Most
of the musicians of the time were vain. Cooke must have been
intolerable. Perhaps they learnt it from the actors with whom they
associated--many of them, in fact, were actors as well as musicians.
Humphries had worked under Lulli. It is not known that he had any other
master in Paris or in Italy, or whether he ever got as far as Italy. Up
to that date no opera of Lulli's seems to have been produced, but he was
none the less a master of music, and he could hand on what he had learnt
of Carissimi's technique. Humphries, highly gifted, swift, returned to
England knowing all Lulli could teach him. He had not Purcell's rich
imagination, nor his passion, nor that torrential flow of ever-fresh
melody; but it cannot be doubted that he was of immense service in
indicating new paths and new ways of doing things. He had--at second
hand we must admit--Carissimi's methods and new impulse; and, at the
very least, he saved Purcell the trouble of a journey to Paris. It was a
misfortune for English music that he died so early. These Restoration
geniuses had a way of dying early. He distinctly had genius, a very
different thing from the plodding industry of Dr.
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