From a Bust by Professor B. Creswick
The old songs were his delight, old English and French and Scotch. German songs, German music, and everything German, except Dürer and Holbein, he could not abide; German love-songs especially, "songs of seduction," he called them. He would just endure a bit of Swiss carolling, with its breezy reminder of the Alps; but the unlucky individual who tried him with Fesca has cause to remember the event. Haydn and Mozart he classed with the Italians, and Handel with the good old standards; but Mendelssohn was not to be named. Worst of all he misliked execution without feeling: the brilliant young lady pianist had no welcome from Ruskin. Gaiety, or else tenderness, appealed; even among the old songs there were those he cast out of the programme. Of "Charmante Gabrielle" he said once, "it might do when a king sang it."
Corelli was one of his favourite composers; that was another link with "Redgauntlet" and Wandering Willie; and though he was never a collector of rarities as such, he bought all the Corelli he could meet with, as well as various old editions of early music at Chappell's sales.
AT MARMION'S GRAVE
WORDS BY SIR WALTER SCOTT
AIR BY JOHN RUSKIN, 1881
