LECTURE ON WILLIAM GAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2255, 20 May 1897, Page 54

LECTURE ON WILLIAM GAY.

An entertainment, which was attended by upwards of two hundred ladies and gentlemen, was given in thecentrilhallof theßojs' High School on Friday evening. The object of the gathering was to extend recognition of his merits as a poet to William Gay, to whoso works a good deal of attention has recently been direotsd. The principal item on the programme was an address by Mr A. Wilson, M.A., the rector of the school. Mr Wilson said : Ladies and gentlemen,— In order that my part of the proceedings may b?, at least in some respect, out of the common, I am going to begin with the epilogue. I desire to thank all those who have helped us in our undertakiog and who have assisted to mike this evening so pleasant, and who have given their services willingly and without any hope of reward except such as must arise from the conscicufnesa of helping a good cause. The number of those who have helped ia so large that I musb refrain from mentioning names, I desire to thank thogo who have decorated this hall and have made ib look gayer than I have ever seen it before, those who have sold tickets, those who have provided tea and coffee, and the members of the committee, all of whom have been most considerate and helpful. I have said I cannot mention names because tho?e who have given their aervics are restlJy so numerous, but you must permit mo very specially to mention the name of Mrs Oliver, to whose managing skill and indefatigable energy I am indeed deep'y indebted. — (Applause.) When I decided to do something for Mr Gay,' Mrs Oliver was the first of whom I asked advice or assistance, and she gave both most cheerfully and most generously. Indeed, it is on Mrs Oliver's advice that our movement has taken (he form it has done, and she has spared no trouble in making things "go." I desire, also, to thank those who have played for us or who have sung for us. You have yourselves practic-vlly thanked them by your appreciative applause, and you have shown your gratitude by makiug them do about twice as much hs they bad undertaken to do. They have iccppondcd with much good nature, and have made the evening at once delightfully Jong and delightfully short. However, I musb implore and beseech of you that you do nob encore me, because if you do, and I respond, wo shHll not get home till morning. — (Laughter.) In inviting jour attention to the merita or demeiits of AJr William Gay's verses, I undertake a task upon which I should never have ventured had Mr Giy been sv man in the full possession of health and physical energy. Bat, as you know, it is far otherwise with him. I ana rot going to enter at length into the biography of Mr Gay. I do not know him personally ; I have never seen him, or even written to him ; but I havo heard enough of his history to move me to help him in a way I conceive m-^y prove acceptable to a man such aud so circumstanced as he is. Mr Gay is a joung man, borely buffeted by destiny, prostrated by a life-loug disease for which no effectual remedy has ,jet been found — a disease which, as I gather from his own words, is " now approaching ils term." Mofct people would agree in calling this an unhappy lot ; but J carefully guard myself from speaking of Mr Gay's lob as happy or unhappy ; for though happiness is a faot of human life on which men aud women are to ready to pronounce an opinion, ibis, nevetthelesa, a plant that grows in unexpected places, and sometimes refuses to grow where the chemical constituents of the soil eeem all that could be desired. I take it that Mr Gay has his own fountains of contentment from which he is able, if somewhat intermittently, to draw lefreshing .waters. At least he has the happiness of showing how it ia possible to bear great affliction with great fortitude. But, putib as you will, the situation of Mr Gay, pinned to his bed and writing for a livelihood, is such as may well stir the sympathy of those who value literature. And writing sonnets! The history of literature teaches us bow circumscribed is the market for 6uch wares. The world at large does nob particularly want sonnets. If you will have itread poetry, give it good, galloping, rhymy verses— a horse poem for preference. ¥ov every one who knows anything of the moving s l ory of •' Potnpilia" it may safely be said that 5000 know " How they brought the good news from Ghent." Therefore it may seem a pity that, if Mr Gay will employ his dying hours in writing verses, he does not be&tow his pains on some lighter end more taking form of verso, when no doubt he would eecure 50 readers where now ho has one. But ib is not a pity ; Mr Gay has chosen the better parb, and lie has the happiness of knowing this. Apart from all considerations of the work he has done, n case like Mr Gay's, of protracted and hopeless suffering bravely borne, has claims on the sympathy of every compassionate heart. Bub if suffering bravely borne were all, we need not go co far afield as Bendigo to find it. I would therefore not have anyone suppose that I am cow attempting the puff philanthropic. If I had not believed that Mr Gay, witbin his scope, was a geiiuine poet, and that bis work would bear scrutiny by the best judgea among you, you WGuld not bave seen me in this particular spot to-night. Peer, mark you ; and that is no light word. There are versifiers, and there are poets. Many are versifiers, but few are poets. There are peels who do not write gcod verses. Walt Whitman was a poet, if ever poet was, bub he could not versify : at least if he could, he seldom did. On the other hand, very few of the many who write verges are poets. I cculd write verses by the ream myself if I tried, and tolerably correct verses too ; but they would not ba poetry. Gay writes good versos, and, within his scope, he is a poet. That is the case, shortly stated. And of course a poet must live : nob by bread alone, hut, like other men, not without it. Yeb I believe that with most poebs, indeed with all, recognition is almost as vital as bread, and that they would be content to go on short commons all their lives provided that would ensure the sympathy and recognition which make, the sunlight by which their genius ripens. Poets may sneer at the British public, and they sometimes do ; but all the same they write for a public and publish for a public, and if they receive no answering sign they are in so far defeated of their reward. There is no more pathetic form of failure, ib eeems to me, though the world is fpll of ib, than the recognition that comes too late, when the ears are closed for which it .would have made music. Therefore, if Mr Gay has "done good work, ib is well we should say co whilst he can heat what is said. It is quite incontestable that Dunedin, or even New Zealand, is not the British public : very far from it ; bub though we are only an inconsiderable and infinitesimal fraction, we are nevertheless a fraction, of the British Empire. Therefore, though Mr Gay has had praise and kindness from other quarters, the recognition we intend may prove, I hope, nob unwelcome to him. In what I have to 6ay of Mr Gay's work I propose to be studiously moderate ; for it is a cruel kindness to a poet to overpraise his work. Understatement is easily corrected ; ifc is bo pleasant to say "Friend

go np higher" 1 ; bub the irresponsible ladling out of easy praise, if ib has any result at all, is mischievous to tha i^oefc's reputation r.nd to hia subsequent work. And what tm I to say of a post who, after all, has written vary little P Really a large part of what I have to Bay is said when I tell you that Mr G&y writes a good sonnet aud promising blank versa. If you know what * good sonnet is, you know what Mr Gay has dona, and nil that remains for you to do is to get bis sonnets and re&d them or reread them. But in case some of you, as is easily possible, may nob have considered th« matter closely, and may regard too lightly the achievemsnt of w.iting a good sonnet, permit mo to say what a sonnet is, and what a good sonnet is. A sonnet is coir a mere exercise of ingenuity, as some people hastily and impatiently conclude. Tha ingenuity required is really very slight. True, there are in this form of verse certain conventions and restrictions that appear arbitrary ; but those who are familiar with the history of the sonnefc, and with the bfsfc sou nets even in our own literature, will admit that restrictions which have produced such splendid results must be conditioned by some felt metrical necessity, and are therefore likely to be a help rather than a hindrance to the poet who chooses this vehicle. First of all, the sonnet musb cojnsiab of 14 lines, no fewer and no more. Why not 12, you ask, or 16 ? Because those poetei great enough to pet a law by their example have found 1% lines the proper compass f or. that perfect expression of a noble thought at which the? aim when they write a sonnet. A smaller volume would have scanted the fulness and dignity of tha movement ; a longer would have left it to lug superfluous. It is true that in a stanza of four lines you may exp-ess a worthy thought with the pith and terseness of a proverb. Such stanzas have their uses, but th.y are not sounets, and can never prodace the sonnet effect. On the other hand, you *m*y have a thought illustrated and amplified into a poem of 40 lines, or of 400 ; but though such a poem might be better than a sonnet, it would not ba a sonnet, or produce the name impression as a sonnet. Let us tike it then, on the authority of the greatest poets, that the proper compas3 of the eonnet is 14 pentameter lines. I would next note in the construction of the sonnet that the 14 lines are usually separated into two well-marked divisions — eight lines in the first division, called the cctave, and six in the second, called the sestet. The first division, the octave, is constructed on two rhyme sounds, the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth lines unding on tha one sound, the second, third, sixth, and aeventh on the other, very much as if you ran together two staczas from "In Memociuni." In the sestet there is more freedom of rhyme. The rhyme sounds in the sestet may bs either two or three, and they may be arrauged on any scheme you choose, except that in the true Petrarchan sonnet the sestet may nob end with a rhyming couplet. Aa with the fixed and determinate length of tha sonnet, so iti division also into octave and sestet is said by good authorities to be justified and demanded by a felt metrical need. The sonnet is not merely the evolution of a single important thought ; it is also a somewhal complex rhythmical composition, with a twofold movement — a surge and resurge, an ebb and" flow, a waxing and waning, call ifc what you will, since such attempts to indicate the double movement are affcer all bub analogics — A sonnet is a wave of melody : From heavin? waters of the impassioned soul A billow of tidal tousic one and whole Flows in the " octave" ; then, returning free, Us ebbing surges in the " sestet" roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea. Generally speaking, there is a division in the thought of the sonnet more or less nearly corresponding to the division in its music. The octave is, so to speak, the f able, the sestet the envoi. OEben in the octave the poet will state and elaborate some fact of objective nature or of human experience ; in the second part ho will indicate the point of contact where the objective touches the emotional or the spiritual. This is where the importance and etreugbh of the sonnet very particularly lie: ib is preeminently the poem of thought and spirituality, using the merely sensuous as a picture to body forth the darker truths and the mysteries of life. In his ode on "Immortality," Wordsworth oondenses iuto two lines the whole spirit and motive of the sonnet. To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for teais. This is the attitude of every true sonnet writer. To him a primrose is not a primrose, it is an apocalypsa ; and he writes the revelation in a sonnet. The octave is the flower, the sestet ia the thought that lies too deep for tears. Therefore ecora nob the sonnet.

With this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart. ; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; A thousand tinier this pipe did Tasso sound : Caraoena soothed with it' an exile's grief ; The sonnet glittered, a gay myrtle leaf, Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned.

His visionary brow : a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spencer, called from Faery-land To struggle thiough dark ways; and when a damp J?cll round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animatiug strains— alas, too few ! A sonnet then is a single worthy and noble thought expressed with the lucidity, dignity, splendour, and harmony of expression which are the gifts of a poet, and which, when they are perceived and understood, are acceptable to all. A sine qua -non in the sonnet is a thought : you must have a thought fchab is worth thinking and worth expressing. If one may form an opinion from some well-bound and respectablelookiog volumes, there are kinds of poetry where it is not necessary that there should be any discoverable thought, provided the ear is entertained with & sequence of skilfully modulated vowel sounds and with uncommon and picturesque words. Such is nob the sonnet : it is the record of a thought, of an emotion, or spiritual experience. Thus the mott picturesque description of objective nature, with the utmost perfection of metrical form, will not in ifcaelf constitute a eonnet, the sonnet using such material merely as an alphabet in which to write deeper and more subtle things. Yet though nobility of thought is a first essential in the sonnet, perfecfciori'of form ia also of Grst importance. As regards construction, there is no kind of verse in which the poet requires to be bo much fastidious. It is not at all necessary that you should write sonnets, bub it is necessary that „ you should write them faultlessly. The least crumpled roseleaf is sufficient to create discomfort and to spoil pleasure. A sonnet should be like a coin fresh struck from *the mint ; good metal to begin with, and, after that, whole, perfect, flawless. A misleading illuotration perhaps, for I do nob suppose that good "sonnets are ever struck oft" at white heat. The file, I fancy, is tha chief tool of the sonneteer. But there must be no sign of the file. That which has cost so much labour must give a sense of the most perfect eaae. Any trace of effort, of difficulty in making two ends meet, any poverty, thinness, or banality of phrase, violent or unnecessary inversions, stopgap words, and elisions, »aro bo m&oj weak-

cesses. Tha least little fly will corrupt t&a. whole pob of ointment. If, for instance, yom use imperfect rhymes, one had rather you wrotei iv prose. To eke out a lino with a "do" or a "doth," as Mr Gay so frequently doss, iaj speaking at least for my own palace, fco spoil- a sonnet. To clip and mutilate words fchaft they may fit your line is a barbarity. Why should a master of words, for co a post ought fco be, pronounce •'cataract" as "catracb ? " In spoken speech ifc would be an unpardonable solecism, and a certain sign o£ illiteracy. Why then should ifc be permitted to the poet ? Of course, no man cum write a sonnet if he is a blockhead to begin with. Bull ha may be very mnoh other than a blockhead and yefc not be able to wrifca a souuafc. He mayhave no music ia him. The heaven-bora sonneteer is gifted with an- exquiaifce ear for words. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordaworfcfr, Rosetfci — all the great English masters of tho sonnet are distinguished by tha musical qualiby of their verae. No doubt even the masters o£ sweet sound have their lapses into harshness. You will probably find in them examples of uujntentional and conflicting rhyme sounds, quits as bad, for instance, as this —

So therefore I did sot The heavenly orbs their course of light to run Athwart the empty night. But when such lapses occur th«y do not improve tha quality of fcha sonnet. I Ijopa I hava succeeded in making clear to 'you whab are tha essentials of a good sonnet. If I have you will perceive that, though -it is as . easy as ife is reprehensible to write a bad sonnet, ifc'ia nob 'so easy to write a good on». You will nadflrstuno?, therefore, what I hold WilH*m Gay'a achievement in verae to ba whan I say that he has written some 40 sonnets, none of them bad, most of them good, and some of them excellent ; though I »m not prepared to admit that »ny one of Hia sonnets ia" tho entice and perfect chrysolite a sonnet ought to bo. Still, this standard of ideal perfection ia so far a matter of individual tnsta and feeling that you had' better not trust my judgment, bufc gob Mr Gay's poems and read them for youraelvoß. I do not claim to be more than fairly well acquainted with Australasian literature, perhaps not even thai ; bufc I have hitherto met with nothing in colonial verse to equal MiGay's work in thought and suggesbiveueis, or even, perhaps, in melody. The poetry of .* uatralatia, as far as I know ifc, seems to con cur a itself chiefly with motion and sensation, and to be deficient ii thought. If I am wrong in this impression, its may easily be the case, I shall ba glad to be corrected, and to bo informed that there is a considerable amiuat of Australasian poetry as thoughtful as Mr Gay'a. Gay's verae is nob distinctively Australian. Indeed, with the exception of tares sonnefca dealing more or less directly with federation, and an occanional slight toac 1 ! of local colour, there is tnothing Australian in ifc. Which absence of " Autitraliauism " ia apparently not due to any defeat oE sympathy with Australia, his enthusiasm for frdci-afcioa being sufucianfc contradiction of that:, buh to tho fact that Ms thomes are not of local but of univeraul interest. An Australian would not givo ono wattle fcroa for aii acre of gorse ; I would not give ono yellow gorsa hedge for a wilderness of wattles. These preferences are* tha mere accidents o£ birth and as-joeiabien, though no doubb in themselves tho legitimafccj materials of pufifcry ; bab tho thought that lies so deep, and which yet, as Wordsworth says, may be quickened into life by the moat common weed chut growe is the nnivenal possession of men, Englishmen or Australian, Canadian or New Zoalimder. To touch it into life vrith tho touch divine is the besfc and rarent of all forms of poetic accomplishment. Tb.9 glory of thr> greatest fiontiefc writers from Dante to Rouefcti has been to do this thirst supremely well. What I wish to say of Willism Gay ia that he, too, has done' this ia sosae degree, and that therefore ha

is entitled to a place in the circle of the makers. How far within the verge I do nob undertake to say. Mr Gay is a student of Hegel, his intellectual intereots And ambitions lying, Icm told, more' in philosophy than in poetry ; tiauf this philosophic beat in sufficiently apparent ia his verss>, which concerns ifcnolE chiefly with tha larger issues of life and death, the problems of earthly existence, of faith, religion, and immortality. His writings givo the impression of great intellectual honesty, of high ideals and aspirif.iocs, aud of a loffcy moral sense. A friend of hi 3 writes to me :—: — " Gay looks upon it as an imperative duty for every man to perfect his moral nature &b forming o, portion of the absolute ; and holding that time itself and this life *ra meraly phenomena in cur continued exiateace, he has a firm belief in it&raortivlity. F/iith, a sett'.ed f&fch, enters into hia life, and hia thoughts upon his own death are of a. very assured aad reassuring nature." Mr Gay has written three Braall volnmes of v*rsp, and X hops ifc will n«fc seem ambfguoua praise if. I say it is to his credit that ha h->s written ao little. There are poets whose works, like the sibylline books, would rise ia value if twa-thirdu o£ them ware burnt. A man in Mr Gay'a circumstances has every temptation to write himselc out, and that' he has not yielded to the temptation is, as I have said, to his credit. 16 shows ih*fc he J3 not too easily pleased with his own work — that he can be .critic to himself. His firsts little volume appeared in 1894. I understand that he does not think much of ib himself, and would withdraw ib from circulation if he could — which, perhaps, goes to show Chat ha is not so good a judge of his own work as I have been asking yoa to believe ; for I have heard an excellent judge sny that «he likes this first little volume the besb of the three. I think myself that Mr Gay's xnojfc finished work is in his second book of poems, tha " Sonnate," and therefore in selecting excerpts from his work I shall cull chiefly from this volume. IS opens with the sonnet on Federation :—: —

From all division let our land fee free, For God has made her one ; complete she lies Within the unbroken circle of the skies, And round her indivisible the sea Breaks on her single shore ; while only we, Her foster-children, .bound wifcb. snored tie 3 Of one dear blood — one storied enterprise — Are negligent of her integrity. Her seamless garment, at greaf'Mammon's nod, With hancbt unfllial we have basely rent, With petty variance our souls are spent. And ancient kinship underneath is trod. O let U3'rise, united, penitent, And be one people, — mighty, serving God. This sonnet, perhaps the most quoted and approved of all Gay's poems, i» built on the true Petrarchan pattern, and deals with a larga and weighty theme. It has some remarkably fine linee, bub ib is spoiled — for me at least— by whab I cannot help regarding as a want of truth. A Bonnet is not, of course, teonnd to observe the petty Accuracy of a tradesman's day* book ; bnt any sacrifice of esneati*l truth is fatal. Now, it is not true that the aeamleas garment of Australia has been rent by unfilial hands. Except in the geographical sense Australia never has been seamless. The seams of her garment are there through the exigencies of colonisation ; and though it may possibly be true that they are kept too long open by the indifference and selfishness of colonists, it is i in no sense true that there has been any unfiliri rending. Therefore, rb ifc eeenw to me, tas

poet expends bis indignation in vain, and in f«o far the sonnet fails. Mr Gay has written, in the Petrarchan scheme, other sonnets that are finer and truer than this on Federation — amoDgst them " The Quest Divine." Once, sitting in my cottage, rapt in thought, -When winds of winter shook the noisy pane, I seemed to hear a voice across the rain, "The Lord thy God too long thou hast forgot" t Then I arose and faced the storm aud sought The Lord my God through all the E*rth and Main, And knelt apart with tears in many a fane, And wrestled sore with books, but found Him not.— So deeming Earth was but an empty shrine, Unto my lowly cottage I returned, With wasted limbs and soul within me dead, When lo ! upon the threshold I had spurned, Mine eyes were opened, and I wept and said, "My Lord I- my God 1 the Voice that spake was Thine." "Nulla Vestigia, Retrorsum" is not exactly » Petrarchan sonnet, inasmuch a3 there is no distinct break between the octave and the sestet. The one urns into the other ; and as Milton made considerable uss of this lorm it has been called the Miltonic tonnet — 0 steep and rugged Life, whoae harsh ascent .Slopej blindly- upward- through the _ bitter ' sight ! » They say that on thy summit, high in light, Pweet rest awaits the climber, travel-spent ; But I, alas, with dusty" garments rent ' With fainting .heart and failing limbs and - sight, *" • • • - Can see no glimmer of the shining height, And vainly list, with body forward bent, To catch, athwart the gloom oue wandering note Of those glad anthems which, they say, are "* 'fcung ' When one emerges from the mists below ; But though, O life, thy summit beremote And all thy stony path with darkness hung, Yet ever upward through the night I go. As far as my judgment informs me, the best sonnet Mr Gay has written is one after the Milton type. It is addressed to "A. E. L." : 1 looked, complaining, on the fall of night, J watched the ebbing of the sunset fires, And grieving saw the rosy mountain spires Each after each from my bereaved sight In gloiva withdraw; and for the cheerful light, And for the music of the woodland choire, And all the joy that with the sun retires, I mourned, and fain from western height to height "Was- I to follow in the golden wake Of day ; and so my heart with heaviness Wa- overcome, till sudden there did break •The solace of the stars on my distress : S-\ like a star, thy soul, msthought, doth make .v light the clearer as the day grows less. Ksakef-peare, as you know, invented a sonnet t rm for himself. If you were to run together tsres stanzas of Grey's "Elegy" and add a i-.yming couplet, you would have the metrical model of the Shakespeare sonnet. It has been nrgely adopted by sounet writers, bub I confess r, has not for me anything like the charm of -■ he Italian sonnet. Mr Gay is very partial to -he Shakespeare type, and has some good • samples in this kind. One of the best is the h. nnet"To a Friend," the friend in question "i.eing the Rev. Dr Strong — a t friend indeed :—: — Thou art the Sun, dear Friend, and I the Earth, In~tby sweet influence my life revolves, Tbs fulness of thy light doth hide my dearth, And thy perfection my defect absolves ; Yet oft the Sun expends his light in vain, And shrouded deeply in tompsstuous gloom, j Tiie Earth, an alien in his bright domain, Sweeps darkly on as to a hopeless doom. B;i% Odear Friend, should e'er «ff face By stormy vapours thus be hid from miue, [ J-.ud I from day to day be doomed to trace i A lonely orbit, blame could not be thine : j Fr"m earth itself it is that clouds are bred, ! Ti3 light alone that from the sun is shed. j "In Hell" is. a strong sonnet made on the same pattern, though it is perhaps overcharged •with -metaphor. As "the last example of G-ay's sonnets I will give you "Milford Sound in Winter," which is.so very good that in certain trifling respects I wish it had been batter : Dark ocean walls, majestically 6teep, That dare the skies, that guard a solitude Of straitened Rea from every tempest rude That uncontrolled molests the outer deep I White pinnacles where summer suns will reap A silent store of clouds, unloose the flood That captive long in winter's hold hath sto-.d, Aud wake the mountain mosses from their sleep ! Dark walls ! white peaks ! unravished silences ! Grey sinuous line of solitary sea ! Wild cataracts plunging fearies3 from the height ! And glaciers patient through the centuries ! O, would that my revering soul might be Among yon lonely shrines an eremite ! Mr Gay's last volume of verse, "Christ on Olympu3," contains 15 sonnets of various quality, t The beautiful sonnet " To a Fellow Traveller" was quoted the other day in the Otago Daily Times. " Sub Specie OStemet&tis " is also ' a fine sonnet. They are all cries from the deeps, full of faith, and of a yearning desire to know. Of Mr Gay's poem in blank verse, *• Chrict on Olympus,' 1 I have not time lo cay more than that it is * remarkably successful essay in this difficult form of verse. Of his lyrics also, which are few in number, I m»y say nothing, but will leave you to judge from his .Primrose poem how fur. he possesses the lyric g'f fc : They" shine upon my table there, A constellation-mimic sweet. No stars in Heaven could shine more ftir, Nor earth has beauty more complete ; And on my table there they shine, And speak to me of things divine. In Heaven at firat they grew, and when God could no fairer make them, He Did plant them by the ways of men For all the pure in heart to see, That each might shine upon its stem And be a light from Him to them. They speak of things above my verse, Of thoughts no eartly language knows, -.""' That loftiest bard could ne'er rehearse, Nor holiest prophet e'er disclose, ' • "Which God Himself bo other way Than by a primrose could convey. The programme was an excellent ox e through- , out, and cordial appreciation was extended to every item. Three glees were sung by Messrs Carter, Manson, Thomson, and Armstrong, one ' of which was given as an encore, and .the other was the last selection, when the hour of 11 o'clock was close at hand. A piano and violin duet — "Mazurka " characteristique " (Wieniawski) — was played with- much taste by Miss Wright and" Mr Phil Wright. Mra Theomin favoured, the audience wiih two beautiful songs, admirably sung ; and Miis Dnnlop "sang well, and obtained an encore. A pianoforte s^olo — Beethoven's Sonata in F minor — was brilliantly played by Miss Maud Fitchett, who also responded to a demand for an encore ; and the quarrel scene between Sir Pciter and Lady Teazle in " The SchooL for Scandal " was enaoted in a- most amusing and creditable manner by Misa Alexander and Mr " Moukt. ' Mf J. Tiinsori, who played the „ accompaniments for the vocalists, of course did ■O' with* much taste" and 'precision, and the entertainment, was in all respects highly successful. ______^__

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