pupils for the harpsichord and violin. That one of the principal members of the Pump-room band should be appointed organist in the newly erected Octagon Chapel is most likely, and he seems to have occupied the post for about nine years. "He took great delight in a choir of singers who performed the cathedral service at the Octagon Chapel, for whom he composed many excellent anthems, chants, and psalm tunes." Caroline Herschel adds: "This anthem was left with the rest of my brother's sacred compositions, which were left in trust with one of the choristers. . . . All is lost. . . . With difficulty, many years after, one Te Deum was recovered, and when I was in Bath in 1800 I obtained two or three torn books of odd parts." It is difficult to understand why the compositions were left at all, still more to understand what Mr. Linley had to do with the matter, for "the chorister's wife openly charged Mr. Linley with having taken possession of these treasures."[1]
The story in Campbell's magazine proceeds: "Sir William pursued his profession at Bath for some years, highly esteemed by a numerous circle of friends, and increasing in fame and fortune." Whether this was fact or poetic licence may be matter of debate; but the words attributed by the writer to King George iii., that "Herschel should not sacrifice his valuable time to crotchets and quavers," may justly be accepted as genuine. And the two sentences with which the notice concludes go far to prove that the writer of it was the poet-editor himself: "Sir William possessed 'the milk of human kindness' in an eminent degree, and was most anxious to gratify his numerous visitors by explaining 'the complicated machinery of his mind' in the simplest manner possible. No one ever returned from his hospitable cottage without feeling gratified with the urbanity of the man, and improved by the productions of his genius."
A relic of these early days is still preserved at Bath in the
- ↑ Memoirs, note at p. 36.
