MEYERBEER I Who would have predicted that the day would come when it would be necessary to come to the defense of the author of _Les Huguenots_ and _Le Prophete,_ of the man who at one time dominated every stage in Europe by a leadership which was so extraordinary that it looked as though it would never end?
I could cite many works in which all the composers of the past are praised without qualification, and Meyerbeer, alone, is accused of numerous faults.

However, others have faults, too, and, as I have said elsewhere, but it will stand repeating, it is not the absence of defects but the presence of merits which makes works and men great.

It is not always well to be without blemish.

A too regular face or too pure a voice lacks expression.

If there is no such thing as perfection in this world, it is doubtless because it is not needed.
As I do not belong to that biased school which pretends to see Peter entirely white and Paul utterly black, I do not try to make myself think that the author of _Les Huguenots_ had no faults.
The most serious, but the most excusable, is his contempt for prosody and his indifference to the verse entrusted to him.