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For, people will naturally reason thus, It is Maelzel's interest to represent this thing a pure machine he refuses to do so, directly, in words, although he does not scruple, and is evidently anxious to do so, indirectly by actions were it actually what he wishes to represent it by actions, he would gladly avail himself of the more direct testimony of words the inference is, that a consciousness of its not being a pure machine, is the reason of his silence his actions cannot implicate him in a falsehood his words may.
I therefore appeal to the London musicians not to permit such a grievous wrong to be done to their fellow-artist by Herr Maelzel's performance of the "Battle of Vittoria" and the "Battle Symphony," and also to prevent the London public being so shamefully imposed upon. Vienna, August 22, 1814.
A miniature rope-dancer performed some curious feats, and small figures, when their hands were shaken, ejaculated the words, "Papa!" and "Mamma!" in a life-like manner. But the crowning glory of Monsieur Maelzel's exhibition was a panorama, scenic and mechanical, of the "Burning of Moscow." The view of the Russian capital, with its domes and minarets, was a real work of art.
So far as I am myself concerned, I have long purposed giving up those inconsistent terms allegro, andante, adagio, and presto; and Maelzel's metronome furnishes us with the best opportunity of doing so. I here pledge myself no longer to make use of them in any of my new compositions. It is another question whether we can by this means attain the necessary universal use of the metronome.
We become more and more automatic as we grow older, and if we lived long enough we should come to be pieces of creaking machinery like Maelzel's chess player, or what that seemed to be. Emerson was sixty-three years old, the year I have referred to as that of the grand climacteric, when he read to his son the poem he called "Terminus," beginning: "It is time to be old, To take in sail.
Most assuredly we must not refer the unlife-like appearances to inability for all the rest of Maelzel's automata are evidence of his full ability to copy the motions and peculiarities of life with the most wonderful exactitude. The rope-dancers, for example, are inimitable.
At that very time I became involved in the most frightful pecuniary difficulties. I got back from him the score written for the panharmonica. The concerts then took place, and during that time Herr Maelzel's designs and character were first fully revealed. Without my consent, he stated on the bills of the concert that the work was his property.
To make a machine that articulates is not so easy; but we remember Maelzel's wooden children, which said, "Pa-pa" and "Ma-ma"; and more elaborate and successful speaking machines have, we believe, been since constructed. But no man has been able to make a figure that can walk. Of all the automata imitating men or animals moving, there is not one in which the legs are the true sources of motion.
Cooper cannot be congratulated upon his success in the few attempts he has made to represent historical personages. Washington, as shown to us in "The Spy," is a formal piece of mechanism, as destitute of vital character as Maelzel's automaton trumpeter.
The little man turned round mechanically towards him, as Maelzel's Turk used to turn, carrying his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by cogwheels. Cracking up all sorts of things, native and foreign vermin included, said the little man.
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