at Oxford then who was a real musician and who played well, Professor Donkin, a great mathematician, and altogether a man sui generis. He was a great invalid; in fact, he was dying all the years I knew him, and was fully aware of it. It seemed to be quite admissible, therefore, that he, being an invalid, and I, being a German, should make music' at evening parties; but to ask a head of a house or a professor, or even a senior tutor, to play would have been considered almost an insult. And yet I feel certain there is more love, more honest enjoyment of music in England than anywhere else.

And how has the musical tide risen at Oxford since those days! Some of the young men now come up to college as very good performers on the pianoforte and other instruments. I never know how they learn it, considering the superior claims which cricket, football, the river, nay, the classics and mathematics also have on their time at school. There are musical clubs now at Oxford where the very best classical music, may be heard performed by undergraduates with the assistance of some professional players from London. All this is due to the influence of Sir F. Ouseley, and still more of Sir John Stainer, both professors of Music at Oxford. They have made music not only respectable, but really admired and loved among the undergraduates. Sir John Stainer has been indefatigable, and the lectures which he gives both on the science and history of music are crowded by young and old. They are real concerts, in which he is able to illustrate all he has to say with the help of a well-trained choir of Oxford amateurs. Asto myself, I have long become a mere listener. One learns the lesson, whether one likes it or not, that there is time for everything. Old fingers grow stiff and will no longer obey, and if one knows how a sonata of Beethoven ought to be played, it is most painful to play it badly. So at last I said: "Farewell!" The sun has set, though the clouds are roseate still with reflected rays. It may be that I have given too much time to music, but what would life have been without it? I do not like to exaggerate, or say anything that is not quite true. Musical ears grow sensitive to any false note, whether sharp or flat. But let us be quite honest, quite plain. Is there not in music, and in music alone of all the

arts, something that is not entirely of this earth? Harmony and rhythm may be under settled laws; and in that sense mathematicians may be right when they call mathematics silent music. But whence comes melody? Surely not from what we hear in the streets, or in the woods, or on the sea shore, not from anything that we hear with our outward ears, and are able to imitate, to improve, or to sublimise. Neither history nor evolution will help us to account for Schubert's "Trockne Blumen." Here, if anywhere, we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven to earth, and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth earthy. Melodies, however, are not of this earth, and the greatest of musical poets has truly said:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

F. MAX MÜLLER.

SINCE THE ELIZABETHANS.

IT has not been sufficiently, if it has been remarked at all, that Slav and Celtic fiction differ fundamentally from Saxon, and in this respect, that while the former make invariably for primary ideas, the latter is uniformly contented with secondary. But only since the Elizabethans is the Saxon satisfied with the representation of the mere appearance of life. Shakespeare's tragedies are pure elucidations of moral truths. "Hamlet" illustrates the case of a man whose dreams are in conflict with circumstances; "Macbeth" is the drama of ambition; "Othello" is the infuriated male, the struggle for the female ; "Lear," parental altruism; "Romeo and Juliet," the rapture of adolescent love; "Antony and Cleopatra," the boundless madness of the love-passion when it takes a man in middle age.

The transition from Shakespeare to Balzac is the easiest in literature, and in "La Cousine Bette," his most dramatic novel, the primary idea which sustains the narrative is the persistence of the amorous temperament in an elderly man, and in "Les Mémoires de deux Jeunes Mariées" we are confronted with the eternal problem: Shall we choose a life of pleasure or of duty? Shall a woman cultivate her senses, or shall she devote herself to her home, her children, and the advancement of her husband's interests? The "Chefd'œuvre Inconnu" relates the story of a celebrated painter who has been engaged for years upon a picture which he believes to be his finest. He has always refused to show the picture; and when at last, yielding to the entreaties of his friends, he uncovers it, they can distinguish no design, only a mass of multicoloured crustations, out of which in one corner appears a miraculously painted foot, all that remains of the original

picture, all that the labour of years has not obliterated. Possibly it will be well to note here that the intention of this article is not with symbolism but with primary ideas, and that the two must not be confused, though indeed the alliance is as close as that of values with chiaroscuro. The symbol begins the moment the writer perceives that his character represents an idea. To us all Othello is a symbol of jealousy; Hamlet, of doubt. Lucien, in "Illusions Perdues," summarises all that is inherently enchanting and imaginative in a young man. Philip, in "Un Ménage de Garçon," all the surly ferocity of a soldier by nature, a drunken soldier reeking of foul tobacco, a thief who robs his mother, his aunt, his brother; a wretch incapable of aught else but physical courage, and redeemed by it in sufficient measure to be endurable to the reader. But as Balzac's novels are brought together under the general title of the "Human Comedy," as many of his themes are comedy themes, it may be well to point out how, like Shakespeare in his lighter pieces, he conveys a sense of the eternal in the comment with which he surrounds his characters. Does not every scene in "Twelfth Night," no matter how farcical, seem to breathe the sensation that all is dream "and we the shadows of the dream"? That beautiful sadness was the subconsciousness of Shakespeare's mind, and the subconsciousness of Balzac's was a passionate will to live. So we rise from the comedies happily sighing, and from the novels eager to understand life.

Were the stories and characters of Balzac taken away from him, he would be still a great writer; on the love of parents for their children, of husbands for their wives, of lovers for their mistresses, of mistresses for their lovers, of scholars for ideas, on the joy of life, the peace of the grave, the vanity of work, the impulse to accomplish, Balzac has spoken as profoundly as Shakespeare. Even the necessity of worship he understands, and expresses it as sympathetically as Pascal. To compose pretty sentences on the subject of the colour of the seas and trees, to skim the surface of any secondary emotion, is to establish a claim to be considered a graceful writer, such as R. L. Stevenson undoubtedly was; but to be a great writer it is surely necessary to say profound things on profound subjects. It seems strange that contem

porary criticism should have entirely forgotten what seems an obvious truth, and that writers should be judged according to the infinite measure of their superficiality. Balzac and Landor thought otherwise. On every subject on which the heart may be moved they have said something penetrating, something essential.

If the reader will turn from Balzac to his favourite Saxon novelist, Fielding or Thackeray, he will find there men and women admirably observed in their superficial appearances; he will find men and women depicted as we see them; each will be stamped with his or her age, and with the habits and customs of his or her class. But the emotions which move them will be always secondary emotions. In "Tom Jones' and "Vanity Fair" no mention is made of religion, but in Trollope it induces an attendance in church, and if the young lady's sweetheart goes to India a little slumming. But no one surrenders the world for an idea, nor society for a love-passion. And "Tom Jones" illustrates the moderation-I use the word as synonymous with materialism-that Saxon literature fell into even as early as the middle of last century. The book was written when sexual relations were alluded to more openly in literature than they are now; of this literary licence Fielding took full advantage, and produced a novel which for sheer outspokenness knows no rival amid English novelists. But in literature the result is the same whether the writer accepts the materialism of the back parlour or the smoking-room. The Established Church prefers the tone of the former to that of the latter, and, no doubt, very rightly; but we are not discussing ethics but literature, and that we do not express ourselves as openly as Fielding is an unimportant literary accident. The essential is that the Saxon discovered the materialist novel in "Tom Jones," and liked it so much that he has gone on producing it ever since. Thackeray improved its form, Dickens enriched it with genial caricatures, Eliot painted it over with bleak Protestant positivism; but in essentials it has not changed, for the character of the race has not changed for the last hundred and fifty years. The ideas we find in "Tom Jones" are on the same plane as those we find in Trollope,