The mazurkas of Chopin are a literature in themselves, said Lenz, and there is some truth in his saying.  They may, indeed, be called a literature in themselves for two reasons—­first, because of their originality, which makes them things sui generis; and secondly, because of the poetical and musical wealth of their contents.  Chopin, as I have already said, is most national in the mazurkas and polonaises, for the former of which he draws not only inspiration, but even rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic motives from his country’s folk-music.  Liszt told me, in a conversation I had with him, that he did not care much for Chopin’s mazurkas.  “One often meets in them with bars which might just as well be in another place.”  But he added, “And yet as Chopin puts them, perhaps nobody else could have put them.”  And mark, those are the words of one who also told me that when he sometimes played half-an-hour for his amusement, he liked to resort to Chopin.  Moscheles, I suspect, had especially the mazurkas in his mind when, in 1833, [footnote:  At this time the published compositions of Chopin were, of course, not numerous, but they included the first two books of Mazurkas, Op. 6 and 7.] he said of the Polish master’s compositions that he found “much charm in their originality and national colouring,” and that “his thoughts and through them the fingers stumbled over certain hard, inartistic modulations.”  Startling progressions, unreconciled contrasts, and abrupt changes of mood are characteristic of Slavonic music and expressive of the Slavonic character.  Whether they ought to be called inartistic or not, we will leave time to decide, if it has not done so already; the Russian and other Slavonic composers, who are now coming more and more to the front, seem to be little in doubt as to their legitimacy.  I neither regard Chopin’s mazurkas as his most artistic achievements nor recommend their capriciousness and fragmentariness for general imitation.  But if we view them from the right stand-point, which is not that of classicism, we cannot help admiring them.  The musical idiom which the composer uses in these, notwithstanding their capriciousness and fragmentariness, exquisitely-finished miniatures, has a truly delightful piquancy.  Yet delightful as their language is, the mazurkas have a far higher claim to our admiration.  They are poems—­social poems, poems of private life, in distinction from the polonaises, which are political poems.  Although Chopin’s mazurkas and polonaises are no less individual than the other compositions of this most subjective of subjective poets, they incorporate, nevertheless, a good deal of the poetry of which the national dances of those names are the expression or vehicle.  And let it be noted, in Poland so-called civilisation did not do its work so fast and effectually as in Western Europe; there dancing had not yet become in Chopin’s days a merely formal and conventional affair, a matter of sinew and muscle.