. . . Concerning the bagwigs of composers. Handel’s was not a bagwig, which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn’s and Mozart’s—much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the Sir Godfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great General of the day used to take off his head after the fatigue of the battle, and hand over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it. Such a wig was a fugue in itself. I don’t understand your theory about
trumpets, which have always been so little spiritual in use, that they have been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from the beginning of the world. ‘Power,’ whether spiritual or physical, is the meaning of the trumpet: and so, well used, as you say, by Handel in his approaches to the Deity. The fugue in the overture to the Messiah expresses perhaps the thorny wandering ways of the world before the voice of the one in the wilderness, and before ‘Comfort ye my people, etc.’ Mozart, I agree with you, is the most universal musical genius: Beethoven has been too analytical and erudite: but his inspiration is nevertheless true. I have just read his Life by Moscheles: well worth reading. He shewed no very decided preference for music when a child, though he was the son of a composer: and I think that he was, strictly speaking, more of a thinker than a musician. A great genius he was somehow. He was very fond of reading: Plutarch and Shakespeare his great favourites. He tried to think in music: almost to reason in music: whereas perhaps we should be contented with feeling in it. It can never speak very definitely. There is that famous ‘Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, etc.,’ in Handel: nothing can sound more simple and devotional: but it is only lately adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love song in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses more than their God. Then the famous music of ‘He layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, etc.,’ was originally fitted
to an Italian pastoral song—‘Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc.’ That part which seems so well to describe ‘and walketh on the wings of the wind’ falls happily in with ‘e con l’aura di fortuna’ with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven’s Sonata—Op. 14—is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome—Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the analogous phenomena spiritual or material—if you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes the battle of the passions as well as of armed men. This is long and muddy discourse: but the walls of Charlotte Street present little else, especially during this last week of Lent, to twaddle about. The Cambridge Dons have been up in town for the Easter vacation: so we have smoked and talked over Peacock, Whewell, etc. Alfred is busy preparing a new volume for the press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Taylor, also appear in new
volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks of publishing a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one. Nothing has been heard of Spedding: [114a] but we all conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped.
To W. F. Pollock. [114b]
Boulge Hall, May 11/42.
Dear Pollock,
. . . I have just been reading the great Library of Athanasius. [114c] Certainly only you and I and Thackeray understand it. When men like Spedding quote to me such a passage as ‘Athanasius alas is innocent of many smiles, etc.,’ they shew me they don’t understand it. The beauty—if one may dare to define—lies more in such expressions as ‘adjusting the beaks of the macaws, etc.’ I have laughed outright (how seldom one does this alone!) at the Bishops’ meeting. ‘Mr. Talboys—that candle behind Dr. Allnut—really that I should be obliged—.’ I suppose this would be the most untranslateable book in the world. I never shall forget how I laughed when I first read it.
[Geldestone Hall, 22 May 1842.]
Dear Pollock,