These comparisons must not be misunderstood; study of Bach strengthened Beethoven's genius. We are not speaking of bald imitation, not even of conscious imitation. He not only received the message of the old master, as a child, but while he was a child; and that no doubt helped him more than all the works of his predecessors from Emanuel Bach upwards. It appealed to him strongly, because it was based on nature. Bach's Fugues are living organisms; they are expansions of some central thought. Development reveals the latent power, the latent meaning of the themes; were it merely artificial, no matter how skilful, it would be letter, not spirit. A clever contrapuntist once conceived the bold idea of competing with Bach; he wrote a series of Preludes and Fugues in all the keys, and displayed wonderful skill in all the arts of counterpoint, canon, and fugue, while in the matter of elaborate combinations he actually surpassed Bach (we refer here only to the "Well-tempered Clavier"). But the result was failure; the laborious work was wasted. Klengel had mistaken the means for the end; he had worked as a mathematician, not as a musician. Beethoven felt the true secret of Bach's greatness, and his own genius taught him how to profit by it. Next to the necessity of having something of importance to say, something which development will enhance, the great lesson which Beethoven learnt from Bach was unity in variety, the "highest law in all artistic creation," as Dr. H. Riemann well remarks in his _Catechism of Musical AEsthetics_.