[Sidenote: =Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland's English Music in the 19th century.=
As applied to Parry, Stanford, or Mackenzie, we are instructed, the reproach of being "academic" has absolutely no aptness whatever. These worthy dons are creative artists of the highest possible order, to be classed with Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner, and it thus appears that about the middle of the century British music arose like the lark, soaring at once to the topmost airs of the welkin; that to find a parallel for the revelation of genius during the fifty ensuing British years one has to range over two German centuries! Not even Beethoven is to be excepted from the list of things that were matched by our professorial larks, swans, giants, heroes, angels, and demigods! Now all this represents a rather deplorable state of things. Why is it--I cannot help asking once more--that at the present time in this country so much worse nonsense is written about music than about drama, literature, or any other kindred subject? A great stir was recently made by the production of "Paolo and Francesca," yet no admirer of Mr. Stephen Phillips has thought it necessary to call him the equal of Shakespeare. There is certainly this excuse for Mr. Fuller Maitland, that in the London press of recent years much extravagance of the opposite kind has appeared--excessive and, in a few cases, positively brutal detraction of Parry and Stanford and their school--and perhaps the chief blame for the hysterical nonsense of supporters lies within certain opponents who have attacked without regard either for the facts of the case or even for common decency. In any case a state of things has been brought about in which one party howls "Incompetent humbug!" while the other shrieks "Genius of the highest order!"