by giving people something easy to do
beside conversing. I say Rossini did this; but I only know of his doing
it once, at Trouville, where F. Hiller met him, who has published the
Conversations they had together.

Did you lead the very curious Paper in the Cornhill, {122b} a year back,
I think, concerning the vext question of Mozart's Requiem? It is curious
as a piece of Evidence, irrespective of any musical Interest. Evidence,
I believe, would compel a Law Court to decide that the Requiem was
mainly, not Mozart's, but his pupil Sussmayer's. And perhaps the Law
Court might justly so decide, if by 'mainly' one understood the more
technical business of filling up the ideas suggested by the Master. But
then those ideas are just everything; and no Court of Musical Equity but
would decide, against all other Evidence, that those ideas were Mozart's.
It is known that he was instructing Sussmayer, almost with his last
breath, about some drum accompaniments to the Requiem; and I have no
doubt, hummed over the subjects, or melodies, of all.

_To W. H. Thompson_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Feb._ 1, [1871],

MY DEAR MASTER,

The Gorgias duly came last week, thank you: and I write rather earlier
than I should otherwise have done to satisfy you on that point.
Otherwise, I say, I should have waited awhile till I had gone over all
the Notes more carefully, with some of the sweet-looking Text belonging
to them; which would have taken some time, as my Eyes have not been in
good trim of late, whether from the Snow on the Ground, and the murky Air
all about one, or because of the Eyes themselves being two years older
than when they got hurt by Paraffin.

The Introduction I have read twice, and find it quite excellently
written. Surely I miss some--ay, more than some--of the Proof you sent
me two years ago; some of the Argument to prove the relation between this
Dialogue and the Republic, and consequently of the Date that must be
assigned to it. All that interested me then as it does now, and I would
rather have seen the Introduction all the longer by it. Perhaps,
however, I am confounding my remembrances of the Date question (which of
course follows from the matter) with the Phaedrus Introduction.

Then as to what I have seen of the Notes: they seem to me as good as can
be. I do not read modern Scholars, and therefore do not know how
generally the Style of English Note-writing may be [different] from that
of the Latin one was used to.