When, therefore, he came to the composition of his wonderful operas, he saw no necessity for the creation of new forms, because he did not feel the shackles of the old ones. To him they were chains of roses, and the impulse had not come which set all composers thundering against the restrictive barriers of mere formalism. With Mozart there was no such thing as mere formalism; and if there is any lesson which every repetition of "Don Juan" forces home upon us with vital force, it is that fashion is no restraint on genius. Mozart accepted the material of Italian opera as he found it. But he filled the old forms with a new spirit. In the process of the years the spirit waxed too mighty for the old body and took its flight into the infinite regions of free, untrammelled expression. Mozart stood upon the boundary of the promised land; Beethoven and Weber strode boldly across the border; Wagner feasted upon the milk and the honey. Chapter XXV Weber and Beethoven Weber the artistic forerunner of Wagner--Characteristics of "Der Freischütz"--Weber's theory of the lyric drama--Beethoven and his "Fidelio"--Advancement of the overture--Marschner, Conelius, and Goldmark. Mozart, in "Die Zauberflöte," had touched upon an element which always appeals to the peculiar naïveté of the German character. That element is the supernatural. The Germans love a good fairy tale, and the "Nibelungen Lied," their national epic, is a version of the most imposing fairy tale the world knows. It was Mozart's misfortune, however, that he clung to old traditions and served up his German food in Italian dressing. So it was reserved for Weber to join hands with Beethoven and Schubert in starting the romantic movement. What Beethoven did for absolute music and Schubert for the song, Weber did for German opera. The influence which acted as an incentive to the romantic movement in music was the romantic movement in German literature. The writings of Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Ruckert, and others were intensely romantic in feeling and distinctively German in character; and they seem to have suggested to Weber the importance of national stories as material for opera librettos. At any rate he took up such material with a full knowledge of the awakened German taste for native legend and story. Unfortunately he was easily turned aside from this path, and induced afterward to waste his powers upon librettos of no value whatever.