Madame von Breuning interested Beethoven in the classics, as well as in contemporary philosophical literature.  Lessing, Goethe and Schiller became favorite authors with him.  A much-thumbed translation of Shakespeare was a valued part of his small library in after years.  He devoted much study to Homer and to Plato.  Beethoven left school at the age of thirteen, and could not have given much time to his studies even when at school, as so much was required of him in his music.  He learned a little—­a very little, of French, also some Latin and Italian, and made up for his deficiencies by studying at home.  Intellectual gifts were valued by the Von Breunings; to the youth, in his formative period, association with people like these was an education in itself.

About this time the Elector enlarged the sphere of his musical operations by establishing a national opera at Bonn, modeled after the one maintained by his imperial brother at Vienna.  The works were produced on a good scale, and some excellent singers were engaged.  Beethoven was appointed to play the viola, and this connection with the orchestra was of inestimable value to him in many ways.  It not only gave him a knowledge of orchestration; it also made him familiar with the noted operas, which must have been greatly enjoyed by him.  Mozart’s operas were given a prominent place in the repertoire, and many others that were noteworthy were introduced.  But it was not opera alone which was being performed; the drama was also represented, and his connection with the orchestra gave him an intimate acquaintance with the masterpieces of literature, which greatly influenced his subsequent career.  The tragedies of Shakespeare were occasionally produced, special prominence, however, being given to the works of the great Germans, Lessing, Schiller and other philosophers and poets of the Fatherland, the exalted sentiments and pure intellectuality of which are unmatched by any people.  This early acquaintance with the best literature of his time gave him an intellectual bias which served him well all his life.  It is fortunate that his opportunity came so early in life, when the activity of the brain is at its highest and when lasting impressions are produced.  The mental pictures called up by the portrayal of these tragedies came to the surface again in after years sublimated, refined, in symphony and sonata, in mass and opera.  Every one of his works has its own story to tell; sometimes it is just the record of the events of a day as in the Pastoral Symphony, but told with a glamour of poetry and romance, that for the time gives us back our own youth in listening to it; sometimes it is a tragedy which is unfolded, as in the Appassionata Sonata or the Fifth Symphony; or it will be a Coriolanus Overture, that seething, boiling ferment of emotion and passion, the most diverse, contradictory, unlike, that can be imagined.  From these impressions, acquired in the ardor of youth, when the intellect grasps at