vigour! It is a joy to read it; one drinks at the source of life
itself.]

He wrote them at the same age, but ten years later; for _Les Fées_
appeared in 1833, when Berlioz had already written the _Fantastique_,
the _Huit scènes de Faust, Lelio_, and _Harold; Rienzi_ was only played
in 1842, after _Benvenuto_ (1835), _Le Requiem_ (1837), _Roméo_ (1839),
_La Symphonie funèbre et triomphale_ (1840)--that is to say, when
Berlioz had finished all his great works, and after he had achieved his
musical revolution. And that revolution was effected alone, without a
model, without a guide. What could he have heard beyond the operas of
Gluck and Spontini while he was at the Conservatoire? At the time when
he composed the _Ouverture des Francs-Juges_ even the name of Weber was
unknown to him,[58] and of Beethoven's compositions he had only heard an
_andante_.[59]

Truly, he is a miracle and the most startling phenomenon in the history
of nineteenth-century music. His audacious power dominates all his age;
and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's
example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not
see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away
in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for
lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and he wanted it obstinately.

[Footnote 58: _Mémoires_, I, 70.]

[Footnote 59: _Ibid_. To make amends for this he published, in 1829, a
biographical notice of Beethoven, in which his appreciation of him is
remarkably in advance of his age. He wrote there: "The _Choral Symphony_
is the culminating point of Beethoven's genius," and he speaks of the