secretary strikes me as by no means
lightly to be esteemed. If Theodore objects to the way in which you
have portrayed Heinrich of Ofterdingen, at all events the suggestion of
your portrait of him is to be found in Wagenseil. If he thinks it a
fault that the singers never arrive at any actual singing from
continual preparation for the same, I must confess that I do not quite
know what he means. Perhaps he does not quite know, himself, what he
means. I should scarcely think he would have wished you to introduce
little verses of poetry, as being the masters' songs. The very fact of
your not having done so, but left their words to our imaginations,
redounds greatly to your credit in my opinion. I can never tolerate the
introducing of verses into a story. They always seem to go along in it
so lamely and limpingly, and interrupt its progress in an unnatural
sort of manner. The writer--keenly impressed with the feebleness of his
matter at some particular point--grasps at the crutch of verse. But if
he manages, in this fashion, to prop himself along for a time, this
sort of uniform, monotonous, tottery, pit-a-pat movement is very
different from the firm tread of vigorous health; and, probably, it is
a frequent error of our modern writers, that they seek their salvation
exclusively in the outward, metrical form, forgetting that it is the
poetic matter only which gives the metric pinions their due swing.
Well-sounding verses have the power of inducing a species of
somnambulistic intoxication; but this is very much like the effect of
the sound of a mill, or of other similar, regular and monotonous
noises. They procure one a sound sleep. All this I merely say en
passant, for the behoof of our musical Theodore, who is very often
deluded ('bribed' was the word I was going to employ) by the sweet
sound of meaningless verses; and, indeed, he is often attacked by a
sort of 'sonnetical' mania, under the influence of which he brings into
the world the strangest automaton-like little monsters. But now for you
again, Cyprian. I do not think you ought to plume yourself much on your
'Singers' Contest.' I cannot say that I am altogether satisfied with
it, though it certainly does not deserve death by fire. The laws of the
land declare that abortions are not to be put to death if they have
human heads; and in my opinion, this child of yours is not only not an
abortion at all, but it is fairly well-shapen, though it may be a
little weak about t