Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/262

76 lic to an undertaking, the sole aim of which is to raise a worthy monument to German art, to furnish the true artist with a gallery of the most instructive models, and to open to the friends of musical science an inexhaustible source of the sublimest enjoyment.”

The deep, tender repose in the contemplation of genius, the fidelity in the details of observation, indicated in this passage, are the chief requisites of the critic. But he should never say of any object, as Forkel does, it is the greatest that ever was or ever will be, for that is limiting the infinite, and making himself a bigot, gentle and patient perhaps, but still a bigot. All are so who limit the divine within the boundaries of their present knowledge.

The founder of the Bach family (in its musical phase) was a Thuringian miller. “In his leisure hours he amused himself with his guitar, which he even took with him into the mill, and played upon it amidst all the noise and clatter.” The same love of music, for its own sake, continued in the family for six generations. After enumerating the geniuses who illustrated it before the time of John Sebastian, Forkel says,

“Not only the above-mentioned, but many other able composers of the earlier generations of the family might undoubtedly have obtained much more important musical offices, as well as a more extensive reputation, and a more brilliant fortune, if they had been inclined to leave their native province, and to make themselves known in other countries. But we do not find that any one of them ever felt an inclination for such an emigration. Temperate and frugal by nature and education, they required but little to live; and the intellectual enjoyment, which their art procured them, enabled them not only to be content without the gold chains, which used at that time to be given by great men to esteemed artists, as especial marks of honour, but also without the least envy to see them worn by others, who perhaps without these chains would not have been happy.”

Nothing is more pleasing than the account of the jubilee which this family had once a year. As they were a large family, and scattered about in different cities, they met once a year and had this musical festival.