as they were. He became, at one stroke, famous, and no one was more astonished at the sudden notoriety he had acquired, than himself.
He, if ever one did, had "greatness thrust upon him." Fortunately it did not spoil him, for his nature was eminently a sane one.
Even as a young man he had made decisive plans as to his future. He had come to the definite conclusion that teaching was incompatible with composition, and therefore, resolved upon trying to compose in a manner calculated to catch the public ear, and thus, while making an income sufficient for his needs, still have time to devote himself to more serious efforts. That he successfully carried out his resolution is a matter of history, for such teaching as he did, was confined to a few only, of pupils who appeared to be of exceptional promise. Even this did not last long.
The medium through which he made his appeal to the general public was song-writing, and, one must allow—such is the advance in musical education—that compared with songs that achieve great popularity to-day, like those of Landon Ronald, Arthur Somervil, Sir Charles Stanford and others, many of them possess little distinction.
Others, such as "Orpheus with his lute," are on the contrary, worthy of place in the highest rank. His greatest achievement in this form of art, written at a later period, was "The Lost Chord," which not only attained world-wide celebrity and an enormous circulation, but is
full of poetic interest and instinct with genuine inspiration.
It was written one night, while sitting at the bedside of his dying brother.
It may be mentioned that, perhaps, the earliest that promised to bring any really substantial result was one called "Meet me once again."
Its sale, already large, was greatly increasing, when it suddenly stopped, owing to "Punch" producing a parody of it in a picture representing the excitement of a number of cats, on hearing a man singing "meat me once again," as it was rendered. The caricature was neither clever nor in good taste, but it was a serious thing for the composer, as it meant the loss of a considerable income, while still a young man, and not earning as many hundreds as he did thousands of pounds in after years.
At that time the paper was far different from the brilliant and refined "Punch" of to-day.