It is in this astonishing spontaneity that Schubert's greatness largely consists. In some elements of artistic perfection he is lacking, and the want may be traced to some of the circumstances of his education. His early teachers were simply overwhelmed by his genius and let him go unguided. Holzer, as we have seen, whenever he wished to teach the boy anything, found that the boy could teach him. So Ruzicka, instructor in thorough-bass at the _Convict_, simply protested that Schubert must have learned music directly from heaven, and he could do nothing for him. Sir George Grove very properly asks, "If all masters adopted this attitude toward their pupils, what would have become of some of the greatest geniuses?" Schubert certainly suffered from defective knowledge of counterpoint; after coming to maturity he recognized this defect in his education and sought to remedy it by study. Herein he was at a disadvantage compared with his younger contemporary Mendelssohn. Himself a musician of extraordinary precocity and spontaneity, Mendelssohn became thoroughly grounded in counterpoint under one of the best of teachers, Zelter; and in all his works Mendelssohn shows that absolute mastery of form, the lack of which is often noticeable in Schubert, especially in his instrumental works. Upon this point we shall have occasion to make some further comment. There can be little doubt that the worthy Ruzicka would have done well had he given his wonderful pupil a careful training in counterpoint. The heaven-sent music would have lost nothing of its heavenly quality by enlarging its means of expression. About the first of November, 1813, Schubert left the _Convict_ and studied for awhile in the Normal School of St. Anna, in order to qualify himself for a school-teacher. He escaped conscription by entering his father's parish school, where he served three years as teacher and discharged the monotonous and irksome duties of that position with scrupulous fidelity. He still, however, found time for music. The compositions of the year 1814 show a marked advance in maturity. The most important is the first mass, in F, a work that has been pronounced superior to the first mass of any other composer except Beethoven's mass in C. Then we have the second symphony, in B flat, the overture in Italian style for full orchestra, five string quartets, eleven dances for strings and horns, and twenty-two songs, more than half of them to Matthisson's words. Among the songs "Gretchen am Spinnrade," to Goethe's words, is especially to be noted.