While
engaged in an attorney's office, his means were very limited, but,
to gratify his tastes, he was accustomed to borrow a livery and go
into the gallery of the Opera, then appropriated to domestics.
Unknown to his father he made great progress with the violin, and
the first knowledge his father had of the circumstance was when
accidentally calling at the house of a neighbouring gentleman, to
his surprise and consternation he found his son playing the leading
instrument with a party of musicians. This incident decided the
fate of Arne. His father offered no further opposition to his
wishes; and the world thereby lost a lawyer, but gained a musician
of much taste and delicacy of feeling, who added many valuable
works to our stores of English music.
The career of the late William Jackson, author of 'The Deliverance
of Israel,' an oratorio which has been successfully performed in
the principal towns of his native county of York, furnishes an
interesting illustration of the triumph of perseverance over
difficulties in the pursuit of musical science. He was the son of
a miller at Masham, a little town situated in the valley of the
Yore, in the north-west corner of Yorkshire. Musical taste seems
to have been hereditary in the family, for his father played the
fife in the band of the Masham Volunteers, and was a singer in the
parish choir.
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