Yet, though in looking over the _Années de pèlerinage_ one may find but a very few pieces of genuine worth, though most are pretentious, there is in all a certain sort of fire which one cannot approach without being warmed. It is the glorious spirit of Byron in music. There is the facility of Byron, the posturing of Byron, the oratory of Byron; but there is his superb self-confidence too, showing him tricking himself as well as the public, yet at times a hero, and Byron’s unquenchable enthusiasm and irrepressible passionateness. Finally we come to the small group of big pieces in which we find the sonata in B minor, the two concertos, several études, polonaises and concert pieces. Among the études, the great twelve have been already touched upon. Besides these the two best known are those in D-flat major and in F minor. The former is wholly satisfactory. The latter is at once more difficult and less spontaneous. The two polonaises, one in C minor and one in E major, have the virtues which belong to concert pieces in the style of Weber’s _Polacca_, the chief of which is enormous brilliance. In addition to this that in C minor is not lacking in a certain nobility; but that in E major is all of outward show. The two concertos are perfect works of their kind, unexcelled in brilliancy of treatment of both the orchestra and the piano, and that in E-flat major full of musical beauty. Both are free in form and rhapsodical in character, effusions of music at once passionate and poetical. That in A major loses by somewhat too free a looseness of form. Even after careful study it cannot but seem rambling. The sonata in B minor is perhaps Liszt’s boldest experiment in original music for the pianoforte alone. One says experiment quite intentionally, because the work shows as a whole more ingenuity than inspiration, is rather an invention than a creation. There are measures of great beauty, pages of factitious development. At times one finds a nobility of utterance, at others a paucity of ideas.