bstantial nucleus for any letters
that may hereafter be discovered. On the other hand, as many of Beethoven's
Letters slumber in foreign lands, especially in the unapproachable cabinets
of curiosities belonging to various close-fisted English collectors, an
entire edition of the correspondence could only be effected by a most
disproportionate outlay of time and expense.

When revising the text of the Letters, it seemed to me needless perpetually
to impair the pleasure of the reader by retaining the mistakes in
orthography; but enough of the style of writing of that day is adhered to,
to prevent its peculiar charm being entirely destroyed. Distorted and
incorrect as Beethoven's mode of expression sometimes is, I have not
presumed to alter his grammar, or rather syntax, in the smallest degree:
who would presume to do so with an individuality which, even amid startling
clumsiness of style, displays those inherent intellectual powers that often
did violence to language as well as to his fellow-men? Cyclopean masses of
rock are here hurled with Cyclopean force; but hard and massive as they
are, the man is not to be envied whose heart is not touched by these
glowing fragments, flung apparently at random right and left, like meteors,
by a mighty intellectual being, however perverse the treatment language may
have received from him.

The great peculiarity, however, in this strange mode of expression is, that
even such incongruous language faithfully reflects the mind of the man
whose nature was of prophetic depth and heroic force; and who that knows
anything of the creative genius of a Beethoven can deny him these
attributes?

The antique dignity pervading the whole man, the ethical contemplation of
life forming the basis of his nature, prevented even a momentary wish on my
part to efface a single word of the oft-recurring expressions so painfully
harsh, bordering on the unaesthetic, and even on the repulsive, provoked by
his wrath against the meanness of men. In the last part of these genuine
documents, we learn with a feeling of sadness, and with almost a tragic
sensation, how low was the standard of moral worth, or rather how great was
the positive unworthiness, of the intimate society surrounding the master,
and with what difficulty he could maintain the purity of the nobler part of
his being in such an atmosphere. The manner, indeed, in which he strives to
do so, fluctuating between explosions of harshness and almost weak