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394 with your musical journals! It should be the highest endeavour of a just critic to render himself wholly unnecessary; the best discourse on music is silence. Why write about Chopin? Why not create at first hand—play, write, and compose?' ('Gesammelte Schriften,' i. 276; Engl. trans, in 'Music and Musicians,' series i. p. 205.) True, this impassioned outburst has to be moderated by Eusebius. But consider the significance of Schumann's writing thus in his own journal about the critic's vocation! It plainly shows that he only took it up as an artist, and occasionally despised it. But with regard to Schumann's place in art, Mendelssohn did not, at that time at all events, consider it a very high one, and he was not alone in this opinion. It was shared, for example, by Spohr and Hauptmann. In Mendelssohn's published letters there is no verdict whatever on Schumann's music. The fact however remains that in Schumann's earlier pianoforte works he felt that the power or the desire for expression in the greater forms was wanting, and this he said in conversation. He soon had reason to change his opinion, and afterwards expressed warm interest in his friend's compositions. Whether he ever quite entered into the individualities of Schumann's music may well be doubted; their natures were too dissimilar. To a certain extent the German nation has recovered from one mistake in judgment; the tendency to elevate Schumann above Mendelssohn was for a very long time unmistakable. Latterly their verdict has become more just, and the two are now recognised as composers of equal greatness.

Schumann's constant intimacy in Wieck's house had resulted in a tender attachment to his daughter Clara, now grown up. So far as we know it was in the spring of 1836 that this first found any definite expression. His regard was reciprocated, and in the summer of the following year he preferred his suit formally to her father. Wieck however did not favour it; possibly he entertained loftier hopes for his gifted daughter. At any rate he was of opinion that Schumann's means and prospects were too vague and uncertain to warrant his setting up a home of his own. Schumann seems to have acknowledged the justice of this hesitation, for in 1838 he made strenuous efforts to find a new and wider sphere of work. With the full consent of Clara Wieck he decided on settling in Vienna, and bringing out his musical periodical in that city. The glory of a great epoch still cast a light over the musical life of the Austrian capital—the epoch when Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert were living and working there. In point of fact, all genuine music had vanished even during Beethoven's lifetime, and had given way to a trivial and superficial taste. Rossini and his followers were paramount in opera; in orchestral music there were the waltzes of Strauss and Lanner; and in vocal music the feeble sentimentalities of Proch and his fellow-composers. So far as solo playing was concerned, the fourth decade of the century saw it at its highest pitch of executive brilliancy, and its lowest of purpose and feeling—indeed it may be comprehensively designated as the epoch of Thalberg. Thus Schumann would have found in Vienna ample opportunity for doing good work, for the Viennese public was still as ever the most responsive in the world, and one to justify sanguine hopes. Schumann effected his move with the assistance of Professor Joseph Fischhof, his colleague in the paper; settling himself in Oct. 1838 in the Schönlaterngasse, No. 679. Oswald Lorenz edited the 'Zeitschrift' as Schumann's deputy, and for a time it was still to be issued in Leipzig. Schumann hoped to be able to bring it out in Vienna by Jan. 1839, and made every effort to obtain the prompt permission of the authorities, as well as the support of influential persons for himself and his journal. But the consent of the censor's office and the police were long withheld; and he was required to secure the co-operation of an Austrian publisher, in itself a great difficulty. It is hard to believe that in the great city of Vienna no strictly musical newspaper then existed, and that a small catalogue, the 'Allgemeine musikalischer Anzeiger,' published weekly by Tobias Haslinger, and almost exclusively devoted to the business interests of his firm, was the only publication which could pretend to the name. But the publishers were either too indolent or too timid to attempt any new enterprise, and sought to throw impediments in Schumann's way.

His courage and hopefulness were soon much reduced. The superficially kind welcome he met everywhere could not conceal the petty strife of coteries, the party spirit and gossip of a society which might have been provincial. The public, though keenly alive to music, was devoid of all critical taste. 'He could not get on with these people,' he writes to Zuccamaglio as early as Oct. 19, 1838; their utter insipidity was at times too much for him, and while he had hoped that on its appearance in Vienna the 'Zeitschrift' would have received a fresh impulse, and become a medium of intercourse between North and South, he was forced as early as December to say: 'The paper is evidently falling off, though it must be published here; this vexes me much.' Sterndale Bennett, who was residing in Leipzig during 1837–8, and who, Schumann hoped, would settle with him in Vienna, was obliged to relinquish his intention; and in Vienna itself he sought in vain for an artist after his own heart, 'one who should not merely play tolerably well on one or two instruments, but who should be a whole man, and understand Shakespeare and Jean Paul.' At the same time he did not abandon the scheme of making a wide and influential circle of activity for himself; he was unwilling to return to Leipzig, and when in March 1839 he made up his mind to do so, after trying in vain to carry on the journal in Vienna, it was with the intention of remaining there but a short time. He indulged in a dream of going to England never to return! What the anticipations could have been that led him tocherish such an idea we know not; perhaps his friendship for Bennett may have led to it; but,