made of songs from his operas in the days of Foster he
will find that the great Italian composer's settings were quite as thin
as Foster's and exhibited not much greater art. It was the fault of the
times on the piano, not of the composers. It was not till long afterward
that the color capacities of the piano were developed. As Foster was no
pianist, but rather a pure melodist, he could not be expected to surpass
his times in the management of the piano, the only 'orchestra' he had.
It will not do to regard Foster as a crude musician. His own scores
reveal him as the most artful of 'artless' composers.

"It is not even presumption to speak of him in the same breath with
Verdi. The breadth and poignancy of Foster's melodies entitle them
to the highest critical respect, as they have received worldwide
appreciation from great musicians and plain music lovers. Wherever he
has gone he has reached the popular heart. Here in the United States
he has quickened the pulse beats of four generations. But this master
creator of a country's only native songs has invariably here at home
been apologized for as a sort of 'cornfield musician,' a mere banjo
strummer, a hanger-on at barrooms where minstrel quartets rendered
his songs and sent the hat round. The reflection will react upon his
country; it will not detract from the real Foster when the constructive
critic appears to write his brief and unfortunate life. I am not
contending that he was a genius of the highest rank, although he had
the distinction that great genius nearly always achieves, of creating
a school that produced many imitators and established a place apart
for itself in the world's estimation. In ballad writing he did for the
United States what Watteau did for painting in France. As Watteau found
a Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, so
Foster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish,
German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodic
strain forever impressed upon it as pure American.

"He was like Watteau in more than that. Watteau took the elegancies and
fripperies of the corrupt French court and fixed them in art immortal,
as if the moment had been arrested and held in actual motion. Foster
took the curious and melancholy spectacle of African slavery at its
height, superimposed by the most elegant and picturesque social manners
this country has known, at the moment the institution was at its ze