eadth."

"What I can't understand," said Lothair, "is, why Theodore, with his
command of language and poetical expression, doesn't write librettos
for himself? Why should we have to learn to be musicians, and expend
our poetical powers, merely to produce a sort of block, or lay figure,
for him to give life and motion to? Is it not principally because
composers are usually one-sided people, without enough _general_
education, that they require other folks to help them to do their own
work? Are perfect unity of text and music conceivable, except when poet
and composer are one and the same person?"

"All that sounds astonishingly plausible," said Theodore, "and yet it
is utterly and completely untrue. I maintain that it is wholly
impossible that any one person can write a work, the words and the
music of which shall both be excellent."

"You composers," said Lothair, "get that idea into your heads either
because you are absurdly unenergetic, or constitutionally indolent. The
notion of having to go through the labour of writing the words before
you can set to work at the music is so disagreeable to you that you
can't bring yourselves to face it; but my belief is that, to a really
inspired composer, the words and the music would occur simultaneously."

"You are rather driving me into a corner," said Theodore, "so instead
of carrying on this argument, I shall ask you to let me read you a
dialogue about the necessary conditions, or essentials of opera, which
I wrote several years ago that eventful period which we have passed
through was then only beginning. I thought my artistic existence
seriously menaced, and I fell into a state of despondency, which was
probably partly the result of bad health. At this time I made a
Serapiontic friend, who had abandoned the pen for the sword. He cheered
me in my despondency, and forced me to throw myself into the full
current of the events of that stirring time." Without further
introduction, Theodore at once began:--

"THE POET AND THE COMPOSER.

"The enemy was before the gates. Heavy guns were thundering in every
direction, and shells were hurtling through the air; the people of the
town were running, with white faces, into their houses, and the empty
streets rang to the tramp of the cavalry patrols that were cantering
along through them, and driving, with threats and curses, such of the
soldiers as were loitering, or had fallen out of the ranks from any
c