As an operatic writer he is, however, less the musical genius than the gifted translator of poetry into the language of music. In the opinion of the most competent judges, he was only thoroughly successful with subjects which harmonised with his own literary leaning to the terrible and the supernatural. We have him at his best, for instance, in the songs of the wild, inhuman Teutons in _Das Kreuz an der Ostsee_, with their expression of untamable passions, and in the fairy tale-like, supernatural scenes of _Undine_, which produce a feeling of agreeable eeriness. No less an authority than Karl Maria von Weber bestowed hearty praise upon the last-mentioned opera. And Weber himself is, beyond comparison, the greatest of the composers who succeeded in giving expression in music to the Romantic theory of art. In his choice of themes he follows closely in the track of the Romanticists. In _Preciosa_ the joys of a free, vagabond life are extolled, just as they are in Tieck's _Franz Sternbald_ and Eichendorff's _Leben eines Taugenichts_ ("Life of a Ne'er-Do-Well"). In _Oberon_ we are transported into the fairy world of Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_, the play which served as the point of departure for all Tieck's fantastic comedies. And in _Der Freischütz_, Weber, like the Romanticists in their later periods, has recourse to the popular in his art, makes use of national, popular melodies, just as the Romanticists of Germany and Denmark made use of national, popular songs, and, like them, introduces popular traditions and superstitions. No one witnessing a performance of _Der Freischütz_ in a German theatre could be for a moment in doubt, even though he were deaf, of its being a Romantic opera. He sees the gloomy ravine where the spirits of nature dwell, the weird moonlight dance (scenes that remind one of the temptations of St. Anthony in old Dutch paintings), and, finally, the wild chase in which, with a marvellously illusive effect, shadows projected by a species of magic lantern pursue each other through the air. But to the listening connoisseur the real interest lies in the attitude of the composer to all these external conditions. He feels that Weber treats his subject much as the Romanticists do theirs, only with greater genius. He too drives his art to one of its extremes. Just as the Romanticists are inclined to conceive of speech as only sound and rhythm, he is inclined to treat music as if it were simply rhythm. Samiel's _Motiv_, for example, is more rhythmic than melodic, and consequently produces a coarser, more realistic, but also more picturesque effect. The Romanticists write musical poetry; Weber composes pictorial music. While Beethoven presents us with a purely psychological picture, represents nothing tangible, nothing but his own soul, Weber gives us physical characterisation. He always relies upon unmistakable outward phenomena, on something of which his audience already have a