of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first⁠—he was the last that founded a school⁠—do we not now regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Romanticism of Schumann’s has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the “Saxon Switzerland” of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!)⁠—his Manfred music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a petty taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity⁠—doubly dangerous among Germans⁠—for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and noli me tangere ⁠—this Schumann was already merely a German