And what a splendid variety there is in these melodies: there is the
song in Gluck's style (Cassandre's airs), the pure German _lied_
(Marguerite's song, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"), the Italian melody,
after Bellini, in its most limpid and happy form (arietta of Arlequin in
_Benvenuto_), the broad Wagnerian phrase (finale of _Roméo_), the
folk-song (chorus of shepherds in _L'Enfance du Christ_), and the freest
and most modern recitative (the monologues of Faust), which was
Berlioz's own invention, with its full development, its pliant outline,
and its intricate nuances.[76]

[Footnote 75: _Mémoires_, II, 361.]

[Footnote 76: M. Jean Marnold has remarked this genius for monody in
Berlioz in his article on _Hector Berlioz, musicien (Mercure de France_,
15 January, and 1 February, 1905).]

I have said that Berlioz had a matchless gift for expressing tragic
melancholy, weariness of life, and the pangs of death. In a general way,
one may say that he was a great elegist in music. Ambros, who was a very
discerning and unbiassed critic, said: "Berlioz feels with inward
delight and profound emotion what no musician, except Beethoven, has
felt before." And Heinrich Heine had a keen perception of Berlioz's
originality when he called him "a colossal nightingale, a lark the size
of an eagle." The simile is not only picturesque, but of remarkable
aptness. For Berlioz's colossal force is at the service of a forlorn and
tender heart; he has nothing of the heroism of Beethoven, or Händel, or
Gluck, or even Schubert. He has all the charm of an Umbrian painter, as
is shown in _L'Enfance du Christ_, as well as sweetness and inward
sadness, the gift of tears, and an elegiac passion.