music, and that verse without rhyme was not poetry. This same type of brilliant mind will go on to aver (forgetting the Scot and the Greek) that men who wear skirts are not men, and that women who smoke cigars are not women; indeed, he will not hesitate to settle a score of other problems in so silly a manner that a ten year old, half-witted schoolboy, after three minutes light thinking, could be depended upon to do better.
The rules for the art of singing, laid down in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have become obsolete. How could it be otherwise? They were contrived to fit a certain style of composition. We have but the briefest knowledge, indeed, of how people sang before 1700, although records exist praising the performances of Archilei and others. If a different standard of vocalization existed before 1600 there appears to be no sound reason why a different standard should not exist after 1917. As a matter of fact, maugre much authoritative opinion to the contrary, a different standard does exist. In certain respects the change in tradition is taken for granted. We do not, for example, expect to hear male sopranos at the opera. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe admired this artificial form of voice almost to the exclusion of all others. His favourite singer, Pacchierotti, was a male so-
