Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/17

certained long after his death), as suggesting the special isolation of his brain. From a boy Beethoven was a great reader. He fed his mind in his own way. Unlike the musicians who went before him, he could brook no dependence upon condescending nobilities. He was not going to be a Court fool. The man who could rush into the courtyard of his really sincere friend and 'patron,' Prince Lobkowitz, and shout 'Lobkowitz donkey, Lobkowitz donkey,' for all the valets and chambermaids to hear; or who could leave his humble lodgings because the over-polite landlord of the house would insist on doffing his hat each time they passed on the stairs; must have had 'something of the devil in him!' (This was the verdict of Hummel, Vogler, Gelinck, and others when they first heard him improvise on his arrival at Vienna). In politics, in a quite general way, he evolved radicalism or republicanism as his creed; in religion, though nominally a Catholic, he was quite informal. A pantheist one might perhaps call him, or a mystic after Eckhardt and Tauler. Finally, one may mention, as an indication of the great range and strength of his personality, its exceedingly slow growth. While Mozart at the age of twenty-three had written a great number of Operas, Symphonies, Cantatas and Masses—many of them of quite mature character—Beethoven at the same