conceived as such, and though Berlioz tried by various devices to give it entity, he failed.  When he gave it to the world, he called it a “Dramatic Legend,” a term which may mean much or little as one chooses to consider it; but I can recall no word of his which indicates that he ever thought that it was fit for the stage.  It was Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the opera at Monte Carlo, who, in 1903, conceived the notion of a theatrical representation of the legend and tricked it out with pictures and a few attempts at action.  Most of these attempts are futile and work injury to the music, as will presently appear, but in a few instances they were successful, indeed very successful.  Of course, if Berlioz had wanted to make an opera out of Goethe’s drama, he could have done so.  He would then have anticipated Gounod and Boito and, possibly, have achieved one of those popular successes for which he hungered.  But he was in his soul a poet, in his heart a symphonist, and intellectually (as many futile efforts proved) incapable of producing a piece for the boards.  When the Faust subject first seized upon his imagination, he knew it only in a prose translation of Goethe’s poem made by Gerald de Nerval.  In his “Memoirs” he tells us how it fascinated him.  He carried it about with him, reading it incessantly and eagerly at dinner, in the streets, in the theatre.  In the prose translation there were a few fragments of songs.  These he set to music and published under the title “Huit Scenes de Faust,” at his own expense.  Marx, the Berlin critic, saw the music and wrote the composer a letter full of encouragement.  But Berlioz soon saw grave defects in his work and withdrew it from circulation, destroying all the copies which he could lay hands on.  What was good in it, however, he laid away for future use.  The opportunity came twenty years later, when he was fired anew with a desire to write music for Goethe’s poem.

Though he had planned the work before starting out on his memorable artistic travels, he seems to have found inspiration in the circumstance that he was amongst a people who were more appreciative of his genius than his own countrymen, and whose language was that employed by the poet.  Not more than one-sixth of his “Eight Scenes” had consisted of settings of the translations of M. de Nerval.  A few scenes had been prepared by M. Gaudonniere from notes provided by the composer.  The rest of the book Berlioz wrote himself, now paraphrasing the original poet, now going to him only for a suggestion.  As was the case with Wagner, words and music frequently presented themselves to him simultaneously.  Travelling from town to town, conducting rehearsals and concerts, he wrote whenever and wherever he could—­one number in an inn at Passau, the Elbe scene and the Dance of the Sylphs at Vienna, the peasants’ song by gaslight in a shop one night when he had lost his way in Pesth, the angels’ chorus in Marguerite’s apotheosis at Prague (getting up in the middle of