highest thing for me as well as art,--'Faust.'"

(From a conversation-book used in 1823. To Buhler, tutor in the house
of a merchant, who was seeking information about an oratorio which
Beethoven had been commissioned to write by the Handel and Haydn Society
of Boston.)

95. "Ha! 'Faust;' that would be a piece of work! Something might come
out of that! But for some time I have been big with three other large
works. Much is already sketched out, that is, in my head. I must be rid
of them first:--two large symphonies differing from each other, and each
differing from all the others, and an oratorio. And this will take a
long time, you see, for a considerable time I have had trouble to get
myself to write. I sit and think, and think I've long had the thing, but
it will not on the paper. I dread the beginning of these large works.
Once into the work, and it goes."

(In the summer of 1822, to Rochlitz, at Baden. The symphonies referred
to are the ninth and tenth. They existed only in Beethoven's mind and a
few sketches. In it he intended to combine antique and modern views of
life.)

["In the text Greek mythology, cantique ecclesiastique; in the Allegro,
a Bacchic festival." (Sketchbook of 1818)]

[The oratorio was to have been called "The Victory of the Cross." It was
not written. Schindler wrote to Moscheles in London about Beethoven in
the last weeks of his life: "He said much about the plan of the tenth
symphony. As the work had shaped itself in his imagination it might have
become a musical monstrosity, compared with which his other symphonies
would have been mere opuscula."]

ON ART AND ARTISTS

96. "How eagerly mankind withdraws from the poor artist what it has once
given him;--and Zeus, from whom one might ask an invitation to sup on
ambrosia, lives no longer."

(In the summer of 1814, to Kauka, an advocate who represented him in the
lawsuit against the heirs of Kinsky.)

97. "I love straightforwardness and uprightness, and believe that
the artist ought not to be belittled; for, alas! brilliant as fame is
externally, it is not always the privilege of the artist to be Jupiter's
guest on Olympus all the time. Unfortunately vulgar humanity drags him
down only too often and too rudely from the pure upper ether."

(June 5, 1852, to C. F. Peters, music publisher, in Leipzig when
treating with him touching a complete edition of his works.)

98. "The true artist h