Arthurian subject, and sketched a single act of it. He had planned
this work upon novel lines: there was to be comparatively little
singing, and much emphasis was to be laid upon the orchestral
commentary; the action was to be carried on by a combination of
pantomime and tableaux, and the scenic element was to be
conspicuous--a suggestion which he got in part from E.A. Abbey's Holy
Grail frescoes in the Boston Public Library. But he had determined to
write his own text: and the prospective labour of this, made more
formidable by his restricted leisure, finally discouraged him, and he
abandoned the project. Five years before his death he destroyed the
sketches that he had made; only a few fragments remain.

A rare and admirable man!--a man who would have been a remarkable
personality if he had not written a note of music. His faults--and he
was far from being a paragon--were never petty or contemptible: they
were truly the defects of his qualities--of his honesty, his courage,
his passionate and often reckless zeal in the promotion of what he
believed to be sound and fine in art and in life. Mr. Philip Hale,
whose long friendship with MacDowell gives him the right to speak with
peculiar authority, and whose habit is that of sobriety in speech, has
written of him in words whose justice and felicity cannot be bettered:
"A man of blameless life, he was never pharasaical; he was
compassionate toward the slips and failings of poor humanity. He was a
true patriot, proud and hopeful of his country and of its artistic
future, but he could not brook the thought of patriotism used as a
cloak to cover mediocrity in art.... He was one who worked steadily
and courageously in the face of discouragement; who never courted by
trickery or device the favour of the public; who never fawned upon
those who might help him; who in his art kept himself pure and
unspotted."