I will not give any of these, nor any of his letters, because the limits forbid to give them all, and they require light from one another. In such an account as the present, a mere sketch is all that can be attempted.
A few passages will speak for themselves. Goethe neglected to lend his aid to the artist for whom he had expressed such admiration, at a time when he might have done so without any inconvenience. Perhaps Beethoven’s letter (quoted No. V. of the Dial, Essay on Goethe) may furnish an explanation of this. Cherubini omitted to answer Beethoven’s affectionate and magnanimous letter, though he complied with the request it contained. But “the good Bettina” was faithful to her professions, and of essential use to Beethoven, by interesting her family in the conduct of his affairs.
He could not, for any purpose, accommodate himself to courts, or recognize their claims to homage. Two or three orders given him for works, which might have secured him the regard of the imperial family, he could not obey. Whenever he attempted to compose them, he found that the degree of restriction put upon him by the Emperor’s taste hampered him too much. The one he did compose for such a purpose, the “Glorreiche Augenblick,” Schindler speaks of as one of the least excellent of his works.
He could not bear to give lessons to the Archduke Rudolph, both because he detested giving regular lessons at all, and because he could not accommodate himself to the ceremonies of a court. Indeed it is evident enough from a letter of the Archduke’s, quoted by Schindler as showing most condescending regard, how unfit it was for the lion-king to dance in gilded chains amid these mummeries.
Individuals in that princely class he admired, and could be just to, for his democracy was very unlike that fierce vulgar radicalism which assumes that the rich and great must be bad. His was only vindication of the rights of man; he could see merit if
