uselessness of spending time and
labour on elaborate finish. But then, many admirable plots, which have
occurred to us in our poetic inspiration, and which we bring to you,
all pride, expecting you to be delighted with them, you reject in a
moment, as being unsuitable, and unworthy to be clothed in music. But
this must often be sheer caprice, or I don't know what else it can be;
because you often set to work upon texts which are absolutely wretched
and----'

"_Ludwig_. 'Stop a moment, my dear friend! Of course there are
composers who have as little idea of music as many rhyme-spinners have
of poetry, and _they_ have often put notes to plots which really are
wretched, in all respects. But real composers, who live and move and
have their being in true, glorious, heavenly _Music_, always choose
poetic texts.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'Do you say so of Mozart?'

"_Ludwig_. 'Mozart--however paradoxical it may appear to you--never
chose any but poetic texts for his classical operas. But, leaving that
on one side for the moment, my opinion is that it is always quite easy
to know what sort of plot is adapted for an opera, so that the poet
need never be in any danger of making any mistake about it.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'I must confess I never have really gone into this: and
indeed I know so little about music that I don't suppose it would have
been of much consequence if I had.'

"_Ludwig_. 'If by the expression "knowing about music" you mean being
thoroughly versed in the so-called "school routine" of music, there is
no necessity for your being that, to be able to know what composers
require. It is quite easy, altogether apart from the school routine, so
to comprehend, and have within one, the true essence of music as to be,
in this sense, a much better musician than a person who, after studying
the whole, extensive school-routine in the sweat of his forehead, and
labouring through all its manifold, intricate mazes and labyrinths,
worships its lifeless rules and regulations as a self-manufactured
Fetish, in place of the living Spirit: and whom this Idol-cult excludes
from the happiness of the higher realm of bliss.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'Then you think the poet might enter into this inner
sanctum without the preliminary initiation of the "school"?'

"_Ludwig_. 'I do, certainly. And I say that, in that far-off realm
which we often feel,--so dimly, but so unmistakeably,--to be so close
about us, whence marvellous voices sound to us, awakenin