original thought, who had taken the trouble to think about their art, and
to think for themselves. Naturally, they were not very well known: they
were shelved in their little reviews: with only one or two exceptions,
the newspapers were not for them. They were honest men--intelligent,
interesting, sometimes driven by their isolation to paradox and the habit
of thinking aloud, intolerance, and garrulity. The rest had hastily learned
the rudiments of harmony: and they stood gaping in wonder at their newly
acquired knowledge. Like Monsieur Jourdain when he learned the rules of
grammar, they marvelled at their knowledge:

"_D, a, Da; F, a, Fa; R, a, Ra.... Ah! How fine it is!... Ah! How splendid
it is to know something!..._"

They only babbled of theme and counter-theme, of harmonies and resultant
sounds, of consecutive ninths and tierce major. When they had labeled the
succeeding harmonies which made up a page of music, they proudly mopped
their brows: they thought they had explained the music, and almost believed
that they had written it. As a matter of fact, they had only repeated it
in school language, like a boy making a grammatical analysis of a page of
Cicero. But it was so difficult for the best of them to conceive music as
a natural language of the soul that, when they did not make it an adjunct
to painting, they dragged it into the outskirts of science, and reduced it
to the level of a problem in harmonic construction. Some who were learned
enough took upon themselves to show a thing or two to past musicians. They
found fault with Beethoven, and rapped Wagner over the knuckles. They
laughed openly at Berlioz and Gluck. Nothing existed for them just then but
Johann Sebastian Bach, and Claude Debussy. And Bach, who had lately been
roundly abused, was beginning to seem pedantic, a periwig, and in fine, a
hack. Quite distinguished men extolled Rameau in mysterious terms--Rameau
and Couperin, called the Great.