Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... 21 February 1890 I See that somebody in the Pall Mall Gazette wants to have Mr August Manns knighted. The suggestion will be taken up by the comic journals for the sake of saying that "a Manns a man for a' that." As for me, who am no punster, I ask why Mr Manns should be bothered about it. He knows how we manage these things here. We keep a couple of musical knights (in addition to clerical organist chivalry) in order to make knighthood a little respectable, just as we keep a couple of mounted sentries at Whitehall so as to give the War Office a military air. There is no question of selecting the man who has done most for music: Costa, who had no respect for the past, no help for the present, and no aspiration towards the future--who was equally ready to murder anything old with "additional accompaniments" and cuts, or to strangle anything new by refusing to have anything to do with it --who allowed the opera to die in his grasp whilst it was renewing its youth and strength all over Germany: Costa was made Sir Michael. The gentleman selected by Mr W. S. Gilbert to set his burlesques of grand opera to music is Sir Arthur Sullivan, though music in England would not be one inch further behindhand than she is if he had never existed. Charles Halle, who endowed England with a second orchestra (Rule, Britannia!), and who is therefore the only man whose services are for a moment comparable to those of Mr Manns, was given a knighthood when he was seventy. No doubt Mr Manns's position is such that he can, if he chooses, confer (at sixty-five) on a worthless order an honor that it cannot confer on him. But if he receives any such offer, I hope he will politely pass it over to Mr Barnby or Mr Cusins, and go on quietly with his work. I respect him...
