Chapter 9 Purcell an eminent English musician, composer

of church music, operas, songs, and instrumental music.

(1658-1695).-Rosy Bowers: One of Purcell's most

celebrated songs. "'From Rosie Bowers' is said to

have been set in his last sickness, at which time he seems

to have realized the poetical fable of the Swan and to have

sung more sweetly as he approached nearer his dissolution,

for it seems to us as if no one of his productions was

so elevated, so pleasing, so expressive, and throughout so

perfect as this" (Rees's Cyclopaedia, 1819).