22 AUGUST 1874, Page 16

HENRY BEYLE..

DISAPPOINTING as Mr. Paton's work will prove to all who wish to learn something about Beyle, its very defects make it a somewhat appropriate tribute to the memory of its subject. Fragmentary, desultory, in the vagueness of its information, the affectation of its extracts, it aptly typifies the novelist of the Chartreuse de Parme, and the biographer of Rossini. Had this book been in any sense what it professes to be, a critical and biographical study, it might have brought out more clearly the defects in Beyle's character, both as a man and a writer, which are obvious even to those who (like the present reviewer) count him among their favourite authors. But though Mr. Paton has not troubled himself with arrangement or analysis, being content to mass together a number of extracts from Beyle's familiar letters, and couple them with a meandering thread of dissertation, he gives us some insight into the true nature of his hero. In his letters, as in his works, Beyle speaks for himself. It may seem strange that the genuineness of neither letters nor works should be affected by the coxcombry of the one or the plagiarisms of the other. Yet the coxcombry is too transparent to have any real effect, and the plagiarisms are such as merely cause amusement. Mr. Paton gives some instances, one of which is extremely comic. The Edinburgh Review selected for especial praise a passage in one of Beyle's writings which he had literally translated from an article in one of its earlier numbers. It seems as if the reviewer had taken a hint which is given in one of Beyle's own works, based on the customs of some Italian theatres. Whenever a composer, says Beyle, was detected in a plagiarism from any of his predecessors, the audience would at once begin to applaud the passage, coupling the name of the true author with each bravo. Beyle would probably have been indifferent to the reception of his most philosophic speculations with a cry of "Well done, Edin- burgh Review r He did not write in the style of that grave pub- lication, and he must have been prepared for the detection of such a purple patch upon his less studied attire. Yet Mr. Paton thinks that Beyle's object in publishing his first work under the pseudonym of Bombet, was to escape from any personal charge of plagiarism. If this be so, the disguise has brought with it a deserved punishment. The honour of being quoted in Mr. Dar- win's Descent of' Man has been bestowed upon " Bombet," while the name of Beyle is ignored.

The chief merit of Mr. Paton's book is, that it calls up to our minds many pleasant recollections of Beyle's writings. We are not disposed to treat them in a critical spirit. If we did, it would be easy to find very grave defects. Mr. Paton has pointed out two which seriously detract from Beyle's credit as a musical critic. His Life of Rossini ends with a strange depreciation of the value of Semiramide, and though Beyle lived to witness the production of Tell, he never added a line on the subject to his biography. Again, while his Lives of Haydn and Mozart show that Beyle was not insensible to the merits of German music, he scarcely ever alludes to Beethoven. In a pro- fessed writer on music, such omissions would be fatal. But Beyle laid no claim to science, and his tastes were marked by such an individuality as relieved him from compliance with the usual standards. His love of music went hand-in-hand with his love for Italy. The operas he had heard in Italian theatres, where society met in the boxes for the purpose of conversation, and remained silent only for favourite airs, met with his approval. Mr. Paton aptly describes the Italian method of frequenting the theatre :— " I need not inform those who have resided in Italy what the opera is, namely, something much more than a mere place for bearing music • Henry Beyle Whet-trim De Shndaht >: a Critical and Biagtaphical Study By Andrew Archibald Paton. London : Triibner, 1874. and seeing a lyric drama, or a ballet which idealises the gesture of some moving accident of history or of private existence. The opera in Italy is the social centre of the town while the theatrical season lasts. It is in her box that every lady that can afford one, or an alternate one, or even the fourth turn of one, receives her visitors, and where not only the musical entertainment, the singers, and the dancers are discussed and criticised, but where the conversation is also general. The Italian method of repeating an opera night after night for half a month, or even longer, has also advantages. It is impossible thoroughly to know either the style of a cOmposer, with its advantages and deficiencies, except on the Italian principle 'of a dozen of successive auditions. English people who have not resided in Italy have the idea that this mode is insuffer- ably tiresome, but in practice it is quite the reverse, except in the case of an inferior or ill-selected opera, and good conversation is all the more enjoyed when accompanied by music to which one is accustomed. In the stretto of a finale, the stage is of course dominant, and conversation must be suspended for a few minutes."

The last sentence is significant. On the next page, too, we hear that card-playing was carried to such excess in the boxes of the Scala at Milan that the people in the pit were scandalised by the noisy squabbles.of the players, and cried out for silence. Colder Northerners would say that such practices do not bear witness to any real love for music. But it is natural that one who was brought up in such a school should care little for works requiring closer attention. Beyle has a chapter in his Life of Ros- sini on the ruin of musical art by the incursion of dry-as-dust pedants, and in another chapter he contrasts persons who have a marvellous accuracy of ear and a total absence of taste, with others who are passionately fond of music, but scarcely know one note from another. Such passages are valuable as containing Beyle's protest against the purely scientific school of musicians. No doubt he was vexed to find his favourite master abandoning the spontaneous inspiration of his earlier compositions, and try- ing to compete with those who had neither the advantages nor the drawbacks of his facility. What Beyle chiefly admired in Rossini appears from his account of the early career of that com- poser,—an account which Mr. Paton has abridged somewhat needlessly in his not very elegant translation :— " The impressario, often the richest patrician of a small town, takes a lease of the theatre, and forms his company of a prima-donna, a tenor, a basso-cantante, a basso-buffo, the second woman, and the third basso. He engages a composer, who fits the voices of his singers. The libretto or text is written by a poet—some unfortunate priest or abbate, who is the parasite of one of the rich houses in the place. The ridiculous part of the parasite, so well painted by Terence, is in all its glory in Lombardy, where, in the smallest town, there are several houses with an income of a hundred thousand francs a year. The impressario, who is the chief of one of those houses, gives the care of all the financial management of the theatre to some rascally lawyer, who is manages of his estates and affairs. If the impressario falls in love with the prima-donna, there is matter for the curiosity of the gossips. The company thus organised gives at last a first representation, after a month of burlesque intrigues, which are the general topic of conversa- tion. This first representation is the great event of the little town, where eight or ten thousand persons discuss, during three weeks, the beauties and defects of the opera, with all their powers of attention and of lungs. The life of Rossini, from 1810. was passed thus :—At his arrival, he was feted by all the dilettanti. The first fifteen or twenty days were passed in receiving dinners and looking over the libretto, the weak points of which did not escape the criticism of a composer who had some acquaintance with the poetical and dramatic literature of 'Thou bast given me verses, and not situations,' he would say to the shabby and mud-bespattered poet, who would allege specious excuses, and two hours later bring a sonnet dedicated to the glory of the greatest master of Italy and the world.' After a fortnight of this dissipation, Rossini began to refuse dinners, and study the voices of his singers, who were often incapable of executing his music. He then composed the opera, generally rising late out of bed, and working sur- rounded by dilettanti, who stack fast to him. Ho dined al the inn ; his real work was then done in the dead of the night, and it was some- times at throe o'clock in the morning that many of his most brilliant ideas occurred to him. These ho would write on little scraps of paper, without touching the piano, and to these he would give the technical fori4 on the following day in playful conversation with his friends. The only thing that could paralyse this brilliant genius, always in creation and action, was the presence of a pedant, who would talk of his glory, and bore him with the compliments of a learned dilettante. The de- cisive evening arrives ; the town is filled by the people from a circuit of twenty miles' who sleep in their carriages standing in the street, for all the inns are full. All the business of the town is suspended, and dining the representation the town appears a desert. The opera is praised to the skies, or mercilessly hissed. These are not Parisian dilettanti interrogating the faces of their neighbours, but men seeking the triumph of their feelings by demonstrations of physical energy. At the end of the representation, during which Rossini has acted as con- ductor, he receives his sequins, and a farewell dinner from his friends, that is to say. the whole town, and starts on his further journey, the gayest of men.'" There was some affectation even in Beyle's love of Italy. The epitaph which, according to the direction in his will, was placed upon his tomb, describing him as "Arrigo Beyle, Milanese," is one of the most notable instances. Still Beyle was truly fond of the country in which he passed such happy years, of the society which he found so cordial, of the scenery which he has described so well. All his best inspirations were drawn from Italy, and the pleasure which we feel in reading his books is due in great measure to their bright reflection of Italian life. Mixing freely with cultivated people, tasting enough for his own enjoyment of both art and music, writing much as the fancy took him, without troubling himself about the niceties of style or the selection of subjects which would suit the public, Beyle was naturally led to gossip of what he saw around him, to criticise freely but with- out depth, to give the reins to each successive impulse either of sense or feeling. In this lies the charm of Beyle's writings, as well as their weakness. We can never count on his being the same from one moment to another. He may seem to pour out his heart freely when he is really under the influence of some crotchet. He often made himself ridiculous in life ; he often appears ridiculous in his writings. It was a characteristic trait that when he was in love with an actress he took a clerkship in the town where she was performing, and wrote to his family declaring that he was delighted at being in business, which was his true vocation. In later life Beyle adopted a still more ludi- crous plan for visiting a lady of whom he was enamoured. He followed her from Milan to Volterra, and appeared in the streets of the latter town wearing green spectacles as a disguise. With the usual bad luck which led to the detection of all his trans- parent stratagems, he took off the green spectacles just as the very person passed from whom he wished to be concealed. It was not only in love that Beyle was thus unfortunate. He had once accepted an invitation to dinner, when he saw that an opera by Rossini was to be given at the theatre. Preferring the opera to the dinner, Beyle went to his entertainer with a very long face, and asked that he might be excused, as he had a splitting headache. Of course the host released Beyle from his engagement, and Beyle went to the opera. But the host went there too, and was not so much struck by discovering a new cure for a headache, as vexed at finding that his dinner had been slighted.

We may now leave Mr. Paton's book to make its own way with our readers. They will find some of it very tedious, and they must be prepared to exercise largely the grand privilege of skipping. If, however, it leads them to an acquaintance with Beyle's own works, it will be of some service ; above all, if they gain such an insight into the character of the man as may prepare them for much that would otherwise be strange or perplexing in his writings, if they are put on their guard against his affectation, and guided to his beauties.