In translation, also, Schubert was familiar with the work of certain foreign poets, notably Shakespeare and Walter Scott. To the inspiration of the former we owe at least two masterpieces, ‘Who Is Sylvia?’ and ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark!’ From the latter we have the wonderful ‘Ave Maria.’ We should not forget, also, the songs of Ossian, now almost forgotten. These were forgeries (in all probability) by a Scotch schoolmaster, purporting to be translations from the Gaelic of the songs of the minstrel Ossian, who had been no more than a tradition for centuries. The literary world took them in earnest, and such men as Goethe became enthusiastic over their wild and rugged imagery. But to us they seem rhetorical and far removed from the simplicity of genuine folk-poetry. And Schubert seems to have felt this, for, though he set eight of the long Ossian songs, not one of his settings is memorable. Again the absence of the true lyric spark had left him cold. [Illustration: Poets of the Romantic Period. Top: Goethe and Hugo Bottom: Schiller and Heine] III Among Schubert’s songs we find an extraordinarily wide range of form and subject-matter--so wide that all song writers since his time have not been able much to enlarge it. We have said that he was the first to apply musical genius to the _durchkomponiertes Lied_. But he was not a specialist in this form. He seems to have had no especial preferences, but to have been guided by the nature of his poem. A number of his songs are in the strophe form--simply contrasting phrases of the music forming the tune, which is repeated without change for each stanza of the words, as in the simple folk-tune type. Of this class are some of Schubert’s best songs, such as ‘The Heather Rose,’ ‘The Fisher,’ ‘Praise of Tears,’ ‘Wandering,’ ‘The Brook’s Lullaby,’ ‘Hark, Hark, the Lark!’[20] and many others. Next we find what we might call the ‘developed strophe’ form, in which the simple stanza organization is preserved in spirit, but some change enters into the make-up of the whole song in accordance with the demands of the text. Examples of this are the famous _Du bist die Ruh_, in which the final strophe is much altered to express the intenser feelings of the poet; or the _Gute Nacht_, from the _Winterreise_ series, in which the melody of one stanza is sung in the major to convey the contrasting effect of calmness; or the ‘Serenade,’ in which the repeated strophe is followed by a free coda necessary to give completeness to the idea. In the class of the ‘developed strophe’ form we might group such pieces as ‘Her Portrait,’ which repeats the main strophe after a contrasting middle section. Or there are such songs as ‘By the Sea,’[1] which are almost in the strict strophe form, but varied here and there in some minor detail, proving that however much Schubert felt the beauty of form he did not feel its dogma.