16/67 Much other music had already found its way upon paper, had been tried in the unsparing fire of his criticism, which was even then vigorous and searching, and had been marked for destruction--a symphony, among other efforts. He was absorbed in the German poets; Goethe and Heine, whom he was now able to read with ease in the original German, he knew by heart--a devotion which was to find expression a few years later in his "Idyls" and "Poems" (op. He had begun also to read the English poets. He devoured Byron and Shelley; and in Tennyson's "Idyls of the King" he found the spark which kindled his especial love for mediaeval lore and poetry. |