. Now, it is true that what is chiefly valuable in criticism is
what a man qualified to think and feel tells us he did think and feel
under the inspiration of a performance; but when carried too far, or
restricted too much, this conception of a critic's province lifts
personal equation into dangerous prominence in the critical activity,
and depreciates the elements of criticism, which are not matters of
opinion or taste at all, but questions of fact, as exactly
demonstrable as a problem in mathematics. In musical performance these
elements belong to the technics of the art. Granted that the critic
has a correct ear, a thing which he must have if he aspire to be a
critic at all, and the possession of which is as easily proved as that
of a dollar-bill in his pocket, the questions of justness of
intonation in a singer or instrumentalist, balance of tone in an
orchestra, correctness of phrasing, and many other things, are mere
determinations of fact; the faculties which recognize their existence
or discover their absence might exist in a person who is not "moved by
concord of sweet sounds" at all, and whose taste is of the lowest
type. It was the acoustician Euler, I believe, who said that he could
construct a sonata according to the laws of mathematics--figure one
out, that is.

[Sidenote: _The Rhapsodists._]

[Sidenote: _An English exemplar._]

Because music is in its nature such a mystery, because so little of
its philosophy, so little of its science is popularly known, there has
grown up the tribe of rhapsodical writers whose influence is most
pernicious. I have a case in mind at which I have already hinted in
this book--that of a certain English gentleman who has gained
considerable eminence because of the loveliness of the subject on
which he writes and his deftness in putting words together. On many
points he is qualified to speak, and on these he generally speaks
entertainingly. He frequently blunders in details, but it is only when
he writes in the manner exemplified in the following excerpt from his
book called "My Musical Memories," that he does mischief. The reverend
gentleman, talking about violins, has reached one that once belonged
to Ernst. This, he says, he sees occasionally, but he never hears it
more except

[Sidenote: _Ernst's violin._]

"In the night ... under the stars, when the moon is low and
I see the dark ridges of the clover hills, and rabbits and
hares, black against the pal