rdon this jumble of Shakespeare!--I shall tell you what I think
of the blond madman who sets to music crazy philosophies, bloody
legends, sublime tommy-rot, and his friend's poems and pictures. At this
writing I have neither humor nor space.

As I understand the rank and jargon of modern criticism, Berlioz is
called the father of modern instrumentation. That is, he says nothing in
his music, but says it magnificently. His orchestration covers a
multitude of weaknesses with a flamboyant cloak of charity. [Now, here I
go again; I could have just as easily written "flaming"; but I, too,
must copy Berlioz!] He pins haughty, poetic, high-sounding labels to his
works, and, like Charles Lamb, we sit open-mouthed at concerts trying to
fill in his big sonorous frame with a picture. Your picture is not
mine, and I'll swear that the young man who sits next to me with a silly
chin, goggle-eyes and cocoanut-shaped head sees as in a fluttering
mirror the idealized image of a strong-chinned, ox-eyed, classic-browed
youth, a mixture of Napoleon at Saint Helena and Lord Byron invoking the
Alps to fall upon him. Now, I loathe such music. It makes its chief
appeal to the egotism of mankind, all the time slily insinuating that it
addresses the imagination. What fudge! Yes, the imagination of your own
splendid _ego_ in a white vest [we called them waistcoats when I was
young], driving an automobile down Walnut Street, at noon on a bright
Spring Sunday. How lofty!

Let us pass to the Hungarian piano-virtuoso who posed as a composer.
That he lent money and thematic ideas to his precious son-in-law,
Richard Wagner, I do not doubt. But, then, beggars must not be choosers,
and Liszt gave to Wagner mighty poor stuff, musically speaking. And I
fancy that Wagner liked far better the solid cash than the notes of
hand! Liszt, I think, would have had nothing to say if Berlioz had not
preceded him. The idea struck him, for he was a master of musical
snippets, that Berlioz was too long-winded, that his symphonies were
neither fish nor form. What ho! cried Master Franz, I'll give them a
dose homeopathic. He did, and named his prescription a _Symphonic Poem_
or, rather, _Poeme Symphonique_, which is not quite the same thing.
Nothing tickles the vanity of the groundlings like this sort of verbal
fireworks. "It leaves so much to the imagination," says the stout man
with the twenty-two collar and the number six hat. It does. And the
kind of imagination--Oh,