carefully to collect evidence in proof of their existence, and that in the person of a near connexion.” This quite poisoned the atmosphere of his ideal world, and destroyed for the time all creative glow. On account of the van prefixed to his name, the cause was, at first, brought before the tribunal of nobility. They called on Beethoven to show them his credentials of noble birth. “Here!” he replied, putting his hand to head and heart. But as these nobles mostly derived their titles from the head and heart of some remote ancestor, they would not recognize this new peerage, and Beethoven, with indignant surprise, found himself referred to the tribunal of the common burghers.
The lawsuit was spun out by the obstinate resistance of his sister-in-law for several years, and when Beethoven at last obtained possession of the child, the seeds of vice were already sown in his breast. An inferior man would have been more likely to eradicate them than Beethoven, because a kindred consciousness might have made him patient. But the stern Roman spirit of Beethoven could not demand less than virtue, less than excellence, from the object of his care. For the youth’s sake he made innumerable sacrifices, toiled for him as he would not for himself, was lavish of all that could conduce to his true good, but imperiously demanded from him truth, honour, purity and aspiration. No tragedy is deeper than the perusal of his letters to the young man, so brief and so significant, so stern and so tender. The joy and love at every sign of goodness, the profound indignation at failure and falsehood, the power of forgiving but not of excusing, the sentiment of the true value of life, so rocky calm, that with all its height it never seems exalted, make these letters a biblical chapter in the protest of modern days against the backslidings of the multitude. The lover of man, the despiser of men, he who writes, “Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make happy, not gold; I speak from experience,” is fully painted in these letters.
