laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless,
gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom
he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun.
Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no
patrons, resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children
of music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to each
other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could not
separate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it he was
nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own.
Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in
England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records "one Claudius
Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance
on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!" Logical
conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy
contempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!

Gaetano Pisani's talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and power
over the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona among
instruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other pieces of larger
ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of these, his precious, his
unpurchased, his unpublished, his unpublishable and imperishable opera
of the "Siren." This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, the
mistress of his manhood; in advancing age "it stood beside him like
his youth." Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Even
bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle head
when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his most
thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music differs from all
Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but patience, Gaetano Pisani!