e parts
are by no means on a par with his enthusiasm, who WILL be
original whether he CAN or not. There is a clumsiness about
his harmonies in the midst of their affected strangeness, a
sickliness about his melodies despite their evidently FORCED
unlikeness to familiar phrases, an utter ignorance of design
everywhere apparent in his lengthened works...The entire works
of Chopin present a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and
excruciating cacophony. When he is not THUS singular, he is no
better than Strauss or any other waltz compounder... such as
admire Chopin, and they are legion, will admire these
Mazurkas, which are supereminently Chopin-ical; that do NOT
we.

Wessel and Stapleton, the publishers, protested against this shameful
criticism, defending Chopin and adducing the opinions of numerous
musicians in support of their own. But the valorous editor "ventures to
assure the distinguished critics and the publishers that there will
be no difficulty in pointing out a hundred palpable faults, and an
infinitude of meretricious uglinesses, such as, to real taste and
judgment, are intolerable." Three more letters appeared in the following
numbers--two for (Amateur and Professor) and one against (Inquirer)
Chopin; the editor continuing to insist with as much violence as
stupidity that he was right. It is pleasant to turn from this senseless
opposition to the friends and admirers of the master. Of them we learn
something in Davison's Essay on the Works of F. Chopin, from which I
must quote a few passages:--

This Concerto [the E minor] has been made known to the
amateurs of music in England by the artist-like performance of
Messrs. W. H. Holmes, F. B. Jewson, H. B. Richards, R.
Barnett, and other distinguished members of the Royal Academy,
where it is a stock piece...The Concerto [in F minor] has been
made widely known of late by the clever performance of that
true little prodigy Demoiselle Sophie Bohrer....These charming
bagatelles [the Mazurkas] have been made widely known in
England through the instrumentality of Mr. Moscheles, Mr.
Cipriani Potter, Mr. Kiallmark, Madame de Belleville-Oury, Mr.
Henry Field (of Bath), Mr. Werner, and other eminent pianists,
who enthusiastically admire and universally recommend them to
their pupils...To hear one of those eloquent streams of pure
loveliness [the nocturnes] delivered by such pianists as
Edouard Pirkhert, William Holm