ve, but to be young was very Heaven."[176] Why
expect senatorial wisdom and the fancy of youth in any one person!

[Footnote 176: Compare also the definition of genius by Masters in the
_Spoon River Anthology_:

"In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision--
Genius is wisdom and youth."]

A most important distinction between a classical and a romantic
composer is the knowledge and love of literature shown by the latter.
Although Haydn kept a note-book on his London tours, and although we
have a fair number of letters from Mozart, in neither of these men do
we find any appreciation of general currents of thought and life. In
many of Beethoven's works we have seen how close was the connection
between literature and musical expression. All the Romantic composers,
with the exception of Schubert, were broadly cultivated, and several
could express themselves artistically in words as well as in notes.
They may not have been on this account any better composers, as far as
sheer creative vitality is concerned, but it is evident that their
imaginations were nourished in quite a different way and hence a novel
product was to be expected. Romantic music has been defined as a
reflex of poetry expressed in musical terms, at times fairly trembling
on the verge of speech. Music can not, to be sure, describe matters of
fact, but the Romantic composers have brought it to a high degree of
poetical suggestiveness. Thus the horn-calls of Weber and Schubert
remind us of "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" and much romantic
music arouses our imaginations and enchants our senses in the same way
as the lines of Keats where he tells of "Magic casements opening on
the foam of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn," the chief glory of
which is not any precise intellectual idea they convey, but the
fascinating picture which carries us from the land of hard and fast
events into the realm of fancy. Schumann claimed that his object in
writing music was so to influence the imagination of the listeners
that they could go on dreaming for themselves. A second characteristic
is the freedom of form. Considering that a free rein to their fancy
was incompatible with strict adherence to traditional rules, the
Romantic spirits refused to be bound by forms felt to be inadequate.
Although this attitude sometimes resulted in diffuse