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Again and again we meet with works thus christened which bear upon them the distinct marks of painful effort and anxious filing, which maybe said to smell of the mid- night lamp, and to be dripping with the hard-working artificer's sweat. Although an admired improviser, the process of composition was to him neither easy nor quick.
Besides this, he was the best improviser in verse of his day. The Duke, hearing the marvellous discourse of Leonardo, became so enamoured of his genius, that it was something incredible: and he prevailed upon him by entreaties to paint an altar-panel containing a Nativity, which was sent by the Duke to the Emperor.
Hoffmann was essentially an improviser, and sang only too copiously in all the tones and fashions of German verse. But Freiligrath's strongest work was in the field of political poetry. He, too, made sacrifices for the faith that was in him; he gave up a royal pension and twice went into voluntary exile in order to be free to express his liberal sentiments.
This comparison was once applied to herself by George Sand, Zola's only rival in the matter of quantity. But Madame Sand was an improviser; with notes she never bothered herself; in her letters to Flaubert she laughed over the human documents of Zola, the elaborate note taking of Daudet, for she was blessed with an excellent memory and a huge capacity for scribbling. Not so Zola.
There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is deemed desirable that a little boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo, then he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow. As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an improviser.
It was the same old tale of love and adventure that many generations have listened to; but the lively fancy of the hearers rent it new interest, and the wit of the improviser drew forth sighs of interest and shouts of laughter. A yellow-haired girl on the edge of the throng turned, as Hermas passed, and smiled in his face. She put out her hand and caught him by the sleeve.
The improviser disdains economy, as much as the artist cherishes it. Coquelin has some half-dozen complete variations of the face he has composed for Tartuffe; no more than that, with no insignificances of expression thrown away; but each variation is a new point of view, from which we see the whole character.
But he was an improviser of genius, and Mr. Stevenson was a conscious artist. Of course we did by no means always agree in literary estimates; no two people do. But when certain works in his line in one way were stupidly set up as rivals of his, the person who was most irritated was not he, but his equally magnanimous contemporary. There was no thought of rivalry or competition in either mind.
It was the same old tale of love and adventure that many generations have listened to; but the lively fancy of the hearers lent it new interest, and the wit of the improviser drew forth sighs of interest and shouts of laughter. A yellow-haired girl on the edge of the throng turned, as Hermas passed, and smiled in his face. She put out her hand and caught him by the sleeve.
The Abbé Marigny, that "delicate epicurean, that improviser of fine triolets, ballads, vaudevilles, that enemy of all sadness and sticklers for morality," charmed her, at times, with sentimental ballads, such as the following: Tréville went so far as to say that the figure of Mme. de Sévigné was beautiful enough to set the world afire.
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