an
without cruelty, and the humorous love of Figaro and his sprightly
bride Susanna. Each of these characters typifies one of the many
species of love. But Cherubino anticipates and harmonises all. They
are conscious, experienced, world-worn, disillusioned, trivial. He is
all love, foreseen, foreshadowed in a dream of life to be; all love,
diffused through brain and heart and nerves like electricity; all
love, merging the moods of ecstasy, melancholy, triumph, regret,
jealousy, joy, expectation, in a hazy sheen, as of some Venetian
sunrise. What will Cherubino be after three years? A Romeo, a
Lovelace, a Lothario, a Juan? a disillusioned rake, a sentimentalist,
an effete fop, a romantic lover? He may become any one of these, for
he contains the possibilities of all. As yet, he is the dear glad
angel of the May of love, the nightingale of orient emotion.
This moment in the unfolding of character Mozart has arrested and
eternalised for us in Cherubino's melodies; for it is the privilege of
art to render things most fugitive and evanescent fixed imperishably
in immortal form.

IV

This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was probably right.
Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might not have philosophised the
_Nozze_ thus. Yet, in the main, I believe that my instinct was
well grounded. Music, especially when wedded to words, more especially
when those words are dramatic, cannot separate itself from emotion. It
will not do to tell us that a melody is a certain sequence of sounds;
that the composer chose it for its beauty of rhythm, form, and tune,
and only used the words to get it vocalised. We are forced to go
farther back, and ask ourselves, What suggested it in the first place
to the composer? why did he use it precisely in connection with
this dramatic situation? How can we answer these questions except by
supposing that music was for him the utterance through art of some
emotion? The final fact of human nature is emotion, crystallising
itself in thought and language, externalising itself in action and
art. 'What,' said Novalis, 'are thoughts but pale dead feelings?'
Admitting this even in part, we cannot deny to music an emotional
content of some kind. I would go farther, and assert that, while a
merely mechanical musician may set inappropriate melodies to words,
and render music inexpressive of character, what constitutes a musical
dramatist is the conscious intention of fitting to the words of his
librett