development. There are, indeed, some grand exceptions from this generalization—the last movement of the Eroica, above all others—but there still exist too many examples to justify the remark. About this time Beethoven made his only artistic tour, visiting Leipzig and Berlin, where he played several times at court, received a handsome gift from the king, and wrote his first two violoncello sonatas, to perform with the then popular Duport. In the Prussian capital, also, he met with Prince Louis Ferdinand, the patron and pupil of Dussek, whose musical taste he acknowledged, and who proved this by his appreciation of the genius of Beethoven. Shortly after his return to Vienna, a fashionable countess gave an entertainment, to bring this famous dilletante and artist together; when she greatly incensed the latter by not assigning to him a place at the nobility's table in the supper-room; for which, however, the prince made some amends by seating the composer on his right, and the countess on his left hand, at a dinner of his own; but Beethoven had already resented the indignity put upon him and his art, and thus given the first proof that is recorded of the republicanism which was his indomitable political principle. Strange as it may seem that, surrounded by the admiring aristocracy of the country, and fostered with a truly fraternal fondness by them, he should have nourished such a feeling; his proud independence was unswerving, and he would have sacrificed the highest worldly advantages rather than suffer this, in the slightest degree, to be compromised.
Of all the great musicians that have been, no one has shown such a continual development of his genius as Beethoven, and so great was this with him that critics have, not unfitly, classed his works in three separate styles, corresponding with three periods of his life; but although his mind was in an incessant state of progress, and the productions of each epoch are manifestly distinguished from those of the other two, this distinction must be understood to refer to style and not to merit, since in his latest years he wrote bagatelles and other pieces of the lightest, nay of the most trivial character; whereas in this early time he produced some of his greatest, if not his most individual masterpieces, such as the Sonata in E flat. Op. 7, the Quintet in the same key, and the Sonate Pathétique.
It was now that he took lessons, professedly in dramatic composition, of Salieri, his connection with whom is acknowledged in his first three violin sonatas. Whatever he may have expected, "he received lessons, but not instruction," from this fashionable composer of his day; for the grand dramatic power which marks his writing was not to be taught him, and the conventionalities of the lyric drama are totally absent from his few theatrical works.
In 1796 he first began to suffer from that dreadful malady—the worst evil to which he of all men could be subject—which embittered his life, which influenced his character, which excluded him from society, and which cannot have been without its important effect upon his music—the loss of hearing. Space will not permit the recital of the many painful incidents that sprang from this calamity; but it must be noticed that it made him irritable in temper, violent in manner, and suspicious to the last degree; detesting to play or even to appear in company, and distrustful of every one, even of those most zealous in his interest. It is needless to trace the course of the disease through thirty years, which, baffling the greatest medical skill, and proceeding by degrees, ended in almost total deafness. Nothing can be more pathetic than the manner in which he speaks of his affliction in his letters to Dr. Wegeler, to Bettina von Arnim, and others; but it cannot require his own words of complaint to make us estimate the misery it occasioned him. Let it not be thought profane to mention here one whimsical consequence of this misfortune. It naturally led Beethoven to seek, in the light periodical literature of the day, the resource which others find in conversation, and his love of drollery fixed his attention upon the perverted expressions common in facetious writing, which, unaware of their peculiarity, since incapable of social parlance, he adopted in his ordinary speech, and thus his language, abounding in epithets that had no reference to the occasion, became extravagant, if not unintelligible.
At this time the famous quartet party, of which Schuppanzigh was the first violin, first met at the residence of the Russian ambassador, Count Rasumowsky. For Beethoven to witness their remarkable performances was for him to be incited to write for them, and he accordingly now produced his Quartet in D, which was rapidly followed by the other five published with it. He was closely connected with this eminently artistic association to the end of his life, and wrote all his works of that class with a special view to their performance; his transcendant excellence as a quartet writer is thus, in some sort, a consequence of the excellence of this party; for though he had been urged by Count Affany to compose for string instruments, his trios and his first quintet were the only result, until he became concerned in the Rasumowsky meetings.
His general habit of composition was to set down every idea as it occurred to him, and afterwards to amalgamate these into complete movements; he would even modify a phrase in many different forms upon paper, before he was satisfied to incorporate it into a work; and thus he employed his sketch-book, as Mozart did his memoir, making it the crucible in which he moulded his creations into maturity. He frequently pondered in this manner for very long upon a composition, and would sometimes have several in progress at once; but, on the contrary, he would occasionally produce a work with the promptness of improvisation; and so, when a lady at the opera lamented to him the loss of some favourite variations on the air, Nel cor piu, then being sung, he wrote his piece on this theme, and sent it to her the following morning. Again, the Horn Sonata which he wrote to play with the celebrated Punto, had not a note on paper the day before the performance, and both executants had to read from the author's manuscript; the same was the case some five or six years later with the Violin Sonata, Op. 47, composed for Mr. Bridgetower, the English violinist, and himself to play; for he called up his pupil, Ries, at four in the morning of the concert, to copy the first movement, while he was writing the andante, with variations. In 1799 he wrote the ballet of "Prometheus," of which the merit of the overture makes us regret the loss of the rest of the music.
This first period of his career may be considered to close with the Symphony in D, which he wrote in 1801, and of which he made three entire scores before he was satisfied to dismiss it. In regarding the productions of this epoch, we must notice the strikingly original conception of the scherzo, as it appears in the Septet and in the Symphony in C, a gern that greatly expanded itself in the maturity of after works; besides this, they present little that is individual to our master beyond their excellence, which is, however, such as to rank them with the greatest things that had preceded them. This fact is a powerful illustration of the truth that originality consists, not necessarily in an exceptional habit of thought, but may be progressively developed from external impressions, which, in the case of Beethoven, were the seeds that ultimately ripened into the most original individuality that has ever appeared in music.
Beethoven was of a most inflammable nature, and is reported to have entertained as many ardent passions as he met with objects to inspire them. At the beginning of the present century, however, he found one who made a deeper and far more lasting impression upon his heart than any of the others; this was the Countess Giulietta di Guicciardi, to whom he dedicated the "Sonata quasi Fantasia," in C sharp minor, to whom so late as the summer of 1806 he wrote three letters, expressing all that words can reveal of the intense feeling this wonderful creation embodies, and whom, notwithstanding their discrepancy of rank, he, four years afterwards, seriously purposed to marry. She it was who, in 1801, lured him for a time back into society, from which the embarrassment of his deafness had already exiled him; who gave him renewed confidence in himself, and reliance on the world around him; who was his constant object of most anxious interest, his constant source of brightest inspiration. The fastidious M. Schindler, with a reserve less delicate than unaccountable, suppresses the circumstances of this connection, which was perhaps the most important to his artistic career of any that he formed; and we have, therefore, little evidence of its effect upon his art and mind, beyond what is revealed in the impassioned character of his music, of which it must always be regarded as the key.
In 1801 he received Ferdinand Ries as a pupil, who was his constant companion for the next few years, and was devoted to his interest ever afterwards. At this time his brother Carl came to reside at Vienna, and his intercourse also with his brother Johann became much more frequent than it seems to have been in previous years. The closer connection with his family, to whom he was unalterably attached, aided little his personal com-
