lished hardly anything. In the accounts him by his friends Lichnowsky, Lobwhich we have of his life during this pe- kowitz, Kinsky, and others, fell to less riod there are indeed comic touches than one-fifth its value in consequence enough; but comedy can have little of the troubles of the Empire. But his share in such a drama. works brought him in a good income, if "I know no duty more sacred (he it had been spent with common pruwrites) than the education and training dence; and, if he had found time or of a child." It was in this spirit that he health to travel, he might have filled his undertook the charge of his nephew, and pockets with gold. Offers came from he was never unfaithful to his ideal. The Berlin, from Russia, and from England, first duty which he set himself was to the country which he always honoured keep his ward away from the mother above all others. But he could not (he whose influence he feared for her son, thought) leave his nephew; he did not and to effect this he engaged in three know how to set about the arrangements tedious lawsuits. An ungracious task, for a journey; his health was bad; and one which we may doubt whether he he would not interrupt the progress of ought to have undertaken. But, how-works greater than any he had hitherto ever this may be, there is no question taken in hand. It was during the troubthat it was undertaken under a sense of led years of which we are writing that the highest duty, and discharged without his ninth symphony, second mass, and any indecision or weakness. To the boy last quartetts were composed. He had himself Beethoven was all tenderness in view, and in part actually in hand, a and and indulgence. The gentle spirit which tenth symphony, another mass, was hidden in his roughness was brought Goethe's "Faust"; whether this last was to light in this new relation. The child to have been in the form of opera, sym(he was nine years old at his father's phony, or, as is most probable, dramatic and interludes. To write death) tyrannized over his uncle, climbed overtures on his chair, and dragged him away from" Faust," he said, would be the climax the work which no other person dared to for himself and for Art. interrupt; occupied his thoughts, which should have been employed in other cares than those of household and education ; but gave him little return for all his love, except the easy smiles of a shallow, selfish nature. Nothing gives a truer and more complete view of Beethoven's character, and of the circumstances in which he was placed, than his correspondence at this time; and pity and reverence in turn claim our affections as we read the melancholy pages. His diary and conversation-books tell the same story. Here and there, among memoranda relating to unruly servants, we read such notices as "another bad day; " days when, as we may imagine, ill-health and troubles at home, and want of leisure and want of money drove him mad with vexation and misery. It happened many times. -four days in succession once-that he had hardly a kreutzer to buy his dinner, and had to content himself with a piece of bread and a glass of beer. And yef at this time he had so many commissions for new music that it became another grievance to have so much to do that kept him from the greater works which he was designing. An income of 4,000* gulden per annum, which had been secured to • About 400l. But his work was almost done. Anguish of heart and sickness (for a dropsical tendency was now fully declared) pressed hard upon him. His nephew, his tenderly-loved Carl, the letters adalone evidence dressed to whom are enough, if evidence were wanting, of the depth and warmth of his heart, was ungrateful to his benefactor and fulfilled none of his hopes. He lounged about the billiard-tables, and spent his uncle's money in foolish or vicious pleasures. At length he was expelled from the university, and in a fit of despair shot himThe wound was not mortal, and he self. lived to be the death of his guardian. A few months later, when the young man's was re-established (December health 1826), Beethoven was sent by his brother Johann back to Vienna in an open carriage (he did not care to lend him his own close carriage). An attack of inflammation of the lungs was the consequence. Taken in time, it might have been checked; but the miserable nephew, when sent for a doctor, gave a chance message to a billiard-marker. The message was forgotten for a day or two, till the billiard-marker, himself taken seriously ill, recollected the commission, and sent a doctor to the house. It was too late; medicine could not relieve the patient; repeated operations only weakened * him. "Better water from my body than ness. He pronounced on all subjects from my pen," he said; and on the 29th with equal confidence. "He hates all of March, 1827, he was so evidently sink- restraint, and I think there is no one else ing that his friends asked him to receive in Vienna who speaks with so little rethe last Sacraments. The ceremony over, he said, "Plaudite, amici. -comodia finita est." Almost the last request he made was that his thanks should be sent to the Philharmonic Society for the present of 100l., which (he added) had cheered the last days of his life; and that he thanked, now on the edge of the grave, the Society and the whole English nation. Soon his death agony came on - a terrible struggle between life and death. His last words, whether in wandering or a last spark of his old humour, were, "Do you hear the bell? the scene is changing." "His end came at a quarter to six in the evening, whilst outside the house the thunder and lightning of a violent storm seemed to represent this death agony by the sympathy of Nature, his dearest friend." t What Beethoven was as a musician the whole world knows, or is learning to know but his worth as a man is much misconceived. The idea which is most commonly entertained of him is, that he is an unaccountable medley of contradictions, which it is not worth while to investigate; that his works alone are interesting; and that the character of the man is but an accident of his genius. But apart from the question whether his works, as those of all great artists, are not rendered more intelligible by a study of the man who produced them, we are of opinion that the character of Beethoven is of high interest to every student of human nature. In Beethoven, as in other great artists, genius in one direction was combined with ability, but not distinguished ability, in others. Nothing that remains written in his letters or diaries bears the mark of genius. He writes earnestly and eagerly; but we see reflected in his writings rather the passion than the intellectual power of which his works give evidence. His opinions, and his expression of them, are bold, clear, and forcible; and his conversation was vigourous, though full of eccentricity and uneven An attempt has been made to found a charge of dishonesty on this present. Beethoven, in fact, had in his possession at the time of his death some bank shares to the value of about 400/. But he did not ask for a present: his request was that a concert should be given for his benefit; and the fact of property being found after his death shows at once his inexperience and childish ignorance of business, and his affection to the ungrateful nephew whom he made his heir, and for whom his small savings were kept as a sacred deposit. † Mühlbrecht, p. 61. serve as Beethoven on all subjects, even politics. . . . His observations are as characteristic and original as his compositions. . . . During the whole course of our conversation at table, nothing was more interesting than what he said of Handel. I heard him say, 'Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived.' I cannot describe with what an expression- I may almost say, how sublimely he spoke of the Messiah' of that immortal genius. Each of us felt thrilled as he said, 'I would bare my head, and kneel upon his grave.'" His conversation lias been likened to one of his own symphonies; and fanciful as it may seem, we believe that the incongruities of his character are best understood through his music. In most cases we seek for an interpretation of art from the life of the artist; but here the converse is the rule. It is so with other instances: we must estimate the lives of such men as Thorwaldsen and Turner, or even Michael Angelo, through their works which often light up what is obscure, and harmonize what is incongruous in the outward show of their lives. It is only in contact with degrading circumstances that Beethoven's nobleness suffers. There he made his own circumstances; and the manifold harmony of his mind could unfold itself freely. How can we better appreciate the force of mind which was so impressive to those who heard him talk than by contemplating in his scores that power of mastering details, and that complete understanding of his subject of which every page gives proof? Is not this akin to the vigour of intellect which, as we hear, was never weary of political discussions never lost sight of definite principles was always bold and consistent in asserting them? Or, again, can we not better understand his bursts of boisterous happiness by remembering the uncontrollable joy of his Scherzos and final movements; the hopelessness of his pain by hearing him speak in the "largo e mesto" of the D major Sonata,* or the second movement of the Seventh Symphony? His sudden changes of mood give and receive interpretation when compared with the passion of such movements as the Scherzo of the Fifth Sym * Op. 10, No. 3. 66 * phony, or the "prestissimo" of the † E major Sonata. Has not the majesty of Egmont" or the "Eroica something corresponding to that dignity which made Beethoven in his strangest excesses always respected and even feared? And when we are startled by strange explosions of discord, and then again charmed by broad sunny passages of pastoral joy, or the unexpected merriment of Scherzos, do we not understand more fully Beethoven's laughter? Laughter of every degree, from the loud "lion-voiced " roar to a smile which has been compared to his own "Pastoral Symphony;" a smile, as Lenz says, like nothing else in the world, which "spread from the corners of his well-formed mouth over his whole countenance, driving before it the shadows of the deep thoughts which dwelt on it, as the rising sun drives the night from the valleys." There is little to show that Beethoven had any love for the kindred arts of painting or sculpture. He lived before the reviving such as it is of Art; and, as far as we know, the only form in which the outward beauty of things was revealed to him was in the face of Nature. How dearly he loved Nature we have seen. Next to music the country was his chief consolation in life; and his love for it is enshrined not only in the "Pastoral Symphony," but in all his works; for one of the special characteristics of his music is its fresh open-air clearness, never obscured by science, nor disfigured by the crabbedness of study-smelling not of the lamp, but of the fresh air and country fragrance. He had a lively interest in literature. He spent much time in reading not newspapers only, of which he was voracious, but the best books in prose and verse. Of poetry he was an enthusiastic, if not always a discerning, admirer. He read, and learnt by heart, many passages of Klopstock's "Messiah," till, as he said, it was driven out of his head by the allembracing Goethe. Schiller also he prized. His other favourites were Voss's Homer especially the "Odyssey Shakespeare, Plutarch, and Sturm an interesting catalogue as showing how his mind reposed on large ideas, and was gratified with a mysticism which resembles the mysticism of music in its suggestion rather than expression, reflection rather than repetition, of the emotions of an imaginative mind. No human being is free from some taint of selfishness; and though in Beethoven's heart there were no sordid feelings, pride was in him the form of selfishness which marred the beauty of his character. Αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν was not enough for him. He must be acknowledged by all as first; and he disparaged and disliked all artists whose claims in any way came into competition with his own. It was this desire to assert himself which made him so many enemies among musicians; which caused him to be rude and ungrateful to his best friends, whom he insulted because they were of higher rank than himself; which made him discontented with a reputation greater than that of any of his contemporaries, and at the same time jealous of every little puff of praise in a newspaper article or from a friend's mouth. "We artists want applause," he said; and no applause was too fulsome to be acceptable to this great music-god, who snuffed up with equal relish the smoke of hecatombs and the humblest incense of foreign pilgrims. Nor is it to be denied that, as a friend, he was not wholly trustworthy. His excessive irritability made enemies of friends, and alienated those from him who could have borne anything but the injustice which was a denial of their friendship; and his correspondence makes us aware that of all the friends who lived round him in his later years few had known him in his youth, Musicians are notoriously quarrelsome; but there have been few musicians whose friends have had so much to forgive them, and yet to whom so much has been forgiven for the sake of friendship. 66 His friends, however, were mostly among the nobility of Vienna. "My nobility," as he said before the Court which tried the affair of his nephew's guardianship, "is here, and here;" pointing as he spoke to his head and heart. He claimed an absolute right of equality with the highest of the earth. He would be ebenbürtig" with princes themselves; but in this ostentatious disregard of rank, though it led him into ungracious and foolish actions, there is, we think, no evidence of "snobbishness." He treated all men alike; was on as familiar terms with Schuppanzigh the fiddler, as with Lichnowsky the prince of the empire: and if he liked the great, he is not the only artist or poet who has felt the charm of a gracious manner, and has found pleasure in the society of those who have by tradition the art of pleasing. 66 His political opinions suffered no in-glory of the "Et resurrexit," the peace jury from this; for he never disguised and hope, the self-abasement and divine or softened them-never whilst appre- trust of the Agnus Dei," the Master ciating the "guinea-stamp" of rank for- felt by power of faith, as well as by imag got that his respect was due only to ination, the realities which expressed humanity. He was from first to last a themselves in immortal tones? "Ins strong republican by conviction and by Unendliche zu greifen," was his aim and sentiment. His sympathy with the his achievement in this great work. French Revolution is well known; not Unless we would repeat and magnify the less his outburst of wrath when the news miracle of Goethe's "Confession of a fair came of the establishment of the Empire. Saint," and ascribe to dramatic interest He watched with careful interest the more than it ever produced in this region growth of the republican spirit in Ger- of art, we must acknowledge in the aspimany. He had no theories to which his rations of this Mass the feelings of a opinions must be assimilated; his repub- man capable of the highest reverence, licanism was as spontaneous as every- and full of a sense of human weakness thing else in this true child of nature. and divine presence. "You Protestants The only trace of insincerity is in the cannot conceive what we feel when the famous story of his walk with Goethe, Body of the Lord goes by," said Haydn: when he refused to salute the imperial and if Beethoven's view of the Mass was family; and this rests on Bettina's rather that of a mystic than of a Catholic, evidence, and may, therefore, be highly still we may be sure that in the forms of coloured: or, if true, what is more likely the Catholic Service he enshrined all than that Beethoven should have amused that his thought conceived of sacrament himself at the expense of his courtly and sacrifice; what to Beethoven's soul friend, whose friendship he would have was the reality of the Beatific Vision. prized, but disdained his patronage? Beethoven's religious sentiments are a mystery. Haydn called him flatly an atheist. He certainly was not an atheist -as certainly he was not the child of the Church like Haydn or Mozart. His republican politics were reflected in his religious views. He disliked priests; he despised ceremonies; and seldom saw the inside of churches. But though his belief tended to free thought rather than to any dogmatic system, there is no doubt that his mind was deeply reverential and even devotional in its aspirations. Many passages in his note-books attest this. Two sentences, which he had written out and hung up in a frame above his writing-table, were his often-quoted confession of faith: "I am that which exists. I am all that was, that is, that is to be. No mortal man has raised my veil." "He is alone of Himself; and to Him alone all things owe their being." And, indeed, if there were no positive evidence to this effect, it is impossible to believe that the Second Mass is mere notes, without religious feeling underlying all. His biographers say that at no time of his life was he so completely removed from the earth as during the composition of this work: and who can doubt that when he conceived the ardent aspiration of the "Kyrie," the triumphant Mühlbrecht, p. 40. It is not our business to judge Beethoven as an artist. The generation which has succeeded him has accepted and ratified all his claims to homage. Bach may excel him in science, Handel in majesty, Mozart in sweetness: but no musician has ever felt so deeply-no one has so combined the heights and depths of passion; so written the life of humanity into music; so spoken to the hearts of men in the whole scale of emotion. And our labour will not have been wasted if we have been able in this sketch to show that his life did not wholly jar with his music; that in his tenderness and faithfulness of heart, his uprightness and truthfulness, in his anger and his repentance, his moody sorrow and buoyant gladness, is shown the same greatness of nature of which the truest and highest expression is his music. From The Spectator. MR. RUSKIN ON AMBITION. IT is a real luxury to read a lecture like that contained in Mr. Ruskin's letter to the Art students at Mansfield, and yet we doubt if it will increase the number of Art students. In words which in their singular melody remind us of his earlier writings, he tells his audience, with their empty little eggshells of heads," the value of art and of art training, even for their own work: An Indian worker in gold, or a Scandinavian worker in iron, or an old French worker in thread, could produce, indeed, beautiful design out of nothing but groups of knots and spirals; but you, when you are rightly educated, may render your knots and spirals infinitely more interesting, by making them suggestive of natural forms, and rich in elements of true knowledge. You know, for instance, the pattern which for centuries has been the basis of ornament in Indian shawls - the bulging leaf ending in a spiral. The Indian produces beautiful designs with nothing but that spiral. You cannot better his powers of design, but you may make them more civil and useful by adding knowledge of nature to invention. Suppose you learn to draw rightly, and, therefore, to know correctly the spirals of springing ferns-not that you may give ugly names to all the species of them- but that you may understand the grace and vitality of every hour of their existence. Suppose you have sense and cleverness enough to translate the essential character of this beauty into forms expressible by simple lines — therefore, expressible by thread-you might then have a series of fern-patterns which would each contain points of distinctive interest and beauty, and of scientific truth, and yet be variable by fancy, with quite as much ease as the meaningless Indian one. work, if he is never to rise, and he can And yet, while applying to their minds that strong intellectual stimulus, he bids them beware of the ambition he does his best to provoke, tells them that not one in a million of them will ever be great in anything; that art will but make them wiser and happier, but will not enable The answer seems so simple in our them to get on, will not in fact "pay," day, that it comes up to every reader's except in its return of mental pleasure. tongue; and yet it is hard, Liberals as we Study the work of great men, but remem- are, that is, disciples of a school that ber that there is in art, as in all work of is ever seeking what, after all, may not the intellect, no democracy, but only an be found it is hard to doubt that Mr. aristocracy, to the highest steps of which Ruskin's teaching embodies truth. Amfew can attain. Students like those at bition in this form that is, the hope of Mansfield can but study, and test them- being reverently regarded from outside selves constantly to discover whether -never is happiness, very rarely tends they have by that attained the capacity to it, in fact does not tend to it at all, the root-capacity of art. of seeing except when it produces that most strange more beauties in the objects they study of all delights, the thirst for work; and than they saw before. Greatness may does not, as we conceive, bring with it come, but to very, very few. The re- much of power. There is too much of mainder must be content with the honesty the febrile about ambition for a good of their handiwork taught them by their working agency, or rather, we should say, study. We do not know a stronger proof it is too like alcohol as an impetus to of the degree to which ambition has per- work. It whips the brain only to its exmeated society, than the feeling of inju- haustion. In literature, in art, in science, diciousness which this lecture will inspire in study, it is the man who works for his in half those who read it. It may be all very true, they will say, but why depress students who need encouragement, and find it only in hope? Who will do good own delight, to cultivate his own capaci- |