[5] Hoffmann was, of course, a musician as well; but he is more truly the novelist who wrote about music than the musician who wrote fiction.
[6] Buckle (note 316 to Chap. VII. of the History of Civilisation) remarks that "All great revolutions have a direct tendency to increase insanity, as long as they last, and probably for some time afterwards; but in this as in other respects the French Revolution stands alone in the number of its victims." See the references he gives, bearing upon "the horrible but curious subject of madness caused by the excitement of the events which occurred in France late in the eighteenth century." Buckle speaks only of the Revolution, but of course the subsequent wars must have operated in much the same way.
[7] Chateaubriand, Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, p. 2.
[8] In his letter of March 18, 1839, he gives Ernest Chevalier the plan of a work that is curiously like that of Berlioz mentioned on page 38, in its preposterous fantasies and its over-emphasis of form and colour.
[9] He puts the same rhodomontade into the mouth of his Lélio.
[10] One or two of these dates can only be looked upon as approximative, but if wrong at all, they are so only to the extent of a year or two, which does not affect the question.
[11] It appears from the Sayn-Wittgenstein letters that the beautiful theme of the love-scene in Roméo et Juliette was inspired by the youthful love for Estelle that also produced the opening theme of the Symphonie fantastique. It must, therefore, have been quite a boyish invention, though no doubt its development and general treatment really belong to 1838.
[12] M. Julien Tiersot, in his admirable Berlioz et la société de son temps, divides the life of Berlioz into five epochs—1803-1827 (his childhood, youth, and apprenticeship), 1827-1842 (the epoch of his greatest activity), 1843-1854 (in which he does little except Faust, which in reality, perhaps, dates from an earlier time), 1854-1865 (the epoch of L'Enfance du Christ, Béatrice et Benedict, and Les Troyens), and 1865-1869 (barren of works). The discussion in the text will make it clear why I have substituted my own classification for that of M. Tiersot, and will, I hope, be convincing. One other point deserves noting. Towards the end of his Mémoires Berlioz tells us that he had dreamed a symphony one night, but deliberately refrained from writing it because of the expense of producing and printing it. Such a reason may have weighed a little with him; but no one who knows anything of artistic psychology can regard it as the total explanation. If the dream-work had really sunk into Berlioz's soul and he had felt that he had full command of it, he could not have rested until he had it down on paper, if only for his own gratification. It is far more probable that he felt himself unequal to the mental strain of thinking out his vision and forcing the stubborn material into a plastic piece of art. There was, I take it, a lassitude of tissue in him at this time that made protracted musical thinking a burden to him.
[ [13] On the whole question see the chapter on "Le Tempérament" in Edmond Hippeau's Berlioz Intime.
[14] The date of Lélio is 1831-1832, but the most absurd thing in it, the Chanson de brigands, was written in January 1830—at the same epoch, therefore, as the Symphonie fantastique. It is fairly clear that 1829-1830 marked the climax of Berlioz's eccentricity, and that his passion for Henrietta Smithson had much to do with it.