There are, no doubt, exceptions to this rule, and what we have advanced on the subject is to be understood as applying generally, and not pointed at any individual whatever, living or dead. That education, by which we mean the expansion of mind which results from it, is as essential to the composer as to the professor of any other liberal art or science, will not be disputed by those who give the matter anything like serious consideration: that in most cases the English composer has not the advantages which are to be derived from it, few will be hardy enough to deny. A still smaller number, we believe, will venture to question the fact, that the daily occupation of teaching children to play, must deaden the imaginative faculty, and consequently very much tend to disqualify for all the higher branches of composition.
We shall close this article by an authorised account of the ‘Receipts of Covent Garden Theatre, in each season, from 1809–10, to 1831–32,’ as given in the Appendix to the Parliamentary Report on Dramatic Literature.
£.
s.
d.
1809–10
77,575
6
4
1810–11