ity cannot be bettered:
"A man of blameless life, he was never pharasaical; he was
compassionate toward the slips and failings of poor humanity. He was a
true patriot, proud and hopeful of his country and of its artistic
future, but he could not brook the thought of patriotism used as a
cloak to cover mediocrity in art.... He was one who worked steadily
and courageously in the face of discouragement; who never courted by
trickery or device the favour of the public; who never fawned upon
those who might help him; who in his art kept himself pure and
unspotted."

"O that so many pitchers of rough clay
Should prosper and the porcelain break in two!"

THE MUSIC-MAKER

CHAPTER III

HIS ART AND ITS METHODS

Among those music-makers of to-day who are both pre-eminent and
representative the note of sincere romance is infrequently sounded.
The fact must be obvious to the most casual observer of musical art in
its contemporary development. The significant work of the most
considerable musicians of our time--of Strauss, Debussy, Loeffler,
d'Indy--has few essentially romantic characteristics. It is necessary
to distinguish between that fatuous Romanticism of which Mr. Ernest
Newman has given an unequalled definition: the Romanticism which
expended itself in the fabrication of a pasteboard world of "gloomy
forests, enchanted castles, impossible maidens, and the obsolete
profession of magic," and that other and imperishable Spirit of
Romance whose infrequent embodiment in modern music I have remarked.
_That_ is a romance in no wise divorced from reality--is, in fact, but
reality diviningly perceived; if it uses the old Romanticistic
properties, it uses them not because of any inherent validity which
they possess, but because they may at times be made to serve as
symbols. It deals in a truth that is no less authentic because it is
conveyed in terms of a beauty that may often be in the last degree
incalculable and aerial.

It is to its persistent embodiment of this valid spirit of romance
that MacDowell's work owes its final and particular distinction. I
know of no composer who has displayed a like sensitiveness to the
finer stuff of romance. He has chosen more than occasionally to
employ, in the accomplishment of his purposes, what seems at first to
be precisely the magical apparatus so necessary to the older
Romanticism. Dryads and elves are his intimate companions, and he
dwells at times under fairy boughs and