occasion for "The Athenæum," in which he says: "The delicacy of M.
Chopin's tone and the elasticity of his passages are delicious to the
ear. He makes a free use of _tempo rubato_, leaning about within his
bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a
presiding sentiment of measure, such as presently habituates the ear
to the liberties taken. In music not his own, we happen to know he can
be as staid as a metronome; while his Mazurkas, etc., lose half that
wildness if played without a certain freedom and license--impossible
to imitate, but irresistible if the player at all feels the music.
This we have always fancied while reading Chopin's works:--we are now
sure of it after hearing him perform them."

Moscheles wrote to his wife that Chopin's "_ad libitum_ playing,
which, with the interpreters of his music degenerates into offences
against correct time, is, in his own case, merely a pleasing
originality of style." He compares him to "a singer who, little
concerned with the accompaniment, follows entirely his feelings."
Karasovski says that Chopin "played the bass in quiet, regular time,
while the right hand moved about with perfect freedom, now following
the left hand, now ... going its own independent way. 'The left hand,'
said Chopin, 'must be like an orchestral conductor; not for a moment
must it be uncertain and vacillating.'" Thus his playing, free from
the fetters of _tempo_, acquired a unique charm; thanks to this
_rubato_, his melody was "like a vessel rocked upon the waves of the
sea."

The world suffered a great loss when a band of ignorant soldiers found
the bundles of letters which Chopin had written from Paris to his
parents, and used them to feed the fire which cooked their supper. But
it lost a still greater treasure when Chopin tore up the manuscript of