the characters in Goethe's play are disposed in
the canonical number of symphonic movements.
How is it that men so shrewd in perception, so
brilliant in wit, so deep in appreciation of poetry
as he, can so entirely forget that a cloud can be
but a cloud, or that, if the cloud be proved to be a
whale or an ouzel, such feat can be done but to the
satisfaction of a Polonius?—how consent, again
and again, to confound association with indication?
My readers have heard of a dear, confused
gentlewoman, whom the early spring
reminded of roast pig, and have laughed at her
strange combination of sense with sentiment;
but Mrs. Nickleby was as logical as your
Transcendentalist who shall describe murder by
three trombones, and infidelity by united violas:
and by "diminished sevenths" suggest (not
accompany the detail of) that hope long deferred
which maketh the heart sick. The old painters,
it is true, ticketed virtues and sanctities
with certain colours; but the ear-superstitions
of Music are at once more arbitrary, and limited
to boot. A harp, it may be conceded, is seraphic
—a drum suggests assault and battery—but that
violins should be allotted to picturing the world,
and flutes to offer the colours of the flesh, and
bassoons to show forth the abominations of the
Devil, may be thought somewhat unfair and final.
Moreover, all this coarse alphabet-work
precludes everything like the possibility of light,
demi-tint—of expressing inconsistency—and all
that makes and marks character.—In truth,
there is no telling Clarissa Harlowe's story
in a symphony—no painting that superb
prospect over the plain from the upper town
of Bergamo by aid of the best score which
such skilled painters in music as Weber or
Mendelssohn can produce. Yet, Dr. Liszt has
essayed something of the kind, and with meagre
qualifications, beyond those of aspiration and
poetical enthusiasm. The gift of melody was
not dropped into his cradle, and it may be some
imperfect consciousness of this fact that has urged
one so resolute to fascinate, to conquer, and to
influence men, as he is—so habituated from infancy
to splendid munificence and arrogant triumph—
to the disturbing yet brilliant career of a meteor
—to force Music into tasks for which the art is
altogether unfitted. His is the malady of our
time—but every being touched by it is thereby
weakened: whether the same be a giant or a man
of low stature.

Wherefore a second part should have been
added to Faust in Goethe's old age (let it have
been ever so long in projection), and what that
part distinctly means, are to some heretical
persons puzzles only in some degree explicable by
the intense self-occupation, and the failing
powers of a great poet. Blind faith accepts such
mysteries with a gratitude proportioned to their
mysticism; and there have been found poetical
and accomplished musicians, who have not
shrunk from attempting to apply the clearest of
arts to the illustration of that which Goethe
himself did not profess to set forth as clear. One
of these, Mr. H. H. Pierson, though by birth
English, in training and taste thoroughly German,
has expended—why not at once say wasted?—
much good, if incomplete idea, on this obscure
and semi-chaotic production. Euphorion, The
Mothers, the Gray Women, the Lemures, are all
in his score. The selection of a subject is a
warrant for the manner of its treatment by a
sincere man; and our clever countryman—for Mr.
Pierson is indisputably clever, and more—has
yielded to the spell, and has produced something
which stands vexatiously in the midway betwixt
dream and reality; escaping from the one to the
other with an adroitness which may betoken
profound meditation and subtle conception—but
which, on the other hand, may be only a device to
conceal want of that sustaining power and
studious patience such as are indispensable to the
expression of every inspiration less brief than a few
verses—a few bars—a few grand forms sketched
on the canvas. Mr. Pierson's second part of Faust
has been presented in a German theatre or two
without much success or effect. It is not possible
to consider the music without a wonder, in which
regret has its share—regret over honest
perversity and mistake. No idler would undertake
such a task. No Titan could carry it through
adequately. What can be more sorrowful than
the productions and resulting disappointments
of wasted sincerity in effort?

Another example of this turns up in too
prominent a form—Faust music being the subject—
to be here passed by. Next to Mr. Pierson's
setting of the second part of Goethe's Mystery,
must be named the great Cantata by Robert
Schumann;—the posthumous work of an incomplete
man, disinterred, and put forward by the German
enthusiasts of the day, who have resolved, like
Dr. Caius, that "no honest man shall come into
their closet;" who, having arranged our
Shakespeare (one Schiller of theirs did so), cannot
endure the sight we are approaching of a Frenchman
having successfully "done into universal
music" this great drama of theirs. At the time
present, Schumann is their German greatest
man: paraded as the continuer of Beethoven,
as the deepener of the conventional Mendelssohn
(can fickleness go beyond this epithet?);
as a poet partially accepted during his lifetime,
and therefore to be immoderately deified now
he is gone. What if all this fending and proving
and protesting should merely indicate
infidelity to any truths as truths established—to
any idols as past mortal power to pull down?
What if the game be really not worth the candle?
What if Schumann be a third-rate artist, proved
as such by his perversity, obscurity, and resolution
to present platitude in place of fresh invention?
He was an honest man, without question: but a
man who mistook—throughout a whole busy brain-life
—bewilderment for inspiration, and therefore,
we conceive, without the arrogance of prophecy
—for in Art prophecy is apt to become arrogant
—that his music may not outlast the passions
and the fashions of this our time of antagonism.