he said to the composer, ‘My dear Mozart, that is too fine for my ears; there are too many notes there.’ ‘I ask your majesty’s pardon,’ replied Mozart, dryly; ‘there are just as many notes as there should be. The emperor said nothing, and appeared rather embarrassed by the reply; but when the opera was performed, he bestowed on it the greatest encomiums.”
This anecdote certainly shows Joseph the Second to be not a mean man, if neither a sage nor a connoisseur.
Read in connexion with the foregoing, the traits recorded of the artist during his wife’s illness, (Life of Mozart, p. 309,) and you have a sketch of a most beautiful character.
Combined with this melting sweetness, and extreme delicacy, was a prophetic energy of deep-seated fire in his genius. He inspires while he overwhelms you. The vigour, the tenderness, and far-reaching ken of his conceptions, were seconded by a range, a readiness, and flexibility in his talents for expression, which can only be told by the hackneyed comparison between him and Raphael. A life of such unceasing flow and pathetic earnestness must at any rate have early exhausted the bodily energies. But the high-strung nerves of Mozart made him excessive alike in his fondness for pleasure, and in the melancholy which was its reaction. His life was too eager and keen to last. The gift of presentiment, as much developed in his private history as in his works, offers a most interesting study to the philosophic observer, but one of too wide a scope for any discussion here.
I shall not speak of Mozart as a whole man, for he was not so; but rather the exquisite organ of a divine inspiration. He scarcely took root on the soil; not knowing common purposes, cares, or discretions, his life was all crowded with creative efforts, and vehement pleasures, or tender feelings between. His private character was that of a child, as ever he loved to be stimulated to compose by having fairy tales told to him by the voice of
