Note 1 — FIRST PART. LIFE'S JOYS AND SORROWS. 1783 TO 1815. (continued 2)

[Footnote 1: The celebrated letters to Bettina are given here exactly as published in her book, Ilius Pamphilius und die Ambrosia (Berlin, Arnim, 1857) in two volumes. I never myself had any doubts of their being genuine (with the exception of perhaps some words in the middle of the third letter), nor can any one now distrust them, especially after the publication of Beethoven's Letters. But for the sake of those for whom the weight of innate conviction is not sufficient proof, I may here mention that in December, 1864, Professor Moritz Carrière, in Munich, when conversing with me about Beethoven's Letters, expressly assured me that these three letters were genuine, and that he had seen them in Berlin at Bettina v. Arnim's in 1839, and read them most attentively and with the deepest interest. From their important contents, he urged their immediate publication; and when this shortly after ensued, no change whatever struck him as having been made in the original text; on the contrary, he still perfectly remembered that the much-disputed phraseology (and especially the incident with Goethe) was precisely the same as in the originals. This testimony seems to me the more weighty, as M. Carrière must not in such matters be looked on as a novice, but as a competent judge, who has carefully studied all that concerns our literary heroes, and who would not permit anything to be falsely imputed to Beethoven any more than to Goethe. Beethoven's biography is, however, the proper place to discuss more closely such things, especially his character and his conduct in this particular case. At present we only refer in general terms to the first chapter of Beethoven's Jugend, which gives all the facts connected with these letters to Bettina and the following ones--a characteristic likeness of Beethoven thus impressed itself on the mind of the biographer, and was reproduced in a few bold outlines in his Biography. These letters could not, however, possibly be given in extenso in a general introduction to a comprehensive biography.]