inexcusable. But if this is obvious, it is even more obvious that
there is something radically wrong with the prevalent systems of
musical instruction. It is because of a plentiful lack of knowledge
that so much that is written on music is without meaning, and that
the most foolish kind of rhapsody, so it show a collocation of fine
words, is permitted to masquerade as musical criticism and even
analysis. People like to read about music, and the books of a certain
English clergyman have had a sale of stupendous magnitude
notwithstanding they are full of absurdities. The clergyman has a
multitudinous companionship, moreover, among novelists, essayists, and
poets whose safety lies in more or less fantastic generalization when
they come to talk about music. How they flounder when they come to
detail! It was Charles Lamb who said, in his "Chapter on Ears," that
in voices he could not distinguish a soprano from a tenor, and could
only contrive to guess at the thorough-bass from its being
"supereminently harsh and disagreeable;" yet dear old Elia may be
forgiven, since his confounding the bass voice with a system of
musical short-hand is so delightful a proof of the ignorance he was
confessing.

[Sidenote: _Literary realism and musical terminology._]

But what shall the troubled critics say to Tennyson's orchestra
consisting of a flute, violin, and bassoon? Or to Coleridge's "_loud_
bassoon," which made the wedding-guest to beat his breast? Or to Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's pianist who played "with an airy and bird-like
touch?" Or to our own clever painter-novelist who, in "Snubbin'
through Jersey," has Brushes bring out his violoncello and play "the
symphonies of Beethoven" to entertain his fellow canal-boat
passengers? The tendency toward realism, or "veritism," as it is