He did not determine upon, he did not seek such a result; he created no ideal a priori.

Without having predetermined to transport himself into the past, he constantly remembered the glories of his country, he understood and sung the loves and tears of his contemporaries without having analyzed them in advance.

He did not task himself, nor study to be a national musician.

Like all truly national poets he sang spontaneously without premeditated design or preconceived choice all that inspiration dictated to him, as we hear it gushing forth in his songs without labor, almost without effort.

He repeated in the most idealized form the emotions which had animated and embellished his youth; under the magic delicacy of his pen he displayed the Ideal, which is, if we may be permitted so to speak, the Real among his people; an Ideal really in existence among them, which every one in general and each one in particular approaches by the one or the other of its many sides.