we need no
effort of the imagination, and though the machine can give us a personal
rendering it can never offer us the personality. In much the same way
the mechanical piano-player may give So-and-so's exact rendering if only
we follow the requisite directions, but it is impossible for it to be
the same. Two things seem alike, but one is stuffed, and the other
hollow.

[Note 12: Lancelot, in the "Referee."]

Personality, then, must always be a vital factor since it colours and
vitalises, as well as reinforces the meaning of the music. Spirit is a
fact, but a beautiful personality will invest it with all the glamour of
romance. The emotion may be "pure joy" but it needs a warm heart to give
it out to full effect to a coldish world. Consequently, for the beauty
to shine through, the artist's personality must be finely wrought. A
selfish soul might sing a love-song, but a woman would not be taken in
by it--unless she thought twice: it would not ring true enough. Beauty
lies in the heart of all worthy music, so the artist who studies it and
lives in its atmosphere gradually builds that beauty into the life and
the character: the mere expression henceforth makes it part of him
through memory. So, beautiful thoughts are needful food to the mind of
the artist, and no amount of cleverness in the simulation of this or
that emotion will ever enable the same effect to be produced, as when
beauty is reinforced by beauty. Personality counts beyond all
calculation.

The music that is written shows whether its composer was an artist or a
mechanic in music. "The spirit of anything which a man makes, or does,
is his nature expressed in those things, and the fineness or poorness of
his work and actions depends upon the way in which he feels or
thinks."[13] The academic writer, steeped in his contrapuntal devices
and harmonic progressions, so intent upon the orthodox resolution of his
discords, is apt to produce excellent dry bones without the informing
spirit. We have even heard it stated that no music publisher would deign
to consider for publication a song manuscript with Mus. Doc. on the
title page. Yet Parry's books of "English Lyrics" stand as permanent
testimony that scholarly music may also contain the emotional and
spiritual elements to infuse it with abundant life: the pity is that the
combination is none too frequent. "A vast proportion of what is printed
and sold as music... is meaningless, and therefore worthless."[14] Su