Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/49

 Concerning Truth: What we were, what we are, and what we ought to be. These pages have been bound up with his Memoirs and Essays on Music published in 1789. The whole makes three large volumes which can be read with great enjoyment. The Memoirs are charming The Essays in spite of an element of confusion in the most general ideas, are full of wonderful passages, especially on vocal music, the rightness of melody, prosody and declamation, matters which the master treats with a subtlety that has not been equalled since. As to Grétry the metaphysician, moralist and organiser of cities, he is a mild disciple of Jean Jacques, spreading himself in amiable ineptitudes.

We must pick out from his Memoirs a well-told anecdote which throws a very clear light on Rousseau's character. The latter had got introduced to Grétry at the first performance of False Magic, and with a great deal of gush had sworn eternal friendship. As they lived not far apart they came from the theatre together. The paviors had left in the middle of the street a heap of stones which Jean Jacques found some difficulty in crossing, and Grétry who was nearly thirty years his junior wanted to help him. The philosopher's serenity was clouded, he rejected the proffered aid, and left him without a word, never to see him againagain. [sic]

The private life of Grétry was both happy and unhappy. Married to a loving, simple and faithful wife, he had by her three charming daughters: one of them, Lucile, was a little musical genius, but consumption carried off all three before their twentieth year. In the closing years of his life he installed himself at Montmorency, in Rousseau's celebrated Hermitage, and there numerous visitors, among them Queen Hortense and young Boïeldieu, came to pay homage to his