DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 319 



of sounds, mobile in form, and not absolutely devoid 

 of a literary meaning. Yet we must not seek in in- 

 strumental music for that -which it cannot afford, 

 such as the ideas contained in words. Any one must 

 admit the futility of the attempt to give a dramatic 

 interpretation or language to instrumental music, who 

 reads the description attempted by Lenz and other 

 writers of some of Beethoven's sonatas. Instrumental 

 music does not lend itself to these interpretations, 

 since it is an art with an independent existence. We 

 have observed that in its first development it was used 

 as an accompaniment to the voice, or associated with 

 the movements of the body, or with the dance, and 

 consequently had not the independence which was 

 gradually achieved, until it culminated in the sym- 

 phony. Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, 

 nor to the expression of ideas and sentiments, but in it 

 pure music consists, and it is the very essence of the 

 art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order 

 of ideas and emotions; music is only able to afford 

 musical ideas and sentiments. Instrumental music 

 has its peculiar province as the supreme art which 

 composes its own poems by means of the order, suc- 

 cession, and harmony of sounds ; it delights, ravishes, 

 and moves us by exciting the emotional part of our 

 nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas which may 

 be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the 

 powerful means at its disposal, produce effects of 

 which instruments merely used for accompanying the 



