Keeps the unclouded vision of a tender-hearted child.
The sequel is curious, for while the gentle Humperdinck signed the anti-British manifesto issued at the outbreak of the War by leading German professors, men of science and artists, the name of Strauss was conspicuously absent. And as I write Strauss, middle-aged and grey, is revisiting London and, no longer in the van of musical progress, is regarded by our emancipated critics not exactly as a "back number" but certainly as very far from being the "Mad Mullah" of music. Even before the War German operatic music had been superseded in popularity by the Russian school. In June, 1914, Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov was the great feature of the season, and to this, as to Borodine's Prince Igor, Chaliapine, in Punch's phrase, "brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place apart from his kind."
In the domain of light and comic opera the severance of the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership, though a personal reconciliation was effected, was final so far as collaboration was concerned. Composer and librettist both formed new or renewed old associations—Gilbert with Cellier in The Mountebanks, and Sullivan with Burnand in The Chieftain—but without repeating their old triumphs. When Sullivan died in 1900 his services to art and humanity are read aright in Punch's memorial stanzas:—
In the immortal music rolled from earth
He was content to claim a lowly part,
Yet leaves us purer by the grace and mirth,
Human, that cling about the common heart.
Now on the bound of Music's native sphere,
Whereof he faintly caught some earthward strain,