bane of English musicians ever since. However unconscious it may have, and doubtless has been, its effect has been equally disastrous. Imitation never made art and never will. The imitator may arrive at temporary distinction, but future generations will not recognise him. He will be, merely, a painted figure in a painted sepulchre of plagiarism. Happily there were yet composers, chiefly cathedral organists, who clung to English Church tradition, and among whose work occasional glimpses of its genius can be found.
This fact did not escape the eyes of so keen and accomplished an observer as Vincent Novello, and to this remarkable man the country is under a great debt of recognition.
An Italian by blood, he was born in England, and spent the greater part of his life here. He was organist in turn of several London churches, and thus gained the opportunity to learn and appreciate such music of the early English school as he found in use.
So interested did he become, that he visited various cathedral libraries and, with the permission of the authorities, copied much of the ancient music of which they were the repositories.
This he carefully edited and published, after transposing the parts written in clefs, with which the public are generally unacquainted. He thus furnished the means of bringing into general use much of the splendid music that had hitherto been confined to the services of the cathedral, for which it had been originally written.
He was, practically, the founder of the world-famed publishing house of Novello and Co., and it is an interesting fact that this great firm has never deviated from its early traditions, since it is at the present day as emphatically as it ever was at any period of its existence, the home of all that is best in English Church music.
The founding of the firm, if an event of moment to the public at large, was one of still greater import to the musician, for it caused a commercial value to be attached to his work that, previously, had little more than a sentimental one.
It is not difficult to imagine, in those days of stage-coach travelling, the anxious feelings of the composer about to undertake a long journey to London, his manuscript carefully folded in his pocket and intent on this new and even amazing idea of selling it for actual gold; not, perhaps, simply on account of the happiness that it might bring to his home, but of the fame that might accrue to his name. Nor is it otherwise than quite easy to imagine with what different feelings he would start on his homeward course after a successful issue to his venture. At any rate, it would be difficult to over-estimate the services that the historic firm has rendered to the country and the musical profession during the hundred years of its existence.
The decline of English music had been continuous. It culminated in the productions of such composers as Kent and William Jackson,