Note 65 — Chapter V · ToC

Sir George Grove wrote after the banquet in 1882: "Dear Leighton,—Let me say a word of most hearty congratulations on the brilliant way in which you got through your Herculean task on Saturday. You are really a prodigy! Your last speech reads just as fresh and gay and unembarrassed as the first, and every one of the nine is as neat, as pointed, as perfectly à propos as if there were nothing else to be said! Thank you especially for the reference to the music business."