as
prevented from repeating the good fortune by that fatal illness
which soon set in. So he lived out the last glimmers of his life,
poverty-stricken, despondent, with few even of the amenities of
friendship to soothe his declining days. Yet those who know the
beautiful results of that life, and have even a faint glow of sympathy
with the life of a man of genius, will exclaim with one of the most
eloquent critics of Schubert:

"But shall we, therefore, pity a man who all the while reveled in the
treasures of his creative ore, and from the very depths of whose despair
sprang the sweetest flowers of song? Who would not battle with the
iciest blast of the north if out of storm and snow he could bring back
to his chamber the germs of the 'Winterreise?' Who would grudge the
moisture of his eyes if he could render it immortal in the strains of
Schubert's 'Lob der Thrane?'"

Schubert died in the flower of his youth, November 19, 1828; but he left
behind him nearly a thousand compositions, six hundred of which were
songs. Of his operas only the "Enchanted Harp" and "Rosamond" were put
on the stage during his lifetime. "Fierabras," considered to be his
finest dramatic work, has never been produced. His church music,
consisting of six masses, many offertories, and the great "Hallelujah"
of Klopstock, is still performed in Germany. Several of his symphonies
are ranked among the greatest works of this nature. His pianoforte
compositions are brilliant, and strongly in the style of Beethoven,
who was always the great object of Schubert's devoted admiration, his
artistic idol and model. It was his dying request that he should be
buried by the side of Beethoven, of whom the art-world had been deprived
the year before.

Compared with Schubert, other composers seem to have written in prose.
His imagination burned with a passionate love of Nature. The lakes, the
woods, the mountain heights, inspired him with eloquent reveries that
burst into song; but he always saw Nature through the medium of human
passion and sympathy, which transfigured it. He was the faithful
interpreter of spiritual suffering, and the joy which is born thereof.

The genius of Schubert seems to have been directly formed for the
expression of subjective emotion in music. That his life should have
been simultaneous with the perfect literary unfolding of the old
_Volkslied_ in the superb lyrics of Goethe, Heine, and their school,
is quite remarkable. Poe-try and son