noblest would not disown. With all his puerilities there is a mixture
of grandeur. There are passages in "Ernani," "Rigoletto," "Traviata,"
"Trovatore," and "Aida," so strong and dignified, that it provokes a
wonder that one with such capacity for greatness should often descend
into such bathos.

To better illustrate the false art which mars so much of Verdi's
dramatic method, a comparison between his "Rigoletto," so often claimed
as his best work, and Rossini's "Otello" will be opportune. The air sung
by _Gilda_ in the "Rigoletto," when she retires to sleep on the eve of
the outrage, is an empty, sentimental yawn; and in the quartet of
the last act, a noble dramatic opportunity, she ejects a chain of
disconnected, unmusical sobs, as offensive as _Violetta's_ consumptive
cough. _Desdemona's_ agitated air, on the other hand, under Rossini's
treatment, though broken short in the vocal phrase, is magnificently
sustained by the orchestra, and a genuine passion is made consistently
musical; and then the wonderful burst of bravura, where despair and
resolution run riot without violating the bounds of strict beauty in
music--these are master-strokes of genius restrained by art.

In Verdi, passion too often misses intensity and becomes hysterical.
He lacks the elements of tenderness and humor, but is frequently
picturesque and charming by his warmth and boldness of color. His
attempts to express the gay and mirthful, as for instance in the
masquerade music of "Traviata" and the dance music of "Rigoletto," are
dreary, ghastly, and saddening; while his ideas of tenderness are apt
to take the form of mere sentimentality. Yet generalities fail in
describing him, for occasionally he attains effects strong in their
pathos, and artistically admirable; as, for example, the slow air for
the heroine, and the dreamy song for the gypsy mother in the last act
of "Trovatore." An artist who thus contradicts himself is a perplexing
problem, but we must judge him by the habitual, not the occasional.

Verdi is always thoroughly in earnest, never frivolous. He walks on
stilts indeed, instead of treading the ground or cleaving the air,
but is never timid or tame in aim or execution. If he cannot stir the
emotions of the soul he subdues and absorbs the attention against
even the dictates of the better taste; while genuiue beauties gleaming
through picturesque rubbish often repay the true musician for what he
has undergone.

So far this compos