Life of Beethoven

＂DURING the painful illness of full four months which terminated in the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, he was one day conversing with Hofrath von Breuning and myself on the subject of Plutarch’s Lives. Breuning took advantage of the long-wished-for opportunity to ask Beethoven, apparently without any particular object, which of his contemporaries he should prefer for his biographer. Without the least hesitation, he replied, ＂Rochlitz, if he should survive me.＂ He went on to say that it might be anticipated with certainty, that after his decease many officious pens would hasten to amuse the world with stories and anecdotes concerning him, utterly destitute of truth-for such is the usual lot of those who have had any influence upon their times. It was, therefore, his sincere wish that whatever might hereafter be said concerning him ＂should be in every respect strictly consonant with truth, no matter how hard it might bear upon this or the other person, or

even upon himself.＂

This sentiment of Beethoven’s, uttered at a moment when his dissolution appeared to us to be near at hand-though his physicians still held out to him some hopes of recovery, while at the same time they felt thoroughly convinced of its impossibility-this sentiment was too important for us to neglect following it up. In so doing, however, we were obliged to proceed with the utmost caution; as indeed we were in everything which, in his state

of severe suffering, had any reference, however remote, to death: for his imagination, more excited than when in health, ranged through the universe, formed projects of tours, of prodigious compositions, and other enterprises. In short, he had no idea that death was so near, neither would he take any warning of its approach. In fact, all his desire was to live; for he still intended to do much, that none but himself, perhaps, was capable of accomplishing.＂