other pieces of a solemn character, or else select and make
over to me some musical pieces already composed--the style of which I
will indicate later--as a foundation for appropriate compositions. As
soon as I know your real opinion on the subject, you shall receive
further details.

Your beautiful series of little essays on orchestra organization I have
left lying around till now, and the reason is that they contained a sort
of satire on our own conditions.

Now Reichard wishes them for the _Musical Review_. I hunt them up
again, look them over, and I feel that I really could not deprive the
Intelligence Page of our _Literatur-Zeitung_ of them. Some of our
conditions here have changed, and, after all, a man may surely be
allowed to censure those things which he did not try to hinder.

Privy Councillor Wolf of Halle is here at present. If only I could hope
to see you also here this year! Would it not be possible for you to come
to Lauchstaedt the end of July, so as to help, there on the spot, in the
preparation and performance of the above-mentioned work?

Think it over and only tell me there is a possibility of it; we shall
then be able to devise the means of bringing it to pass.

* * * * *

LETTER 606

Weimar, October 30, 1808.

The world of art is just now too much run down for a young man to be
able to realize exactly where he stands. People always search for
inspiration everywhere but in the place where it originates, and if they
do once catch sight of the source, then they cannot find the path
leading to it. Therefore I am reduced to despair by half a dozen of the
younger poetic spirits, who, though endowed with extraordinary natural
talent, will scarcely accomplish much that I can ever take pleasure in.
Werner, Ochlenschlaeger, Arnim, Brentano and others are still working
and practising at their art, but everything they do is absolutely
lacking in form and character. Not one of them can understand that the
highest and only operation of nature and art is the creation of form,
and in the form, detail, so that each single thing shall become, be, and
remain something separate and important. There is no art in letting your
talent go to suit your humor and convenience.

The sad part of it is that the humorous, because it has no support and
no law within itself, sooner or later degenerates into melancholy and
bad temper. We have been forced to experience the most horrible exampl