indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in
which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the
soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and
trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty.
Milton's lines--

Where the bright seraphim in burning row
Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--

seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But
we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result
of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The
thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with
consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the
world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of
music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers
in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his
themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind
before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion
for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible
perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not
speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the
cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic
form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value
which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty.
This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to
attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how
marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For
lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but
must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his
mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters,
Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said
to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his
glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of
space, the prince of the powers of the air.

Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it,
unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our
apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon
paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear
together. I hav