Warmly romantic with Shakespeare, purely classic with Virgil, who were his literary deities, he was eclectic in literature as in music. The splendid lyric accents of Gluck are not in full harmony with the deep poetic and chivalric inspiration of Weber, and the lack of resemblance between Spontini and Beethoven is still more striking, yet Berlioz loved them all. It matters not that Berlioz confounded these masters in his religious admiration of them and made for himself a double personality, repudiating all rule and tradition when he wrote for the orchestra and for the concert stage, and becoming a pious observer of hallowed forms when he turned to the theatre. In his _Les Troyens_, the voice parts are of a wholly classic purity while the orchestra abounds in modern romanticism; in _Béatrice et Bénédict_, delightful inspirations, exquisite in their poetry, are mingled with the conventional forms that Berlioz mercilessly condemned in the works of others: inexplicable vocal flourishes, repetitions of words, outrages on prosody, the clipping of rebellious words; all this by a composer in whose eyes correct declamation was a fundamental essential of song. Such was the composer Berlioz, such the critic, and the critic was not unhelpful to the composer. In fact, all that he was in France, all that he was able to win, during his lifetime, he owed to his position as a writer for the press and as the friend of influential journalists. But he made many enemies, less by the aggressiveness of his writings than by his caustic wit. There was in him an imperative necessity to tell the public his hates and his loves, and if he did not always feel free to give bold expression to the disgust with which certain works filled him, he invariably let his contempt be seen through his polished and even laudatory phrases. At least, nobody was ever deceived. The musician in Berlioz is impassioned, now tender, now vigorous. It is the same with the writer. His style is picturesque and incisive, sometimes trivial. Side by side are exclamations of admiration and contempt; quasi religious respect and genuinely holy anger, all equally energetic and sincere—the word and the blow. To appreciate this at its full value, it suffices to select at hazard one of the collection of articles published by himself in book form under the titles, _Les Soirées de l’orchestra, Les Grotesques de la musique_, in which the humorist tone prevails and _A travers chants_, which contains his most serious thoughts; the two volumes of letters published after his death, _Correspondance inédite et lettres intimes_; and finally his amusing and fascinating _Mémoires_, in which he travesties himself unreservedly and confuses somewhat the dates and facts. This book is a genuine romance.