of the Holy Family,
which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant,
restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a
different subject, a personality drawn with incisive strokes, and the
whole collection overflows with life. It is said that the
_Spanisches-Liederbuch_ is to Wolf's work what _Tristan_ is to Wagner's
work.

The _Italienisches-Liederbuch_ (1890-96) is quite different. The
character of the songs is very restrained, and Wolf's genius here
approached a classic clearness of form. He was always seeking to
simplify his musical language, and said that if he wrote anything more,
he wished it to be like Mozart's writings. These _Lieder_ contain
nothing that is not absolutely essential to their subject; so the
melodies are very short, and are dramatic rather than lyrical. Wolf gave
them an important place in his work: "I consider them," he wrote to
Kaufmann, "the most original and perfect of my compositions."

As for the _Michelangelo Gedichten_ (1897), they were interrupted by the
outbreak of his malady, and he had only time to write four, of which he
suppressed one. Their associations are pathetic when one remembers the
tragic time at which they were composed; and, by a sort of prophetic
instinct, they exhale heaviness of spirit and mournful pride. The second
melody is perhaps more beautiful than anything else Wolf wrote; it is
truly his death-song:

_Alles endet, was entstehet.
Alles, alles rings vergehet_.[190]

And it is a dead man that sings:

_Menschen waren wir ja auch,
Froh und traurig, so wie Ihr.
Und nun sind wir leblos hier,
Sind nur Erde, wie Ihr sehet_.[191]

At the moment he was writing this song, in the short respite he had from
his illness, he himself was nearly a dead man.

[Footnote 190:

All that is begun must end,
All around will sometime perish.

[Footnote 191:

Once we were also men
Happy or sad like you;
Now life is taken from us,
We are only of earth, as you see.

_Chiunque nasce a morte arriva
Nel fuggir del tempo, e'l sole
Niuna cosa lascia viva....
Come voi, uomini fummo,
Lieti e tristi, come siete;
E or siam, come vedete,
Terra al sol, di vita priva_.

(Poems of Michelangelo, CXXXVI.)

* * * * *

As soon as Wolf was really dead his genius was recognised all over
Germany. His sufferings provoked an almost excessive