Chopin has gained a quite special reputation by the clever spirituelle and profoundly artistic manner in which he knows how to treat the national music of Poland, a genre of music which was to us as yet little known...here again he appears poetical, tender, fantastic, always graceful, and always charming, even in the moments when he abandons himself to the most passionate inspiration.

Karasowski says that Elsner’s letter made Chopin seriously think of writing an opera, and that he even addressed himself to his friend Stanislas Kozmian with the request to furnish him with a libretto, the subject of which was to be taken from Polish history.  I do not question this statement.  But if it is true, Chopin soon abandoned the idea.  In fact, he thoroughly made up his mind, and instead of endeavouring to become a Shakespeare he contented himself with being an Uhland.  The following conversations will show that Chopin acquired the rarest and most precious kind of knowledge, that is, self-knowledge.  His countryman, the painter Kwiatkowski, calling one day on Chopin found him and Mickiewicz in the midst of a very excited discussion.  The poet urged the composer to undertake a great work, and not to fritter away his power on trifles; the composer, on the other hand, maintained that he was not in possession of the qualities requisite for what he was advised to undertake.  G. Mathias, who studied under Chopin from 1839 to 1844, remembers a conversation between his master and M. le Comte de Perthuis, one of Louis Philippe’s aides-de-camp.  The Count said—­

“Chopin, how is it that you, who have such admirable ideas, do not compose an opera?” [Chopin, avec vos idees admirables, pourquoi ne nous faites-vous pas un opera?] “Ah, Count, let me compose nothing but music for the pianoforte; I am not learned enough to compose operas!” [Ah, Monsieur le Comte, laissez-moi ne faire que de la musique de piano; pour faire des operas je ne suis pas assez savant.]

Chopin, in fact, knew himself better than his friends and teacher knew him, and it was well for him and it is well for us that he did, for thereby he saved himself much heart-burning and disappointment, and us the loss of a rich inheritance of charming and inimitable pianoforte music.  He was emphatically a Kleinmeister—­i.e. a master of works of small size and minute execution.  His attempts in the sonata-form were failures, although failures worth more—­some of them at least—­than many a clever artist’s most brilliant successes.  Had he attempted the dramatic form the result would in all probability have been still less happy; for this form demands not only a vigorous constructive power, but in addition to it a firm grasp of all the vocal and instrumental resources—­qualities, in short, in which Chopin was undeniably deficient, owing not so much to inadequate training as to the nature of his organisation.  Moreover, he was too much given to express his own emotions, too narrow