union with Bolingbroke, and became his principal assistant in the celebrated paper called the Craftsman. He was the author also of several anti-ministerial pamphlets, and rendered himself so obnoxious to George II. by his fierce and incessant attacks upon the government, that the king with his own hand struck Pulteney's name out of the list of privy councillors. His great powers as a debater made him the most formidable of Walpole's numerous assailants, while his virulent denunciations of ministerial corruption, and his flaming professions of patriotism, rendered him at one time the most popular man in the country. When Walpole was at last overthrown, in February, 1742, the whole authority of the state seemed for the moment at the disposal of Pulteney. But he showed himself unequal to the occasion. The fear of compromising his personal reputation and consistency, combined with the dread of the attacks of his opponent, induced him to decline office, and to recommend that Lord Wilmington, who was utterly unfit for the post, should be placed at the head of the treasury. Pulteney was induced to ask a peerage for himself, and to consent to certain other arrangements, all of which had been secretly suggested by Walpole for the purpose of destroying his rival's popularity. "I remember," says Horace Walpole, "my father's action and words when he returned from court, and told me what he had done. 'I have turned the key of the closet on him,' making that motion with his hand." This act of political suicide, and the composition of the new cabinet, which was regarded as his work, lost Pulteney at once and for ever the confidence of the public. "The nation looked upon him as a deserter," says Chesterfield, "and he shrunk into insignificance and an earldom." The first time his old rival, now Lord Orford, met him in the house of lords, Orford observed to him with malicious pleasantry, "Here we are, my lord, the two most insignificant fellows in England." Pulteney soon became sensible of the blunder he had made, and would have receded from his promised patent of peerage if the king would have allowed him. On the death of Lord Wilmington in the following year, the earl made an unsuccessful attempt to succeed him as first lord of the treasury; and on the resignation of Henry Pelham, in 1746, he was actually intrusted with the formation of a ministry, but was obliged in two days to resign the task, as he found it impossible to obtain the assistance of any influential statesmen. In 1760 he published anonymously a "Letter to two great men" (Pitt and the duke of Newcastle) respecting the peace, which was widely circulated and greatly applauded. The earl of Bath died in 1764, and as his only son had predeceased him, his peerage became extinct on his death. Pulteney was an able and accomplished man, but his temper was restless and impetuous; he was deficient in steady application, and his judgment was by no means equal to his abilities. He has been pronounced, on high authority, the greatest leader of opposition the house of commons had ever seen. He was a first-rate debater. His eloquence was ready, clear, and pointed, and always adapted with great skill to the question on hand and to the temper of the moment. Speaker Onslow says that he knew how "to animate every subject of popularity with the spirit and fire that the orators of the ancient commonwealths governed the people by: was as classical and elegant in the speeches he did not prepare as they were in their most studied compositions, mingling wit and pleasantry, and the application even of little stories, so properly to affect his hearers, that he would overset the best argumentation in the world, and win people to his side often against their own convictions." He was respectable in his private and uncorrupt in his public character, and free from the vices which disgraced so many of his contemporaries. He was however accused, and justly, of avarice, though he frequently performed acts of charity and benevolence.—J. T.
PUPIENUS, Marcus Clodius, son either of a blacksmith or a coachman, was elected along with Decimus Cælius Balbinus to rule the Roman empire at the death of the Gordians in 238. This dignity he enjoyed only about two months, for in consequence of a conspiracy among the soldiers he was seized and put to death.—D. M.
PURBACHIUS or PURBACH, the surname assumed by an Austrian astronomer named George, who was born at Peuerbach on the 30th of May, 1423, and died at Vienna in 1461. He was the pupil of Johann von Gmünden, and the teacher of Regiomontanus; and was professor of mathematics in the university of Vienna. His "Theoria Planetarum," first published at Venice in 1488, was the standard book on astronomy of its time, and ran through many editions.—W. J. M R.
PURCELL, Henry, the musician, was born in London in the year 1658. His father, Henry Purcell, and his uncle, Thomas Purcell, were both musicians and singers, established in the metropolis, and attached to the court as gentlemen of the chapel royal. To these engagements it is probable that the father added the office of chorister and master of the boys at Westminster abbey. The young Henry lost his father when but six years of age, about which time he appears to have entered as one of the children of the chapel under Captain Cook, the master, to whom, therefore, he was indebted not only for his initiation in the first principles of music, but for much of his knowledge of its practice, and of its theory as applicable to composition. It is true that on Dr. Blow's monumental tablet in Westminster abbey, it is triumphantly recorded that he was "master to the famous Mr. Henry Purcell;" and no doubt the youthful musician, when he quitted the chapel on his voice changing, received some instructions from Blow, a master then in high repute, and from whom a few lessons were enough to recommend to public notice a young man on his entrance into the world: but to Cook the credit is due for the right guidance of Purcell's inborn genius, and for its early cultivation. Sir John Hawkins says it is certain that he was a scholar of Pelham Humphrey (Humphries), who was Cook's successor; but he gives no authority for this, and assigns no reason for his belief. Humphries became master of the children in 1672, when Purcell had attained his fourteenth year, who, consequently, could not have remained long, if he was at all, under the tuition of the new master. Cook, therefore, must not on such doubtful evidence be deprived of the praise to which he is entitled, for his large share in the education of our great English composer. Scarcely had Purcell thrown aside the singing robes of the choir boy, than the honours and appointments of the church fell upon him in quick succession. In 1676, being eighteen years of age, he succeeded Dr. Christopher Gibbons as organist of Westminster abbey, and a few years later Mr. Edward Low, as one of the organists of the chapel royal. From the time of his election to these appointments anthems and other compositions for the church fell from his pen in rapid succession; they were eagerly procured and heard with pious rapture, extending his fame at once to the remotest parts of the kingdom. During the year after his appointment to the cathedral organ of Westminster, in the bloom of youthful ardour and ambition, his attention was accidentally directed towards the theatre by the success of an occasional essay in dramatic music made under the following circumstances:—Mr. Josias Priest, a celebrated dancing master and composer of ballets, kept a boarding-school for young ladies at Chelsea; and the nature of his profession inclining him to dramatic representations, he persuaded Tate to write and Purcell to set to music a little drama called "Dido and Æneas." Purcell was then of the age of nineteen; but the music of this opera had so little the appearance of a puerile essay, that there was scarce a musician in England who would not have thought it an honour to be the author of it. The exhibition of this little piece by the young ladies of the school to a select audience of their parents and friends, was attended with general applause, no small part whereof was justly considered the due of Purcell. It appears probable that Purcell, who was throughout his life a most distinguished singer, performed the part of Æneas in the representation himself; the noble character of the recitative being perfectly suited to the ideal of his style; moreover, in one of the prints of him still extant, he is entitled "musician and actor." The music in Nat Lee's Theodosius, or the Force of Love, performed at the Duke's theatre in 1690, was Purcell's first work for the public stage. In the same year he set new music to The Tempest, as altered by Dryden—which is still heard with delight—and also the Prophetess, or Diocletian, as altered by Dryden and Betterton from Beaumont and Fletcher. In 1691 he composed the songs, &c., in Dryden's King Arthur, among which are the inimitable frost scene, the very original and lovely air "Fairest Isle," and the charming duet, "Two daughters of this aged stream are we." In 1692 appeared Sir R. Howard and Dryden's Indian Queen, with Purcell's music. The fine incantation scene in this work, "Ye twice ten hundred deities," is yet often heard in good concerts, but never in fashionable ones. The duet and chorus, "To Arms," and the air, "Britons strike home," in Bonduca, are national property. These alone will suffice to carry Purcell's name to distant ages.
