The Life and Writings of Francis Iluber. 293 



His taste for the fine arts, unable to derive pleasure from forms, 

 extended to sounds ; he loved poetry, but he was more esyiecially 

 endowed with a strong inclination for music. His taste for it 

 might be called innate, and it furnished him with a great source 

 of recreation throughout his life. He had an agreeable voice, and 

 was initiated in his childhood in the charms of Italian music. The 

 method by which he studied tunes deserves to be related, as it 

 may be useful to others : " It was not by simple recollection,"''* his 

 son writes me, " that he retained airs ; he had learned from Gretry 

 the counterpoint in a dozen of lessons, and in studying by him- 

 self, he had become an able harmonist. In teaching him an air, 

 we first dictated to him the base of a musical phrase ; he ar- 

 ranged it according to the succession of tones ; then came the 

 song which he executed with his voice ; a phrase thus disposed 

 he understood perfectly, and a single repetition was sufficient ; 

 we proceeded to the second, and so on to the end of the piece, 

 which he would then repeat from one end to the other, without 

 tiring the patience of aqy one who dictated to him : he owed 

 much in this respect to the complaisance of his sister.*" 



His musical talents rendered him in his youth extremely po- 

 pular, and after his infirmity it afforded him many agreeable rela- 

 tions, among whom may be mentioned, those which he held, at 

 an advanced age, with a female noted for her wit, and between 

 whom there was the doublesympathy of being passionately fond 

 of music, and being blind. 



The desire of maintaining his connection with absent friends, 

 -without having recourse to a secretary, suggested the idea of a 

 sort of printing press for his own use ; he had it executed by his 

 domestic Claude Lechet, whose mechanical talents he had culti- 

 vated, as he had before done those of Francis Burnens for natu- 

 ral history. In cases properly numbered, were placed small pro- 

 minent types which he arranged in his hand. Over the lines thus 

 composed he placed a sheet blackened with a peculiar ink, then 

 a sheet of white paper, and with a press, which he moved with 

 his feet, he was enabled to print a letter which he folded and 

 sealed himself, happy in the kind of independence which he 

 hoped by this means to acquire*. But the difficulty of putting 



• 1 am indebted for these details, as well as others, here and there staled, 

 to his nephew M. T. Huher, who has distinguished himself by his literary U- 

 lents. 



