studied him thoroughly and well, and that I acknowledge him only as my model"... In like manner have the other luminaries of music placed on record their sense of obligation to one whose name is obscure to the general public in comparison with many of his brother composers.

Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach on the 21st of March, 1685, the son of one of the court musicians. Left in the care of his elder brother, who was an organist, his brilliant powers displayed themselves at an early period. He was the descendant of a race of musicians, and even at that date the wide-spread branches of the family held annual gatherings of a musical character. Young Bach mastered for himself, without much assistance, a thorough musical education at Lüneburg, where he studied in the gymnasium and sang in the cathedral choir; and at the age of eighteen we find him court musician at Weimar, where a few years later he became organist and director of concerts. He had in the mean time studied the organ at Lübeck under the celebrated Buxtehude, and made himself thoroughly a master of the great Italian composers of sacred music-Palestrina, Lotti, Vivaldi, and others...

Our musician rapidly became known far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry. Yet it was in these last two capacities that his reputation among his contemporaries was the most marked. It was left to a succeeding generation to fully enlighten the world in regard to his creative powers as a musical thinker...

Sebastian Bach was not only the descendant of a widely-known musical family, but was himself the direct ancestor of about sixty of the best-known organists and church composers of Germany. As a master of organ-playing, tradition tells us that no one has been his equal, with the possible exception of Handel. He was also an able performer on various stringed instruments, and his preference for the clavichord led him to write a method for that instrument, which has been the basis of all succeeding methods for the piano. Bach's teachings and influence may be said to have educated a large number of excellent composers and organ and piano players, among whom were Emanuel Bach, Cramer, Hummel, and Clementi; and on his school of theory and practice the best results in music have been built...

Bach's great compositions...from their largeness and dignity of form, as also from their depth of musical science, have been to all succeeding composers an art-armory, whence they have derived and furbished their brightest weapons. In the study of Bach's works the student finds the deepest and highest reaches in the science of music; for his mind seems to have grasped all its resources, and to have

embodied them with austere purity and precision of form. As Spenser is called the poet for poets, and Laplace the mathematician for mathematicians, so Bach is the musician for musicians. While Handel may be considered a purely independent and parallel growth, it is not too much to assert that without Sebastian Bach and his matchless studies for the piano, organ, and orchestra, we could not have had the varied musical development in sonata and symphony from such masters as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

From William Foster Apthorp's "Musicians and Music-Lovers."

In a word, Sebastian Bach is the great source and fountain-head from whence well-nigh all that is best and most enduring in modern music has been derived.

In him we find an influence so strong, so subtile, so far-reaching and pervasive, that that exerted by any other single composer is hardly to be compared with it. In him we find united all the requisite conditions for the exertion of such an influence. First, as great specific genius as was ever possessed by man, coupled with the most complete mastery over the technics of his art that has ever been known. Next, a strongly characterized individuality. Then, that foreseeing spirit which anticipates new æsthetic points of view; and, lastly, the opportunity, the lucky chance of coming into the world just at the right time to find the exact task awaiting him which he was best fitted to accomplish.

From George P. Upton's "Standard Musical Biographies."

Owing to his great skill, accurate knowledge, and perfection of form, his works remain fresh and young to-day, while those of most of his contemporaries have become antiquated or are utterly forgotten. And yet he was not appreciated in his own day for he was writing years ahead of his time. His music is called classic and yet it contains all the elements of the music of to-day.

Those who do not have all of Bach's compositions in their own music collections, may be interested to know that they can borrow many of them from the Library. In 1912 the Library started a collection of music scores which has proved useful to many people. It is, as yet, not a very extensive collection, but it has been carefully chosen so as to represent within its scope the best and most characteristic music of various countries and periods.

Scott's Novels and Poems

Probably ninety-nine out of every hundred persons who read Sir Walter Scott's novels and poems-it might be safe to make the number much larger-have been incited thereto by someone who knew and loved them, who recognized their power of inspiring certain desirable ideas and ideals, and who was desirous of passing along to others some of the joys and benefits he had himself received. But does this mark out Scott's works as something apart, something which must be urged upon, even forced upon one? Isn't the process by which a "best seller" becomes a "best seller" much the same? Someone enjoys the book and tells others about it, that they also may enjoy it.

Of course no one expects a Scott novel to rival in popularity at the present day, a "best seller;" but since Scott's novels and poems, after the passage of so many years of changing customs, tastes, and styles, still glow with life and vitality and interest, they surely have in them at least some of the enduring qualities of universal appeal. What some of these qualities of greatness are and why Scott's work is still a part of our live literature, many writers have tried to explain. A few of them are quoted here.

Not many people born one hundred fifty years ago—as will be the case with Sir Walter Scott when the fifteenth of August arrives-can lay claim to being alive even in the memories of a few; still fewer live so truly and vitally as does this man whose spirit and mind are yet a very real and strong influence. Will it not be worth while, if you are not already there, to step within the circle of friendship with this great spirit?

From William Henry Hudson's "Sir Walter Scott."

Time, which tarnishes so many a reputation which it cannot altogether destroy, has not left his untouched. The impulse which he gave to romance has long since died away; other generations have arisen with other manners and ideals, and the novel, upon which for a while.

he had set his mark, has in the hands of later masters undergone vast expansion and change. It was inevitable, therefore, that a reaction in taste should presently set in—inevitable, too, that this reaction should be a sweeping one... But while readers are thus still loyal to the favourites of seventy and eighty years' standing, a few adverse critics have been busy proclaiming Scott's manifold faults, and proving to their own satisfaction, if to no one else's, that his methods are all wrong, and his books entirely out of date. Well, if power to discern and avoid the errors and weaknesses of a great writer implied at the same time power to imitate his virtues and reproduce his strength, the world would to-day be so full of geniuses that ordinary mortals would have no room to breathe. But greatness depends, not on the absence of error and weakness, but on the presence of virtue and strength. Of Scott's countless shortcomings, of his carelessness, lack of style, historic inaccuracy, false archæology, prolixity of description, occasional heaviness of hand, and so forth, we have now heard more than enough ... But meanwhile the striking fact of the matter is, that, all these blemishes notwithstanding, they remain, amid far-reaching changes of taste and the fierce conflict of critical theories, pretty much where they stood at the start, acknowledged by all save a few dissentients to belong to the permanent masterpieces of our literature.

Scott himself, as we know, made no extravagant claims for his work. To cause one reader to forget his bodily pain, to relieve temporarily another's trouble of mind, to "unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil," to "fill the place of bad thoughts, or to suggest better," to induce an idler here and there "to study the history of his country," in short, to furnish harmless amusement, these were his express objects; and on his achievement of these he based his title to kindly recollection. But while he wrote with such modest aims only in view, and cared little or nothing for the possibility of immortal fame, he none the less produced a body of work upon which "Death, the ravager of all things, will not lay his hands." Old-fashioned in many ways he already is, as Homer and Shakespeare are old-fashioned. But old-fashioned and obsolete are not synonymous; and obsolete it is certain Scott will never become till men have ceased to understand in literature the difference between the real and the factitious, the true and the false.

From W. J. Dawson's "The Makers of English Fiction."

It is characteristic of Scott's genius that his greatest successes are attained when he has to deal with the largest canvas. Give him a truly great scene to describe, such as the appearance of Elizabeth amid the revels of Kenilworth, and he is at his best. Nowhere, out of Shakespeare's historical dramas, can we find such a series of splendid figures,

drawn from the life, and energetic with great passions and ambitions. Quentin Durward may be intrinsically unimpressive, and Nigel may be the most wooden of heroes, but how full of vital force are the figures of Louis XI. and James I...

Scott's greatest triumphs are achieved in the depiction of great historic personages and scenes, but it must not be forgotten that he has a firm grasp upon life as a whole, and a wide sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men. His imagination is peculiarly susceptible "to the influence of great achievements and prolonged success in widespreading affairs;" but he was enough of a poet, and enough of a Scotsman, to have an almost equal sympathy with the simplest and humblest forms of life. Mr. Bagehot has pointed out, with equal truth and felicity, that Scott is singularly skilful in his delineation of the poor. He avoids the error of Dickens, who vulgarised the poor, making them "poor talkers, poor livers, and in all ways poor people to read about;" he avoids also the error of sentimental novelists, who clothe the poor with the glamour of Arcadia. Scott's poor folk are genuine poor folk, shrewd, manly, sensible, generous, avaricious, proud, humble, selfish, and heroic. "His poor people are never coarse and never vulgar; their lineaments have the rude traits which a life of conflict will inevitably leave on the minds and manners of those who are to lead it; their notions have the narrowness which is inseparable from a contracted experience; their knowledge is not more extended than their restricted means of attaining it would render possible. Almost alone among novelists Scott has given a thorough, minute, lifelike description of poor people, which is at the same time genial and pleasing."...

He makes friends with all men through his books, as he did in his life, by virtue of his geniality, his shrewd good sense, his warm appreciation of all that is best in human nature, his comprehension of its hidden valours, and his sympathy with its frailties.

The popularity which is based upon such qualities as these is a popularity which is likely to endure.

From Stopford A. Brooke's "Studies in Poetry."

I will draw attention to the most remarkable power of his poetry; its power of kindling romatic feeling for the past, that romantic feeling which is mingled of love, reverence, and wonder-love of the beauty of the past in splendour of pageant and procession and dress and buildings, in battle and battle array, in religion and art; reverence for its noble deeds and sacrifices, its chivalrous adventures for love or honour, its spirit of high courage and faithfulness in war and peace, its contempt for a base or a material life, its carelessness of wealth and of pain and death when compared with honour; its quick, frank,