n the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's
example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not
see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away
in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for
lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and he wanted it obstinately.

[Footnote 58: _Memoires_, I, 70.]

[Footnote 59: _Ibid_. To make amends for this he published, in 1829, a
biographical notice of Beethoven, in which his appreciation of him is
remarkably in advance of his age. He wrote there: "The _Choral Symphony_
is the culminating point of Beethoven's genius," and he speaks of the
Fourth Symphony in C sharp minor with great discernment.]

[Footnote 60: Beethoven died in 1827, the year when Berlioz was writing
his first important work, the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_.]

The zenith of Berlioz's genius was reached, when he was thirty-five
years old, with the _Requiem_ and _Romeo_. They are his two most
important works, and are two works about which one may feel very
differently. For my part, I am very fond of the one, and I dislike the
other; but both of them open up two great new roads in art, and both are
placed like two gigantic arches on the triumphal way of the revolution
that Berlioz started. I will return to the subject of these works later.

But Berlioz was already getting old. His daily cares and stormy domestic
life,[61] his disappointments and passions, his commonplace and often
degrading work, soon wore him out and, finally, exhausted his power.
"Would you believe it?" he wrote to his friend Ferrand, "that which used
to stir me to transports of musical passion now fills me with
indifference, or even disdain. I feel as if I were descending a mountain
at a great rate. Life is so short; I notice that thoughts of the end
have been with me for some time past." In 1848, at forty-five years old,
he wrote in his _Memoires_: "I find myself so old and tired and lacking
inspiration." At forty-five years old, Wagner had patiently worked out
his theories and was feeling his power; at forty-five he was writing
_Tristan_ and _The Music of the Future_. Abused by critics, unknown to
the public, "he remained calm, in the belief that he would be master of
the musical world in fifty years' time."[62]

[Footnote 61: He left Henrietta Smithson in 1842; she died in 1854.]

[Footnote 62: Written by Berlioz himself, in irony, in a letter of
1855.]

Be