It is evident that such a man would be successful with songs. And Grieg’s songs (there are only 146 of them) are among the most delightful we have. Some critics are glad to place him just below Schubert and Brahms. Certainly he shows in his songs a spontaneity, an _élan_, that is one of the prime qualities of the lyrical spirit. Like Franz, he makes his songs brief and to the point. Unlike Franz, he takes considerable freedom of form and outline and makes an easy appeal to an unsophisticated public. As an interpreter of moods he is admirable. But his songs have made their popularity probably more on their sheer beauty than on any interpretative quality. In several of his ballads Grieg has caught a suggestion of the archaic--a certain angularity of melody which is crude yet beautiful. This is typified in ‘The Princess,’ words by the Norwegian poet Björnsen; and ‘The Old Song,’ words by Heine. But in general Grieg shows that he has little to add to the ballad or the longer vocal forms. He is at his most typical, and possibly at his best, in ‘The Swan,’[29] words by the dramatist Ibsen. Here he is using harmonic color for all it will yield. In style the song is as far as possible removed from the work of Franz, for it consists simply of a melody with chords for accompaniment. There is scarcely a suggestion of the polyphonic style. The chords, generally in a slightly unusual or altered form, are simply juxtaposed. From their contrast comes the color which is so marked in this song. No other composer, before Grieg, had done this particular thing so well and in point of originality the song can justly be included among the great ones of the world. In _Ich liebe dich_, which is far better known, he is in a vein that is much less fine. Here there is nothing of the national idiom. The song is indeed remarkable for the manner in which it creates emotional excitement in a mere four lines. But through it all there is something of the vulgar. It is not a song apart, like ‘The Swan,’ but one of the horde.