He is a complete Personality, with an unusually sympathetic and sensitive nervous system.

Such a temperament gives one the capacity not only for moods of the highest transport, but for an unspeakable sorrow tenfold more profound.

This is the unsolvable riddle.

An artist so ideally endowed [_ein so ideal angelegter Kuenstler_] as MacDowell must ask himself: Why have I received from nature this delicately strung lyre, if I were better off without it?
So unmerciful is Life that every artist must ask himself this question.

The only consolation is: Work--yes, even the severest labours.