C IIRRENT LITERAT LIRE.
MOZART.
Mr. Eustace J. Breakspeare, who contributes the volume on Mozart to the "Master Musicians" Series, edited by Mr. F. J. Crowest (J. M. Dent and Co.; 3s. 6d.), has been fortunate in securing some excellent illustrations for his monograph from the Salzburg Mozart Museum, and the appendices, bibliographical, genealogical, and personal, have 'been carefully compiled. Un- fortunately, the value of the book is seriously impaired by the irritating style of the writer. He frequently employs the present tense in narration, interlards his cumbrous sentences with unnecessary, and even dubious, Gallicisms, and in general adopts a tone of forced vivacity which is most inappropriate in dealing with a musician whose dominant characteristics as a com- poser were spontaneity and serenity. Take, for example, this account of an interview between Mozart and his Archbishop : "With the apparent inconsequence of a madman—maddened by vile temper and the very elephantiasis of swollen vanity—the Archbishop had informed Mozart that he must vacate his room. Wolfgang, desirous of some logical sort of why and wherefore,' sought the presence of his lord—only to get bullied in the most vulgarly offensive style. The Archbishop would have nothing more to do with such a miserable knave ! " And I, too,' warmly and properly retorted the composer, will have naught further to do with you!' 'Then go !' stormed the priestly. and princely 'sweater.'" On p. 249 Mr. Breakspeare attempts to translate five lines of Horace, in which he renders ingeni benigna vena a "gracious vein of spirit." Edward Holmes's Life, though possibly "antiquated and non-authentic" (see p. 264), conveys, we venture to say, a far truer impression of Mozart's personality, to say nothing of the incalculable superiority of the mode of presentation. In view of these facts, Mr. Breakspeare's condescending reference to Otto Jahn's literary shortcomings is singularly unfortunate.
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