ndustry are the sciences
achieved so that one can truthfully say: no day without its line,--nulla
dies sine linea."

(1799, in a sketch for a theoretical handbook for Archduke Rudolph.)

ON HIS OWN DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER

So open-hearted and straightforward a character as Beethoven could not
have pictured himself with less reserve or greater truthfulness than he
did during his life. Frankness toward himself, frankness toward others
(though sometimes it went to the extreme of rudeness and ill-breeding)
was his motto. The joyous nature which was his as a lad, and which was
not at all averse to a merry prank now and then, underwent a change when
he began to lose his hearing. The dread of deafness and its consequences
drove him nearly to despair, so that he sometimes contemplated suicide.
Increasing hardness of hearing gradually made him reserved, morose and
gloomy. With the progress of the malady his disposition and character
underwent a decided change,--a fact which may be said to account for the
contradictions in his conduct and utterances. It made him suspicious,
distrustful; in his later years he imagined himself cheated and
deceived in the most trifling matters by relatives, friends, publishers,
servants.

Nevertheless Beethoven's whole soul was filled with a high idealism
which penetrated through the miseries of his daily life; it was full,
too, of a great love toward humanity in general and his unworthy nephew
in particular. Towards his publishers he often appeared covetous and
grasping, seeking to rake and scrape together all the money possible;
but this was only for the purpose of assuring the future of his nephew.
At the same time, in a merry moment, he would load down his table with
all that kitchen and cellar could provide, for the reflection of his
friends. Thus he oscillated continuously between two extremes; but the
power which swung the pendulum was always the aural malady. He grew
peevish and capricious towards his best friends, rude, even brutal at
times in his treatment of them; only in the next moment to overwhelm
them most pathetically with attentions. Till the end of his life he
remained a sufferer from his passionate disposition over which he
gradually obtained control until, at the end, one could almost speak of
a sunny clarification of his nature.

He has heedlessly been accused of having led a dissolute life, of
having been an intemperate drinker. There would be no necessi