theatrical musician had the ball at his foot, he was the man. The immediate and brilliant success of his first venture on the English stage for a time led, if not to entire monopoly in his favour, to comparative discouragement of every other composer.' Balfe died in 1870. They are the abstract and brief chroniclers of the times.' -Hamlet. THOMAS BETTERTON COLLEY CIBBER GARRICK-SPRANGER CHARLES MACKLIN -DAVID BARRY-SAMUEL FOOTE-GEORGE FREDERIC COOKE-JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE-JOSEPH MUNDEN-ROBERT WILLIAM ELLISTON-EDMUND KEAN. THOMAS BETTERTON. could have no room, and so to the Duke's house, and there saw Hamlet done, giving us fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton.' Isaac Disraeli tells us something of Betterton's performance of 'Hamlet' in The Curiosities of Literature: BETTERTON was the greatest actor the English stage ever possessed, with the exception, perhaps, of the more versatile Garrick. Almost incredible accounts remain to us of the effects produced by his perfor-Although his face was ruddy mances. The magnetic influence of tone and expression seemed to mesmerize an audience, and make them followers of his slightest intonation. Almost without speaking, he could let them into the workings of his mind, and anticipate his next motion, as if it arose from their own volition. and sanguine, the amazement and horror expressed at the presence of his father's spectre instantly turned it as white as his neckcloth, while his whole body seemed to be affected with a strong tremor. The spectators shuddered, and participated in the astonishment and horror so apparent to the actor.' In On May 28, 1663, Pepys the Richardsoniana, we find that writes in his diary: By water the first time Booth attempted to the Royal Theatre; but that the Ghost' when Betterton was so full, they told us we acted Hamlet,' the actor's |