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he was to all other singers as superior as the famous horse Childers was to all other running-horses; but it was not only in speed that he excelled, for he had now every excellence of every great singer united. In his voice, strength, sweetness, and compass; and in his stile, the tender, the graceful, and the rapid. Indeed he possessed such powers as never met before, or since, in any one human being; pow- ers that were irresistible, and which must have subdued every hearer; the learned and the ignorant, the friend and the foe.
With these talents he went into Spain in the year 1737, with a full design to return into England, having entered into articles with the nobility, who had then the management of the opera, to perform the ensuing season. In his way thither he sung to the king of France at Paris, where, according to Riccoboni, he en- chanted even the French themselves, who at that time universally abhorred Italian
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