Vair zy maids of ze karrten
Lie schentless and tet!"
Gilbert and Sullivan
When we turn from grand to comic opera, the names of Gilbert and Sullivan confront us throughout the entire period under review in a light that sheds a still undiminished lustre on native art. Of each of the two partners in this long and fruitful collaboration it may be said, in the often quoted phrase, that if not absolutely great he was great in his genre. Between them they created an entirely new type of light opera. Moreover, it was an entirely English or British product in its spirit and structure, and relied entirely on British performers. Punch welcomed the venture from the outset, and in 1880, in some verses modelled on the Judge's song in Trial by Jury, and anticipating Sullivan's knighthood in 1883, he happily summarizes the career of the composer, with whom, by the way, Burnand had been associated in Cox and Box in 1866:—
As a boy I had such a musical bump,
And its size so struck Mr. Helmore,
That he said, "Though you sing those songs like a trump,
You shall write some yourself that will sell more."
So I packed off to Leipsic, without looking back,[13]