One more remark: Towards the decline of life, the masterpieces of literature and art, on which the taste was formed, are apt to become invested in the mind with a sort of nimbus of sanctity; hence, the productions of a young and daring innovator, even when the genius and talent displayed in them are felt and receive just acknowledgement, have the aspect, not only of an extravagant and erring waste of misapplied powers, but of a kind of profane audacity. For these and similar reasons Beethoven’s novelties found little favor with the veterans of the concert-room. THE HOMAGE OF YOUNG DISCIPLES The criticism of the day was naturally ruled and stimulated by the same spirit. Beethoven’s own confession how it at first wounded him, will come in its order; but after he felt that his victory over it was sure--was in fact gained with a younger generation--he only laughed at the critics; to answer them, except by new works, was beneath him. Seyfried says of him (during the years of the “Eroica,” “Fidelio,” etc.): “When he came across criticisms in which he was accused of grammatical errors he rubbed his hands in glee and cried out with a loud laugh: ‘Yes, yes! they marvel and put their heads together because they do not find it in any school of thoroughbass!’” But for the young of both sexes, Beethoven’s music had an extraordinary charm. And this not upon technical grounds, nor solely for its novelties, always an attractive feature to the young, but because it appealed to the sensibilities, excited emotions and touched the heart as no other purely instrumental compositions had ever done. And so it was that Beethoven also in his quality of composer soon gathered about him a circle of young disciples, enthusiastic admirers. Their homage may well have been grateful to him--as such is to every artist and scholar of genius, who, striking out and steadfastly pursuing a new path, subjects himself to the sharp animadversions of critics who, in all honesty, really can see little or nothing of good in that which is not to be measured and judged by old standards. The voice of praise under such circumstances is doubly pleasing. It is known that, when Beethoven’s works began to find a just appreciation from a new generation of critics, who had indeed been schooled by them, he collected and preserved a considerable number of laudatory articles, whose fate cannot now be traced. When, however, the natural and just satisfaction which is afforded by the homage of honest admirers and deservedly eulogistic criticism, degenerates into a love of indiscriminate praise and flattery, it becomes a weakness, a fault. Of this error in Beethoven there are traces easily discernible, and especially in his later years; there are pages of fulsome eulogy addressed to him in the Conversation Books, which would make the reader blush for him, did not the mere fact that such books existed remind him of the bitterness of the composer’s lot. The failing was also sometimes his misfortune;