Sharing in the musical tastes of his family, Roger North, the biographer, was the _friend_ who used to touch the harpsichord that stood at the door of the Lord Keeper's bedchamber; and when political changes had extinguished his hopes of preferment, he found consolation in music and literature. Retiring to his seat in Norfolk, Roger fitted up a concert-room with instruments that roused the astonishment of country squires, and an organ that was extolled by critical professors for the sweetness of its tones. In that seclusion, where he lived to extreme old age, the lettered lawyer composed the greater part of those writings which have rendered him familiar to the present generation. Of his 'Memoirs of Musick,' readers are not accustomed to speak so gratefully as of his biographies; but the curious sketch which Dr. Rimbault edited and for the first time published in 1846, is worthy of perusal, and will maintain a place on the shelves of literary collectors by the side of his brother's 'Essay.'
In that treatise Roger alludes to a contest which in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. agitated the musicians of London, divided the Templars into two hostile parties, and for a considerable time gave rise to quarrels in every quarter of the town. All this disturbance resulted from "a competition for an organ in the Temple church, for which the two competitors, the best artists in Europe, Smith and Harris, were but just not ruined." The struggle thus mentioned in the 'Memoirs of Musick' is so comic an episode in the story of London life, and has been the occasion of so much error amongst writers, that it claims brief restatement in the present chapter.
In February, 1682, the Benchers of the Temples, wishing to obtain for their church an organ of superlative excellence, invited Father Smith and Renatus Harris to compete for the honor of supplying the instrument. The masters of the benchers pledged themselves that "if each of these excellent artists would set up an organ in one of the halls belonging to either of the societies, they would have erected in their church that which, in the greatest number of excellencies, deserved the preference." For more than twenty years Father Smith had been the first organ-builder in England; and the admirable qualities of his instruments testify to his singular ability. A German artist (in his native country called Bernard Schmidt, but in London known as Father Smith), he had established himself in the English capital as early as the summer of 1660; and gaining the cordial patronage of Charles II., he and his two grand-nephews soon became leaders of their craft. Father Smith built organs for Westminster Abbey, for the Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, for St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, for Durham Cathedral, and for other sacred buildings. In St. Paul's Cathedral he placed the organ which Wren disdainfully designated a "box of whistles;" and dying in 1708, he left his son-in-law, Christopher Schreider, to complete the organ which still stands in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. But notwithstanding his greatness, Father Smith had rivals; his first rival being Harris the Elder, who died in 1672, his second being Renatus Harris, or Harris the Younger. The elder Harris never caused Smith much discomfort; but his son, Renatus, was a very clever fellow, and a strong party of fashionable _connoisseurs_ declared that he was greatly superior to the German. Such was the position of these two rivals when the benchers made their proposal, which was eagerly accepted by the artificers, each of whom saw in it an opportunity for covering his antagonist with humiliation.