GOUNOD, CFIARLKS K I J. \\gOIS. 



357 



OOtTNOIl 8 HOVSE AT 8T. CLO 



dramatic art. lie did not see that the drama 

 could ask more than the beauty of pure music 

 and the just expression of human truth. In his 

 search for the latter element he was stopped 

 short of what the Germans call characteristic 

 bounty by his devotion to sensuous charm. He 

 \vas un emotionalist, a mystic, a dreamer. Upon 

 his essentially feminine nature faith and affec- 

 tion took stronger hold than reason. It cost 

 him no effort to believe anything that presented 

 itself to him in a garb that pleased his aesthetic 

 sense. His life was the counterpart of his music : 

 it was amiable and winning, full of emotional 

 ecstasies, but neither strong in its embodiment of 



morals nor steadfast. The climax of his ponius 

 is found in two scenes, which are much alike in 

 their emotional contents the garden scene of 

 " Faust " and the balcony scene of " Romeo >t 

 Juliette." For these scenes, as well as their pro- 

 totypes in the plays of Goethe and Shakespeare, 

 ecstatic utterance is the natural idiom, and (i<>u- 

 nod's truest musical speech was that of passion- 

 ate ecstasy. His gamut, however, was limited. 

 and for that reason he was more generally ad- 

 mirable as a lyrist than as a dramatist. In spite 

 of the wondering regard in which he was held be- 

 cause of hi* "Faust." his contemporaries were 

 forced to recognize the fact that a composer who 



