From this time until the end of his life, in fact, a period of only a little less than forty years--he died in 1897--Brahms never departed from the modes of work and the ideals of attainment he had now set himself. He labored indefatigably, but with no haste or impatience. He was too painstaking and conscientious a workman to botch his products by hurrying them. He thus described to his friend, Mr. Henschel, his method of composing: «There is no real _creating_ without hard work. That which you would call invention, that is to say, a thought, is simply an inspiration from above, for which I am not responsible, which is no merit of mine. Yes, it is a present, a gift, which I ought even to despise until I have made it my own by right of hard work. And there need be no hurry about that either. It is as with the seed corn: it germinates unconsciously and in spite of ourselves. When I, for instance, have found the first phrase of a song, I might shut the book there and then, go for a walk, do some other work, and perhaps not think of it again for months. Nothing, however, is lost. If afterward I approach the subject again, it is sure to have taken shape; I can now really begin to work at it.» Another inkling of the severity of his standard we have in a remark he made after pointing out certain imperfections in a song of Mr. Henschel's. «Whether it is beautiful also,» he said, «is an entirely different matter; but perfect it must be.» With such a standard, we need not be surprised that he imposed so severe a training upon himself at twenty-one, or that he continued all his life the practice of writing each day a contrapuntal exercise, or that he wrought for ten years over his first symphony, that Titanic work. Thus laboring always with the same calm persistence, returning upon his ideas until he could present them with perfect clarity, caring little for the indifference or the applause of the public, but much for the approval of his own fastidious taste, he produced year by year an astonishing series of masterpieces. No one has better described the kind of work that made Brahms great than Matthew Arnold in those lines about labor «which in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes; accomplished in repose; Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.»