cling for so many years to a single flower, nor feel that they have rifled all its sweets. There are in Rome, Germans who give their lives to copy the great masters in the art of painting, nor ever feel that they can get deep enough into knowledge of the beauty already produced to pass out into reproduction. They would never weary through the still night of tending the lights for the grand Mass. Schindler is of this stamp; a patient student, most faithful, and, those of more electric natures will perhaps say, a little dull.
He is very indignant at the more sprightly sketches of Ries and Bettina Brentano. Ries, indeed, is probably inaccurate in detail, yet there is a truth in the whole impression received from him. It was in the first fervour of his youth that he knew Beethoven; he was afterwards long separated from him; in his book we must expect to see rather Ries, under the influence of Beethoven, than the master’s self. Yet there is always deeper truth in this manifestation of life through life, if we can look at it aright, than in any attempt at an exact copy of the original. Let only the reader read poetically, and Germany by Madame de Staël, Wallenstein by Schiller, Beethoven by Ries, are not the less true for being inaccurate. It is the same as with the Madonna by Guido, or by Murillo.
As for Bettina, it was evident to every discerning reader that the great man never talked so; the whole narration is overflowed with Bettina rose-colour. Schindler grimly says, the good Bettina makes him appear as a Word Hero; and we cannot but for a moment share his contempt, as we admire the granite laconism of Beethoven’s real style, which is beyond any other, the short hand of Genius. Yet “the good Bettina” gives us the soul of the matter. Her description of his manner of seizing a melody and then gathering together from every side all that belonged to it, and the saying, “other men are touched by something good. Artists are fiery; they do not weep,” are Beethoven’s, whether
