high value on his life, and a Mahomedan has a safe entry into Paradise if he meets his fate while killing an infidel. But Ya Nyun had no intention of being killed, and when the men refused to drop their arms and surrender, he called on the Andamanese and police to fire. A volley of buckshot and Andamanese arrows at close range is fairly certain, and the men were extremely lucky to escape with their lives. Jan and his two companions were still at large, and Ya Nyun proceeded to run them down also. A few days later A few days later their tracks were found in the jungle far away on the west of the islands. This time there This time there were no police in the expedition at all, and Ya Nyun and his Andamanese had their own way entirely. To add to the dangers of the enterprise, the jungles on this side of the island are inhabited by the hostile Andamanese tribe of the Jarawas, as hostile to other tribes of their own race as to strangers, and it is no easy task to persuade the tame Andamanese to enter their country. Ya Nyun, however, succeeded, and on the second day tracks were found on the shore, and signs that a raft had recently been built. looked as if the runaways were making a desperate attempt to set out to sea on the chance of being picked up by some passing ship. It was a wild hope in the north-east monsoon, for ships in those seas are few and far between, and there is no It land nearer than Africa. They followed up the coast, and soon found that their suspicions were correct; with a little more luck the runaways would have got off, to an almost certain death at sea, it is true, but with a bare chance of escape. The raft had stuck on a shoal just off the shore, and the three desperate men on it saw their pursuers come down to the water's edge. They were well armed with dahs and axes, but the odds were heavily against them; Ya Nyun had a gun, and one of the Andamanese had another, while the rest had their deadly bows and arrows. There was still a fighting chance, and they took it. One man waded ashore and ran off into the jungle, while the other two sat on the raft. Ya Nyun left most of the Andamanese to watch the raft, and followed the man who had run away; he was soon overtaken, and as he refused to surrender Ya Nyun shot him, killing him on the spot. He then returned to the shore and ordered the other two to give themselves up. They put down their dahs and waded towards them, but as they got near one of the Andamanese saw a knife in Jan's waist-cloth. He called out, and as he did so Jan rushed at Ya Nyun. There was still a chance, but Jan had met his match. The Andamanese fired a volley of arrows at him, and both guns went off at the same moment. Jan fell dead with two charges of buckshot and eighteen arrows in his reason as Sadhu, which in Hindustani means a holy man. He deserved much credit for the way he had worked and lived in transportation, where his conduct had gone far to expiate the appalling crimes of his youth. But one who, like the present writer, has lived in his old district and heard men who fought against him and suffered from his oppressions speak of him with terror and hatred nearly a generation later, and who has seen the cunning cruel eyes which belie the friendly smile with which he would greet you, is inclined to doubt whether even the orderly conduct of the last half of his life earned him his title, and to agree with those in authority in his country who declined to permit him to return to his old home in any circumstances. body. It was Ya Nyun's day; other convicts. He was genefor the first time for fifteen rally known for some obscure years he was in his element,he was a leader of men, he had killed his enemies, and the old instincts, the pride of race which every Burman has in his heart, came out again. Twenty-four hours later a grisly procession marched into headquarters; it was led by a tall bearded Pathan, half dead with fatigue and terror, carrying a blood-stained sack, driven along by Ya Nyun, a smile of triumph on his face, and followed by a crowd of little black men, each bearing his bow and arrows, still telling one another the story of what had happened. At Ya Nyun's order the Pathan opened the sack and rolled from it the heads of his fellows. A little wizened-up Burman was still to be met in the Andamans not long ago; he was to all intents and purposes a free man, and was treated with marked respect by the F. VOL. CCXI.-NO. MCCLXXX. 2 G 'THE BEGGAR'S OPERA' IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. BY MRS COMYNS CARR. THE great world of London was on the tiptoe of expectation during the first weeks of the year 1728, for it was announced that Rich, the manager of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, would produce an opera in English by John Gay on the 29th of January. It was said that the work would contain every sort of novelty, with much pungent wit at the expense of high personages. And there had never been such a thing as an opera in English. Plays with a song or two in the vernacular had been heard of as pleasing to the lower orders, but opera proper had only been born with that great advent of Italian singers in London which Addison deplores; and even so had lived a financially precarious but gradually brightening life as it became the fashion for Fashion to patronise it, until the Italian Opera was the thing-and the only thing for any one who was anybody to be seen at. Yet it seems never to have paid. an axe to grind, and it was his luck to touch the frolicsome humour of the hour. Beggared in the South Sea Bubble, the unfortunate poet had led a thwarted life, seeking, and not finding, the preferment from the great which he considered due to his talents, and making his position worse by sneers at the Court and the Government. When the new Queen Caroline was Princess of Wales, Gay had managed to gain access to her, and flattered by some verses of his on the infant Duke of Cumberland, she had promised him a place at Court. But these verses did not please the powers that were in office and how could they! Disregarding the advice of his friends Pope and Swift, Gay had peppered them with allusions which could not but give offence, and all that the Queen was able to obtain for him was the paltry post of gentlemanusher to the Princess Louisa. Gay, furious at what he conSwift is said to have remarked sidered a fresh insult, retaliated to Gay that "a Newgate pas- by scathing satire of people in toral might make an odd pretty high places put into the mouths sort of thing," and this may of characters in the opera. have been the seed which ger- None of this means anything minated in the author's brain; to us, who judge the work but Gay-naturally satirical, purely upon its merits; its and with the bitterness bred gay, rollicking, impossible story; of his misfortunes-had many its perilously broad farcical jollity, which might perhaps The real musicians among not have drawn the town twenty years ago as it does to-day; its vivid pictures of Hogarthian manner and Hogarthian dress -the dress of fashion then, but to us a faithful reproduction of our great-grandparents; and last, but not least, its entrancing music. But to the public of 1728 the satire meant much, and perhaps spiciest of all to musical dilettanti was the hope of a skit on the shibboleth of Italian Opera and its prima donnas of the day-Cuzzoni and Faustina, a fierce fight between whom was rending society into two parties, and providing one of the main topics for the ponderous wit that was practised in all the fashionable assemblies. In his introduction, Gay himself virtually acknowledges his sarcastic intentions. "This piece, I own, was originally writ for celebrating the marriage of James Chanter and Molly Lay-two most excellent ballad singers. I have introduced the similes that are in all your celebrated operasthe Swallow, the Moth, the Bee, the Ship, the Flower. Besides, I have a prison scene which the ladies always reckon charmingly pathetic. As to the parts, I have observed such a nice impartiality to our two ladies that it is impossible for either of them to take offence." After all, the novelty and the charm of the genuine national music was what achieved the success of the opera. the audience, and perhaps even those simple folk who heard in the tunes the airs which they had sung on the village greens of their old homes, led the applause. The more supercilious occupants of the boxes taught to consider nothing music except the trills and cadenzas written to show off the voices of the darling stars of Italian Opera-may have feared to approve until authorised by fashion. Burney, indeed, their recognised mouthpiece, declared the songs to be 66 wild, rude, and often vulgar"; yet the time came when every miss in society, who aspired to be to be "accomplished," piped them ad nauseam. Addison, who had always sneered at Italian Opera, declaring that "we know not what we like, and are only transported by anything that is not English," knew what he liked that night. The songs had been admirably chosen and harmonised by the musical director of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre and organist to Charter House, John Christopher Pepusch, a Prussian by birth but long resident in England, who also composed the overture founded on one of the themes. merit; and one fragment at least is traced to the air "Britons, strike home!" by our own great national composer, Purcell, whose music though never performed among us as it should be, much of it being still only preserved in manuscript-holds so high a place in the world's achievement. The original score of 'The Beggar's Opera,' preserved in the Bodleian, is not precise in acknowledging the origin of the tunes; but on Dr Ernest Walker's authority one may say that the air of Purcell's "What shall I do to show how much I love her," is also to be found there, and the original tune composed by Carey to his own words of Sally in our Alley"; this is not the later eighteenth century air associated with them, which was modified from one of much earlier date. A few of the songs were set to popular folk-tunes of the day, while some of the incidental music of the opera is said to owe something to Handel. This, indeed, it was likely to do, he being the recognised master of style, with thirtysix grand operas to his credit, though it was only after the sweeping success of The Beggar's Opera '-inaugurating, as it did, a long period of ballad opera not ended in our own day-that Handel transferred his great talents to oratorio, upon which his fame rests. The opera had been refused by Colley Cibber because it criticised and even lampooned the mighty in their seats. But what Cibber had not guessed was that the very danger he dreaded was the spice which gave flavour to the dish. For the people were becoming aware of the corruption among men who had undertaken to work in their interests, and the wanton extravagance and self-indulgence of the classes who presumably were supposed to give them a good example. Though the "pampered menials" in the cheap seats were no better than their masters, they were all the more likely to applaud these deft caricatures of them, while the masters would not dare to admit how well the cap fitted. Royalty was probably well advised not to face the satire, but the Government was represented. "Two great ministers were in a box together," says Swift, "and all the world staring at them." No wonder ! For one was very likely Townshend, and the other Sir Robert Walpole himself, in none too good odour at the moment either with the Court or the people. There was talk that he was not wholly unconnected with the bursting of the great South Sea Bubble, a financial disaster under which many in the audience-from the affected and perfumed gentlemen in the boxes to their no less affected and equally unscrupulous footmen in the upper galleries-were wrathfully smarting. Some sneers were |