HENRY PURCELL, ESQ.
Mr. Purcell received his professional education in the school of a choir; it is therefore not very surprising, that the bent of his studies was towards church music. Services he seemed to neglect, and to addict himself to the composition of anthems, a kind of music which, in his time, the church stood greatly in need of.
The anthem, “They that go down to the sea in ships,” was composed by him, on the following extraordinary occasion.
“King Charles II. had given orders for building a yatch, which, as soon as it was finished, he named the Fubbs, in honour of the Duchess of Portsmouth; who, we may suppose, was, in her person, rather full and plump. Soon after the vessel was launched, the king made a party, to sail in his yatch down the river, and round the Kentish coast: and, to keep up the mirth and good humour of the company, Mr. Gostling, was requested to be of the number. They had got as far as the North Foreland, when a violent storm arose, in which the King and the Duke of York were necessitated, in order to preserve the vessel, to hand the sails, and work like common seamen; by good providence, however, they escaped to land: but the distress they had been in, made such an impression on the mind of Mr. Gostling as could never be effaced. Struck with a just sense of the deliverance, and the horror of the scene which he had lately viewed, upon his return to London, he selected from the Psalms those passages which declare the wonders and terrors of the deep, and gave them to Mr. Purcell, to compose as an anthem, which he did; adapting it so peculiarly to the compass of Mr. Gostling’s voice, which was a deep bass, that hardly any person but himself was then, or has since, been able to sing it: but the king did not live to hear it performed. This Anthem is taken from the 107th Psalm, the first two verses of the Anthem are the 23d and 24th of the Psalm. “They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy business in great waters. These men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”
Among the Letters of Tom Brown, from the Dead to the Living, is one from Dr. Blow, to Mr. Purcell, in which it is humourously observed, that persons of their profession are subject to an equal attraction of the church and the play-house; and are, therefore, in a situation resembling that of Mahomet, which is said to be suspended between heaven and earth. This remark of Brown was truly applicable to Purcell; and it is more than probable, his particular situation gave occasion to it, for he was scarcely known to the world, before he became, in the exercise of his profession, so equally divided between both, the church and the theatre, that neither the church, the tragic, nor the comic Muse, could call him her own.