The peculiar place of Schumann as a song-writer is indicated by his being called the musical exponent of Heine, who seems to be the other half of his soul. The composer enters into each shade and detail of the poet's meaning with an intensity and fidelity which one can never cease admiring. It is this phase which gives the Schumann songs their great artistic value. In their clean-cut, abrupt, epigrammatic force there is something different from the work of any other musical lyrist. So much has this impressed the students of the composer that more than one able critic has ventured to prophesy that Schumann's greatest claim to immortality would yet be found in such works as the settings of "Ich grolle nicht" and the "Dichterliebe" series--a perverted estimate, perhaps, but with a large substratum of truth. The duration of Schumann's song-time was short, the greater part of his _Lieder_ having been written in 1840. After this he gave himself up to oratorio, symphony, and chamber-music. * * * * * Note by the Editor.--The above account of Robert Schumann does not give an adequate impression of the composer; the following remarks are therefore appended, based in most part upon J. A. Fuller Maitland's "Schumann" in _The Great Musicians_ Series. In 1832 the poet Grillparzer, in a critical article published in the _Wiener Musikalische Zeitung_, recognises that Schumann "belongs to no school, but creates of himself without making parade of outlandish ideas, ... he has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves about as he wills, with a certain original _bizarrerie_." Moscheles, a friend of Schumann, wrote in his diary--"For mind (Geist) give me Schumann. The Romanticism in his works is a thing so completely new, his genius so great, that to weigh correctly the peculiar qualities and weakness of this new school I must go deeper and deeper into the study of his works." In the _Gazette Musicale_ for November 12, 1837, Franz Liszt wrote a thoroughly sympathetic criticism of the composer's works, as a whole, and says--"The more closely we examine Schumann's ideas, the more power and life do we discover in them; and the more we study them, the more we are amazed at the wealth and fertility which had before escaped us." And Hector Berlioz, the great French Romanticist, looked upon him "as one of the most remarkable composers and critics in Germany." As a musical critic Schumann ranks very high. In 1834 he, with several friends, started a critical paper, _Neue Zeitschrift für Music_, in order "no longer to look on idly, but to try and make things better, so that the poetry of art may once more be duly honoured." The paper was very successful, and had a considerable influence in the musical world--more especially as it supplied a distinct want, for at the time of its appearance "musical criticism in Germany was of the most futile kind, silly, superficial admiration of