Musicians." Here the rainbow of the new brotherhood is set, and he who
can find no pleasure in it "for such an one there is no help," as
Strauss says on another occasion; and, as he might well say here, "he
is not yet ripe for our point of view." For are we not in the heaven
of heavens? The enthusiastic explorer undertakes to lead us about, and
begs us to excuse him if, in the excess of his joy at all the beauties
to be seen, he should by any chance be tempted to talk too much. "If I
should, perhaps, become more garrulous than may seem warranted in this
place, let the reader be indulgent to me; for out of the abundance of
the heart the mouth speaketh. Let him only be assured that what he is
now about to read does not consist of older materials, which I take
the opportunity of inserting here, but that these remarks have been
written for their present place and purpose" (pp. 345-46). This
confession surprises us somewhat for the moment. What can it matter to
us whether or not the little chapters were freshly written? As if it
were a matter of writing! Between ourselves, I should have been glad
if they had been written a quarter of a century earlier; then, at
least, I should have understood why the thoughts seem to be so
bleached, and why they are so redolent of resuscitated antiquities.
But that a thing should have been written in 1872 and already smell of
decay in 1872 strikes me as suspicious. Let us imagine some one's
falling asleep while reading these chapters--what would he most
probably dream about? A friend answered this question for me, because
he happened to have had the experience himself. He dreamt of a
wax-work show. The classical writers stood there, elegantly
represented in wax and beads. Their arms and eyes moved, and a screw
inside them creaked an accompaniment to their movements. He saw
something gruesome among them--a misshapen figure, decked with tapes
and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which
"Lessing" was written. My friend went close up to it and learned the