ial part of Mozart's music; and whose absence from that music
made us feel as if, despite the greatest musical perfection, Mozart's
idea were not completely given to us. Yet, in reality, this psychological
combination called Cherubino does not exist in the work of Mozart. It
exists only by the side of it. We speak of the "Marriage of Figaro" as
Mozart's work; we are accustomed to think of the Countess, of Figaro,
of Susanna, of Cherubino as belonging to Mozart; but in reality only
one half of the thing we call the "Marriage of Figaro" belongs to
Mozart--that half which consists in melodies and harmonies; and as
it happens, it is not in that, but in the other half belonging to
Beaumarchais and D'Aponte, the half consisting of words and their
suggestions of character, of expression and of movement, that really
exists, either the Countess, or Figaro, or Susanna, or Cherubino. Those
notes, which alone are Mozart's and which are nothing more than notes,
have been heard by us in the mouths of many women dressed and acting as
Beaumarchais's characters; they have been heard by us associated to the
words of Beaumarchais; they have been heard delivered with the dramatic
inflections suggested not by themselves but by those words; and thus, by
mere force of association, of slovenly thought and active fancy, we are
accustomed to consider all these characters as existing in the music of
Mozart, as being part and parcel of Mozart's conception; and when we
are presented with those notes, which, to the musician Mozart, were
merely notes without those dramatic inflections suggested solely by
Beaumarchais's words, when we hear in "Voi che sapete" only Mozart's
half of the work, we are disappointed and indignant, and cry out that
the composer's idea has been imperfectly rendered.

Cherubino, we say, is not in Mozart's half of the work; he is in the
words, not in the music. Is this a fault or a merit? is it impotence
in the art or indifference in the artist? Could Mozart have given us
Cherubino? and if able, ought he to have given him? The question is
double; a question of artistic dynamics, and a question of artistic
ethics: the question what can art do; and the question what art ought
to do. The first has been answered by the scientific investigations
of our own scientific times; the second has been answered by the
artistic practice of the truly artistic days of music. The questions are
strangely linked together, and yet strangely separate