on, 1843), the first publication of some
length on the subject, and a Preface to, or, to be more precise,
a Memoir prefixed to Boosey & Co.'s The Mazurkas and Valses of F.
Chopin--seems to have in later years changed his early good opinion of
the Polish master.

[FOOTNOTE: Two suggestions have been made to me in explanation of this
change of opinion: it may have been due to the fear that the rising
glory of Chopin might dim that of Mendelssohn; or Davison may have taken
umbrage at Chopin's conduct in an affair relative to Mendelssohn. I
shall not discuss the probability of these suggestions, but will say
a few words with regard to the last-mentioned matter. My source of
information is a Paris letter in the Musical World of December 4, 1847.
After the death of Mendelssohn some foreign musicians living in Paris
proposed to send a letter of condolence to Mrs. Mendelssohn. One part
of the letter ran thus: "May it be permitted to us, German artists, far
from our country, to offer," &c. The signatures to it were: Rosenhain,
Kalkbrenner, Panofka, Heller, Halle, Pixis, and Wolff. Chopin when
applied to for his signature wrote: "La lettre venant des Allemands,
comment voulez-vous que je m'arroge le droit de la signer?" One would
think that no reasonable being could take exception to Chopin's conduct
in this affair, and yet the writer in the Musical World comments most
venomously on it.]

The battle fought in the pages of the Musical World in 1841 illustrates
the then state of matters in England. Hostilities commenced on October
28 with a criticism of the Mazurkas, Op. 41. Of its unparalleled nature
the reader shall judge himself:--

Monsieur Frederic Chopin has, by some means or other which we
cannot divine, obtained an enormous reputation, a reputation
but too often refused to composers of ten times his genius. M.
Chopin is by no means a putter down of commonplaces; but he
is, what by many would be esteemed worse, a dealer in the most
absurd and hyperbolical extravagances. It is a striking satire
on the capability for thought possessed by the musical
profession, that so very crude and limited a writer should be
esteemed, as he is very generally, a profound classical
musician. M. Chopin does not want ideas, but they never extend
beyond eight or sixteen bars at the utmost, and then he is
invariably in nubibus... the works of the composer give us
invariably the idea of an enthusiastic school-boy, whos