Cashel Byron's Profession

"Now, on this subject of game, I've something to say that will ease

the professor's mind on a point that he seemed anxious about. I am

no musician; but I'll just show you how a man that understands one

art understands every art. I made out from the gentleman's remarks

that there is a man in the musical line named Wagner, who is what

you might call a game sort of composer; and that the musical fancy,

though they can't deny that his tunes are first-rate, and that, so

to speak, he wins his fights, yet they try to make out that he wins

them in an outlandish way, and that he has no real science. Now I

tell the gentleman not to mind such talk. As I have just shown you,

his game wouldn't be any use to him without science. He might have

beaten a few second-raters with a rush while he was young; but he

wouldn't have lasted out as he has done unless he was clever as

well. You will find that those that run him down are either jealous,

or they are old stagers that are not used to his style, and think

that anything new must be bad. Just wait a bit, and, take my word

for it, they'll turn right round and swear that his style isn't new

at all, and that he stole it from some one they saw when they were

ten years old. History shows us that that is the way of such fellows

in all ages, as the gentleman said; and he gave you Beethoven as an

example. But an example like that don't go home to you, because

there isn't one man in a million that ever heard of Beethoven. Take

a man that everybody has heard of--Jack Randall! The very same

things were said of HIM. After that, you needn't go to musicians for

an example. The truth is, that there are people in the world with

that degree of envy and malice in them that they can't bear to allow

a good man his merits; and when they have to admit that he can do

one thing, they try to make out that there's something else he can't

do. Come: I'll put it to you short and business-like. This German

gentleman, who knows all about music, tells you that many pretend

that this Wagner has game but no science. Well, I, though I know

nothing about music, will bet you twenty-five pounds that there's

others that allow him to be full of science, but say that he has no

game, and that all he does comes from his head, and not from his

heart. I will. I'll bet twenty-five pounds on it, and let the

gentleman of the house be stakeholder, and the German gentleman

referee. Eh? Well, I'm glad to see that there are no takers.