His father was a provincial physician and, like so many other fathers in artistic history, seemed to the end of his days ashamed of the fact that he had a genius for a son. The boy imbibed his first music among the amateurs of his town. He went to Paris to study medicine--because his father would provide him funds for nothing else. He loyally studied his science for a while, but nothing could keep him out of music. Without his father’s consent or even knowledge he entered the Conservatory, where he remained at swords’ points with the director, Cherubini, who cuts a ridiculous figure in his ‘Memoirs.’ By hook and crook, and by the generosity of creditors, he managed to live on and get his musical education. His father became partially reconciled when he realized there was nothing else to do. But how Berlioz took to heart the lawlessness of the romantic school! Nothing that was, was right. All that is most typically Gallic--clearness, economy, control--is absent in his youthful work. ‘Ah, me!’ says he in his ‘Memoirs,’ ‘what was the good God thinking of when He dropped me down in this pleasant land of France?’ The events of his career are not very significant. He had a wild time of shocking people. He organized concerts of his own works, chiefly by borrowing money. After two failures he won the _Prix de Rome_, and hardly reached Italy when he started to leave it on a picaresque errand of sentimental revenge. He fell in love with an English actress, Henriette Smithson, married her when she was _passée_ and in debt, and eventually treated her rather shamefully. He gave concerts of his works in France, Germany, England, Russia. He was made curator of the Conservatory library. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honor. He wrote musical articles for the papers. He took life very much to heart. And, from time to time, he wrote musical works, very few of them anything less than masterpieces. That is all. The details of his life make entertaining reading. Very little is significant beyond an understanding of his personal character. He was called the genius without talent. Romain Rolland comes closer when he says, ‘Berlioz is the most extreme combination of power of genius with weakness of character.’ His power of discovering orchestral timbres is only equalled by his power of making enemies. There is no villainy recorded of his life; there are any number of mean things, and any number of wild, irrational things. His artistic sincerity is unquestioned, but it is mingled with any amount of the bad boy’s delight in shocking others. Like Schumann, but in his own manner, he made himself a crusader against the Philistines.