sual manner, found fault with the very things which we
to-day admire most in him--the exotic originality of the style, and
the delightful Polish local color in which all his fabrics are "dyed
in the wool," as it were. How numerous these adverse criticisms were,
may best be inferred from the frequency with which Schumann defended
Chopin in his musical paper and sneered at his detractors. "It is
remarkable," he writes, "that in the very droughty years preceding
1830, in which one should have thanked Heaven for every straw of
superior quality, criticism, which it is true, _always lags behind
unless it emanates from creative minds_, persisted in shrugging its
shoulders at Chopin's compositions--nay, that one of them had the
impudence to say that all they were good for was to be torn to
pieces." In another article, after speaking in the most enthusiastic
terms of Chopin's trio, in which "every note is music and life," he
exclaims, "Wretched Berlin critic, who has no understanding for these
things, and never will have--poor fellow!" And seven years later, in
1843, he writes, with fine contempt for his critical colleagues, that
"for the typical reviewers Chopin never did write, anyway." And this,
be it remembered, was only six years before Chopin's death.

Not a few of the composers and composerlings of the period joined the
professional critics in their depreciation of Chopin's works. Field
called his "a talent of the sick chamber." Moscheles, while admitting
Chopin's originality, and the value of his pianistic achievements,
confessed that he disliked his "harsh, inartistic, incomprehensible
modulations," which often appeared "artificial and forced" to
him--these same modulations which to-day transport us into the seventh
heaven of delight! Mendelssohn's attitude toward Chopin was somewhat
vacillating. He defended him in a letter against his sister's
criticisms, and assured her that if she had heard some of Chopin's
compositions "as he himself played them" for him, she too would have
been delighted. He adds that Chopin had just completed "a most
graceful little nocturne," of which he remembered much, and was going
to play it for his brother Paul. Nevertheless, he did not recommend
the pupils at the Leipsic Conservatory to study Chopin's works, and
various utterances of his are on record showing that he had a decided
artistic antipathy for the exotic products of Chopin's pen. To give
only one instance. In one of the letters to