That there are deathless poets in Art who take rank by the works which they produce, considered without reference to their consequences–as well as artists who are immortal in right of the influences they exercise on their age, is a distinction not always sufficiently kept in sight or memory.–To imagine that everything that we admire the most is therefore fit to serve for universal pattern, is as absurd as would be the fancy of any tourist who, having looked at Mont Blanc, resolved to imitate that mountain in his own park among the fens. Many are the mighty works to which we must look up, knowing them to be solitary–too high, too original, too brilliant, to be reproduced on a smaller scale with weakened outlines and a dimmer lustre. Every poet does not furnish us with household words that can be sung over the cradle, or with a phraseology capable of universal adoption. We must rejoice in the spirit of certain masters, –we must analyze, because we may emulate, the form of others.

There is more than ordinary need of distinctions like these for those who are under the spell of the wondrous genius of Beethoven, when we observe the use which has been made of certain of his compositions as models, watchwords, points of departure.