freshness and sincerity in forming our judgments in art, for it is upon these that art lives.  All over the world we find audiences listening suavely to long concerts, and yet we do not see one person with the frankness of the little boy in Andersen’s story of the “New Clothes of the Emperor.”  It is the same with the other arts.  I have never heard anyone say that part of the foreground of Millet’s “Angelus” is “muddy” or that the Fornarina’s mysterious smile is anything but “hauntingly beautiful.”  People do not dare admire the London Law Courts; all things must be measured by the straight lines of Grecian architecture.  Frankness!  Let us have frankness, and if we have no feelings on a subject, let us remain silent rather than echo that drone in the hive of modern thought, the “authority in art.”

Every person with even the very smallest love and sympathy for art possesses ideas which are valuable to that art.  From the tiniest seeds sometimes the greatest trees are grown.  Why, therefore, allow these tender germs of individualism to be smothered by that flourishing, arrogant bay tree of tradition—­fashion, authority, convention, etc.

My reason for insisting on the importance of all lovers of art being able to form their own opinions is obvious, when we consider that our musical public is obliged to take everything on trust.  For instance, if we read on one page of some history (every history of music has such a page) that Mozart’s sonatas are sublime, that they do not contain one note of mere filigree work, and that they far transcend anything written for the harpsichord or clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we echo the saying, and, if necessary, quote the “authorities.”  Now if one had occasion to read over some of the clavichord music of the period, possibly it might seem strange that Mozart’s sonatas did not impress with their magnificence.  One might even harbour a lurking doubt as to the value of the many seemingly bare runs and unmeaning passages.  Then one would probably turn back to the authorities for an explanation and find perhaps the following:  “The inexpressible charm of Mozart’s music leads us to forget the marvellous learning bestowed upon its construction.  Later composers have sought to conceal the constructional points of the sonata which Mozart never cared to disguise, so that incautious students have sometimes failed to discern in them the veritable ‘pillars of the house,’ and have accused Mozart of poverty of style because he left them boldly exposed to view, as a great architect delights to expose the piers upon which the tower of his cathedral depends for its support.” (Rockstro, “History of Music,” p. 269.) Now this is all very fine, but it is nonsense, for Mozart’s sonatas are anything but cathedrals.  It is time to cast aside this shibboleth of printer’s ink and paper and look the thing itself straight in the face.  It is a fact that Mozart’s sonatas are compositions entirely unworthy of the author of the “Magic Flute,” or of any composer with pretensions to anything beyond mediocrity.  They are written in a style of flashy harpsichord virtuosity such as Liszt never descended to, even in those of his works at which so many persons are accustomed to sneer.