the
other, to whom the earliest letters of Chopin that have come down to
us are addressed, became, not to mention lesser offices and titles, a
Councillor of State, and died on June 4,1877. Whatever the influence of
the friends I have thus far named may have been on the man Chopin, one
cannot but feel inclined to think that Stephen Witwicki and Dominic
Magnuszewski, especially the former, must have had a greater influence
on the artist. At any rate, these two poets, who made their mark in
Polish literature, brought the musician in closest contact with the
strivings of the literary romanticism of those days. In later years
Chopin set several of Witwicki's songs to music. Both Magnuszewski and
Witwicki lived afterwards, like Chopin, in Paris, where they continued
to associate with him. Of the musical acquaintances we have to notice
first and foremost Julius Fontana, who himself said that he was a daily
visitor at Chopin's house. The latter writes in the above-mentioned
letter (December 27, 1828) to Titus Woyciechowski:--

The Rondo for two pianos, this orphan child, has found a step-
father in Fontana (you may perhaps have seen him at our
house, he attends the university); he studied it for more
than a month, but then he did learn it, and not long ago we
tried how it would sound at Buchholtz's.

Alexander Rembielinski, described as a brilliant pianist and a composer
in the style of Fesca, who returned from Paris to Warsaw and died
young, is said to have been a friend of Chopin's. Better musicians than
Fontana, although less generally known in the western part of Europe,
are Joseph Nowakowski and Thomas Nidecki. Chopin, by some years their
junior, had intercourse with them during his residence in Poland as
well as afterwards abroad. It does not appear that Chopin had what can
rightly be called intimate friends among the young Polish musicians. If
we may believe the writer of an article in Sowinski's Dictionary, there
was one exception. He tells us that the talented Ignaz Felix Dobrzynski
was a fellow-pupil of Chopin's, taking like him private lessons from
Elsner. Dobrzynski came to Warsaw in 1825, and took altogether thirty
lessons.

Working together under the same master, having the same
manner of seeing and feeling, Frederick Chopin and I.F.
Dobrzynski became united in a close friendship. The same
aims, the same artistic tendency to seek the UNKNOWN,
characterised their efforts. They comm