quietly: "I
think I lent you a green baize bag." Nor would he allow that it was
lost: "You mean mislaid."]

[Footnote 20: A friend remembers Father Whitty, S.J., bringing to
Maryvale Mr. McCarthy and Mr. M'Quoin, young converts and subsequently
priests (the former is still living in Jersey). Both played the
violin, so an instrumental quartet was essayed (a rare event in the
community), the executants being the two named, and Fathers Newman and
Bowles (violoncello).]

[Footnote 21: Father Lockhart, in the _Paternoster Review_ for
September, 1890.]

Readers will remember here the passage in _Loss and Gain_: "Bateman:
'If you attempt more, it's like taxing a musical instrument beyond its
powers.' Reding: 'You but try, Bateman, to make a bass play
quadrilles, and you will see what is meant by taxing an instrument.'
Bateman: 'Well, I have heard Lindley play all sorts of quick tunes on
his bass, and most wonderful it is.' Reding: 'Wonderful is the right
word, it is very wonderful. You say, "How _can_ he manage it? It's
very wonderful for a bass;" but it is not pleasant in itself. In like
manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward
to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a haut-bois; it's forcing
the poor thing to do what it was never made for.'"[22]

[Footnote 22: _Loss and Gain_, p. 284, Sixth Edition, 1874.]

In the same mood, when a quartet of Schubert was played to him in
March, 1878, the sole remark he let fall was, "Very harmonious and
clever, but it does not touch the heart."

In March, 1883, he observed that he missed the minor key in
Palestrina, and on our adding that, perhaps, Mendelssohn had too much
of it, he went on, "It cuts me to the heart that minor," and so he
liked the mixed mode to the Psalm _In exitu Israel_, and was much
affected by the slow movements in Beethoven's Ninth Quartet and C
minor Symphony, and the Allegretto of the Symphony in A.

I cannot of that music rightly say,
Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones,
Oh, what a heart-subduing melody![23]

[Footnote 23: _The Dream of Gerontius._]

There was just that human element about it, so "deeply pathetic,"
which in the same way made him prefer Euripides to Sophocles, for all
the latter's "sweet composure, melodious fulness, majesty and
grace."[24] And here we may add, that as late as January, 1890,
_apropos_ of a Greek play for his school, he was as keen and eager as
ever about the merits