ioz talks much about
himself, and dares to estimate himself boldly. There was no small
vanity about this colossal spirit. He speaks of himself with outspoken
frankness, as he would discuss another. We can not do better than to
quote one of these self-measurements: "My style is in general very
daring, but it has not the slightest tendency to destroy any of the
constructive elements of art. On the contrary, I seek to increase the
number of these elements. I have never dreamed, as has foolishly been
supposed in France, of writing music without melody. That school exists
to-day in Germany, and I have a horror of it. It is easy for any one to
convince himself that, without confining myself to taking a very short
melody for a theme, as the very greatest masters have, I have always
taken care to invest my compositions with a real wealth of melody. The
value of these melodies, their distinction, their novelty, and charm,
can be very well contested; it is not for me to appraise them. But to
deny their existence is either bad faith or stupidity; only as these
melodies are often of very large dimensions, infantile and short-sighted
minds do not clearly distinguish their form; or else they are wedded
to other secondary melodies which veil their outlines from those same
infantile minds; or, upon the whole, these melodies are so dissimilar
to the little waggeries that the musical _plebs_ call melodies that they
can not make up their minds to give the same name to both. The dominant
qualities of my music are passionate expression, internal fire, rhythmic
animation, and unexpected changes."

Heinrich Heine, the German poet, who was Berlioz's friend, called him
a "colossal nightingale, a lark of eagle-size, such as they tell us
existed in the primeval world." The poet goes on to say: "Berlioz's
music, in general, has in it something primeval if not antediluvian to
my mind; it makes me think of gigantic species of extinct animals, of
fabulous empires full of fabulous sins, of heaped-up impossibilities;
his magical accents call to our minds Babylon, the hanging gardens the
wonders of Nineveh, the daring edifices of Mizraim, as we see them in
the pictures of the Englishman Martin." Shortly after the publication of
"Lutetia," in which this bold characterization was expressed, the first
performance of Berlioz's "Enfance du Christ" was given, and the poet,
who was on his sick-bed, wrote a penitential letter to his friend for
not having given