He was fitted in every way for the part, even by his deficiencies and
his ignorance. His classical education in music was incomplete. M.
Saint-Saëns tells us that "the past did not exist for him; he did not
understand the old composers, as his knowledge of them was limited to
what he had read about them." He did not know Bach. Happy ignorance! He
was able to write oratorios like _L'Enfance du Christ_ without being
worried by memories and traditions of the German masters of oratorio.
There are men like Brahms who have been, nearly all their life, but
reflections of the past. Berlioz never sought to be anything but
himself. It was thus that he created that masterpiece, _La Fuite en
Égypte_, which sprang from his keen sympathy with the people.

He had one of the most untrammelled spirits that ever breathed. Liberty
was for him a desperate necessity. "Liberty of heart, of mind, of
soul--of everything.... Real liberty, absolute and immense!"[80] And
this passionate love of liberty, which was his misfortune in life, since
it deprived him of the comfort of any faith, refused him any refuge for
his thoughts, robbed him of peace, and even of the soft pillow of
scepticism--this "real liberty" formed the unique originality and
grandeur of his musical conceptions.

[Footnote 80: _Mémoires_, I, 221.]

"Music," wrote Berlioz to C. Lobe, in 1852, "is the most poetic,
the most powerful, the most living of all arts. She ought to be the
freest, but she is not yet.... Modern music is like the classic
Andromeda, naked and divinely beautiful. She is chained to a rock
on the shores of a vast sea, and awaits the victorious Perseus who
shall loose her bonds and break in pieces the chimera called
Routine."