tily produced merely to
meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent
beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise
of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he
undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful
thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of
the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made
and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest
or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity
between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed
out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another
is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found
examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its
thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches
the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more
worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their
lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of
this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio
should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna
Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and
as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the
Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of
Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.

[6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor.
Ad Pisones._

In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only
real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there
is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in
melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this
feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form,
no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical
proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious.
These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is
generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all
this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those
expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture,
required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come