form he is unapproachable. In the whole range of
music there is nothing like it elsewhere. It is peculiar to Beethoven,
and is another example of the many-sidedness of the great composer.
"Happiness is a new idea in Europe," said St. Just, speaking of the
period immediately following the French Revolution. Whether or not
Beethoven ever met with this remark, its significance at least was taken
to heart. The word Scherz--joke, sport, is sufficiently obvious. He goes
much farther at times than simply to play pranks, however. A wide range
of expression is possible in the Scherzo when manipulated by a
master-mind like that of Beethoven. The satirical, sarcastic humor which
escaped him in social intercourse at times, is vented on a colossal
scale in the Scherzo, in which he often makes sport of humanity itself,
making it the subject of his jest, his ridicule--its foibles being
shown up, its follies exposed. When projected in this mood, the movement
calls for intellectual co-operation, and is of equal importance with the
others.

Humor has been defined as the outcome of simplicity and philosophy in
the character. It can exist independently of genius we know, but genius
is never without humor. In other words, wherever there is a work of
genius, it transpires that the author has a fund of humor with which he
occasionally enriches his work. The profoundest philosophical treatises
have it. It is a part of the stock in trade of every great novelist;
Fielding, Thackeray, George Eliot, Walter Scott. It frequently comes to
the surface in Schopenhauer pessimist though he be; it pervades
Shakespeare. Few men regarded life with greater seriousness than
Thoreau, but humor sparkles all over his works. It is only where this is
in excess that it detracts from the value of the work. Not important in
itself when separated from the deeper work which it accompanies, it is
yet, all in all, one of the infallible tests, though a minor one, of the
work of any man of genius. A sense of humor exists in the man even
though he keep it out of his work, if he is good for anything.

Beethoven's humor was titanic, heroic, on a grand scale, always with
what might be called a certain seriousness about it like that of a lion
at play. Mozart gives many instances of humor in his compositions, but
with a great difference in the character. His disposition was all
gentleness and sweetness, and his humor is characterized by these
attributes. It is on a small scale,