We have followed Chopin from his birthplace, Zelazowa Wola, to Warsaw, where he passed his childhood and youth, and received his musical as well as his general education; we have followed him in his holiday sojourns in the country, and on his more distant journeys to Reinerz, Berlin, and Vienna; we have followed him when he left his native country and, for further improvement, settled for a time in the Austrian capital; we have followed him subsequently to Paris, which thenceforth became his home; and we have followed him to his various lodgings there and on the journeys and in the sojourns elsewhere—to 27, Boulevard Poissonniere, to 5 and 38, Chaussee d'Antin, to Aix-la-Chapelle, Carlsbad, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Marienbad, and London, to Majorca, to Nohant, to 5, Rue Tronchet, 16, Rue Pigalle, and 9, Square d'Orleans, to England and Scotland, to 9, Square d'Orleans once more, Rue Chaillot, and 12, Place Vendome; and, lastly, to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. We have considered him as a pupil at the Warsaw Lyceum and as a student of music under the tuition of Zywny and Elsner; we have considered him as a son and as a brother, as a lover and as a friend, as a man of the world and as a man of business; and we have considered him as a virtuoso, as a teacher, and as a composer. Having done all this, there remains only one thing for me to do—namely, to summarise the thousands of details of the foregoing account, and to point out what this artist was to his and is to our time. But before doing this I ought perhaps to answer a question which the reader may have asked himself. Why have I not expressed an opinion on the moral aspect of Chopin's connection with George Sand? My explanation shall be brief. I abstained from pronouncing judgment because the incomplete evidence did not seem to me to warrant my doing so. A full knowledge of all the conditions and circumstances. I hold to be indispensable if justice is to be done; the rash and ruthless application of precepts drawn from the social conventions of the day are not likely to attain that end. Having done my duty in placing before the reader the ascertainable evidence, I leave him at liberty to decide on it according to his wisdom and charity.

Henri Blaze de Bury describes (in Etudes et Souvenirs) the portrait which Ary Scheffer painted of Chopin in these words:—

M. Marmontel, with, "his [Chopin's] admirable portrait" by Delacroix before him, penned the following description:—

Poetic distinction, exquisite refinement, and a noble bearing are the characteristics which strike one in all portraits of Chopin, [FOOTNOTE: See Appendix IV.] and which struck the beholder still more strongly in the real Chopin, where they were reinforced by the gracefulness of his movements, and by manners that made people involuntarily treat him as a prince...[FOOTNOTE: See my description of Chopin, based on the most reliable information, in Chapter XX.] And pervading and tincturing every part of the harmonious whole of Chopin's presence there was delicacy, which was indeed the cardinal factor in the shaping not only of his outward conformation, but also of his character, life, and art-practice. Physical delicacy brought with it psychical delicacy, inducing a delicacy of tastes, habits, and manners, which early and continued intercourse with the highest aristocracy confirmed and developed. Many of the charming qualities of the man and artist derive from this delicacy. But it is likewise the source of some of the deficiencies and weaknesses in the man and artist. His exclusiveness, for instance, is, no doubt, chargeable to the superlative sensitiveness which shrank from everything that failed to satisfy his fastidious, exacting nature, and became more and more morbid as delicacy, of which it was a concomitant, degenerated into disease. Yet, notwithstanding the lack of robustness and all it entails, Chopin might have been moderately happy, perhaps even have continued to enjoy moderately good health, if body and soul had been well matched. This, however, was not the case. His thoughts were too big, his passions too violent, for the frail frame that held them; and the former grew bigger and more violent as the latter grew frailer and frailer. He could not realise his aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert himself. Here, indeed, we have lit upon the tragic motive of Chopin's life-drama, and the key to much that otherwise would be enigmatical, certainly not explicable by delicacy and disease alone. His salon acquaintances, who saw only the polished outside of the man, knew nothing of this disparity and discrepancy; and even the select few of his most intimate friends, from whom he was not always able to conceal the irritation that gnawed at his heart, hardly more than guessed the true state of matters. In fact, had not Chopin been an artist, the tale of his life would have for ever remained a tale untold. But in his art, as an executant and a composer, he revealed all his strength and weakness, all his excellences and insufficiencies, all his aspirations and failures, all his successes and disappointments, all his dreams and realities.

Chopin was not a virtuoso in the ordinary sense of the word. His sphere was the reunion intime, not the mixed crowd of concert audiences. If, however, human testimony is worth anything, we may take it as proven that there never was a pianist whose playing exercised a charm equal to that of Chopin. But, as Liszt has said, it is impossible to make those who have not heard him understand this subtle, penetrating charm of an ineffable poesy. If words could give an idea of Chopin's playing, it would be given by such expressions as "legerete impalpable," "palais aeriens de la Fata Morgana," "wundersam und marchenhaft," and other similar ones used with regard to it by men who may safely be accepted as authorities.

As a pianist Chopin was sorely restricted by lack of physical vigour, which obliged him often to merely suggest, and even to leave not a little wholly unexpressed. His range as a composer was much wider, as its limits were those of his spirit. Still, Chopin does not number among those masterminds who gather up and grasp with a strong hand all the acquisitions of the past and present, and mould them into a new and glorious synthesis-the highest achievement possible in art, and not to be accomplished without a liberal share of originality in addition to the comprehensive power. Chopin, then, is not a compeer of Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven. But if he does not stand on their level, he stands on a level not far below them. And if the inferiority of his intellectual stamina prevented him from achieving what they achieved, his delicate sensibility and romantic imagination enabled him to achieve what they were disqualified from achieving. Of universality there was not a trace in him, but his individuality is one of the most interesting. The artistico-historical importance of Chopin lies in his having added new elements to music, originated means of expression for the communication and discrimination of moods and emotions, and shades of moods and emotions, that up to his time had belonged to the realm of the unuttered and unutterable. Notwithstanding the high estimation in which Chopin is held, it seems to me that his importance for the development of the art is not rated at its full value. His influence on composers for the pianoforte, both as regards style and subject-matter, is generally understood; but the same cannot be said of his less obvious wider influence. Indeed, nothing is more common than to overlook his connection with the main current of musical history altogether, to regard him as a mere hors d'oeuvre in the musical MENU of the universe. My opinion, on the contrary, is that among the notable composers who have lived since the days of Chopin there is not to be found one who has not profited more or less, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, by this truly creative genius. To trace his influence we must transport ourselves back fifty or sixty years, and see what the state of music then was, what composers expressed and what means of expression they had at their disposal. Much that is now familiar, nay, even commonplace, was then a startling novelty. The appearance of Chopin was so wonderful a phenomenon that it produced quite an electrical effect upon Schumann. "Come," said Berlioz to Legouve in the first years of the fourth decade of this century, "I am going to let you see something which you have never seen, and someone whom you will never forget." This something and someone was Chopin. Mendelssohn being questioned about his enthusiasm for one of this master's preludes replied: "I love it, I cannot tell you how much, or why; except, perhaps, that it is something which I could never have written at all." Of course, Chopin's originality was not universally welcomed and appreciated. Mendelssohn, for instance, was rather repelled than attracted by it; at any rate, in his letters there are to be found frequent expressions of antipathy to Chopin's music, which seemed to him" mannered "(see letter to Moscheles of February 7, 1835). But even the heartless and brainless critic of the Musical World whose nonsense I quoted in Chapter XXXI. admits that Chopin was generally esteemed by the "professed classical musicians," and that the name of the admirers of the master's compositions was legion. To the early popularity of Chopin's music testify also the many arrangements for other instruments (the guitar not excepted) and even for voices (for instance, OEuvres celebres de Chopin, transcrites a une ou deux voix egales par Luigi Bordese) to which his compositions were subjected. This popularity was, however, necessarily limited, limited in extent or intensity. Indeed, popular, in the comprehensive sense of the word, Chopin's compositions can never become. To understand them fully we must have something of the author's nature, something of his delicate sensibility and romantic imagination. To understand him we must, moreover, know something of his life and country. For, as Balzac truly remarked, Chopin was less a musician than une ame qui se rend sensible. In short, his compositions are the "celestial echo of what he had felt, loved, and suffered"; they are his memoirs, his autobiography, which, like that of every poet, assumes the form of "Truth and Poetry."