I make this quotation for it clearly sets forth a profound but not widely appreciated fact. In art, as in life, there is no absolute. Perhaps the most illuminating statement concerning the romantic style was uttered by Théophile Gautier. Of it he wrote (in his essay on Baudelaire): "Unlike the classic style it admits shadow." We need not bother ourselves about the spirit of romanticism; that has been done to the death by hundreds of critics. And it is a sign of the times that the old-fashioned Chopin is fading, while we are now vitally interested in him as a formalist. Indeed, Chopin the romantic, poetic, patriotic, sultry, sensuous, morbid, and Chopin the pianist, need not enter into our present scheme. He has appeared to popular fancy as everything from Thaddeus of Warsaw to an exotic drawing-room hero; from the sentimental consumptive consoled by countesses to the accredited slave of George Sand. All this is truly the romantic Chopin. It is the obverse of the medal that piques curiosity. Why the classic quality of his compositions, their clarity, concision, purity, structural balance, were largely missed by so many of his contemporaries is a mystery. Because of his obviously romantic melodies he was definitely ranged with the most extravagant of the romantics, with Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt; but, as a matter of fact, he is formally closer to Mendelssohn. His original manner of distributing his thematic material deceived the critics. He refused to join the revolutionists; later in the case of Flaubert we come upon an analogous condition. Hailed as chief of the realists, the author of Madame Bovary took an ironic delight in publishing Salammbô, which was romantic enough to please that prince of romanticists, Victor Hugo. Chopin has been reproached for his tepid attitude toward romanticism, and also because of his rather caustic criticisms of certain leaders. He, a musical aristocrat _pur sang_, held aloof, though he permitted himself to make some sharp commentaries on Schubert, Schumann, and Berlioz. Decidedly not a romantic despite his romantic externalism. Decidedly a classic despite his romantic "content." Of him Stendhal might have written: a classic is a dead romantic. (Heine left no epic, yet he is an indubitable classic.) Wise Goethe said: "The point is for a work to be thoroughly good and then it is sure to be classical."