I do beg and desire that when you next begin a letter to me you will not
tear it up (as you say you have done some) because of its exhibiting a
joviality insulting to any dumps of mine. What was I complaining of so?
I forget all about it. It seems to me to be two years since I heard from
you. If you had said that my answers to your letters were so barren as
to dishearten you from deserving any more I should understand that very
well. But if you really did accomplish any letters and not send them, I
say, a fico for thy friendship! Do so no more. . . .
The finale of C minor is very noble. I heard it twice at Jullien's. On
the whole I like to hear Mozart better; Beethoven is gloomy. Besides
incontestably Mozart is the purest _musician_; Beethoven would have been
Poet or Painter as well, for he had a great deep Soul and Imagination. I
do not think it is reported that he showed any very early predilection
for Music; Mozart, we know, did. They say Holmes has published a very
good life of M. Only think of the poor fellow not being able to sell his
music latterly, getting out of fashion, so taking to drink . . . and
enact Harlequin at Masquerades! When I heard Handel's Alexander's Feast
at Norwich this Autumn I wondered; but when directly afterward they
played Mozart's G minor Symphony, it seemed as if I had passed out of a
land of savages into sweet civilized Life.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE.
[? _March_ 1846.]