second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an
anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet,
Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a
sibyl, and Doehler a pianist.

But if our investigation is to be profitable, we must proceed
analytically. It will be best to begin with the fundamental technical
qualities. First of all, then, we have to note the suppleness and
equality of Chopin's fingers and the perfect independence of his hands.
"The evenness of his scales and passages in all kinds of touch," writes
Mikuli, "was unsurpassed, nay, prodigious." Gutmann told me that his
master's playing was particularly smooth, and his fingering calculated
to attain this result. A great lady who was present at Chopin's last
concert in Paris (1848), when he played among other works his Valse in
D flat (Op. 64, No. 1), wished to know "le secret de Chopin pour que les
gammes fussent si COULEES sur le piano." Madame Dubois, who related
this incident to me, added that the expression was felicitous, for
this "limpidite delicate" had never been equalled. Such indeed were the
lightness, delicacy, neatness, elegance, and gracefulness of Chopin's
playing that they won for him the name of Ariel of the piano. The reader
will remember how much Chopin admired these qualities in other artists,
notably in Mdlle. Sontag and in Kalkbrenner.

So high a degree and so peculiar a kind of excellence was of course
attainable only under exceptionally favourable conditions, physical
as well as mental. The first and chief condition was a suitably formed
hand. Now, no one can look at Chopin's hand, of which there exists a
cast, without perceiving at once its capabilities. It was indeed small,
but at the same time it was thin, light, delicately articulated, and, if
I may say so, highly expressive. Chopin's whole body was extraordinarily
flexible. According to Gutmann, he could, like a clown, throw his legs
over his shoulders. After this we may easily imagine how great must have
been the flexibility of his hands, those members of his body which he
had specially trained all his life. Indeed, the startlingly wide-spread
chords, arpeggios, &c., which constantly occur in his compositions, and
which until he introduced them had been undreamt-of and still are far
from being common, seemed to offer him no difficulty, for he executed
them not only without any visible effort, but even with a