Note 175 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
"A classic is properly a book"—and the same would be true of a musical composition—"which maintains itself by that happy coalescence of matter and style, that innate and requisite sympathy between the thought that gives life and the form that consents to every mood of grace and dignity, and which is something neither ancient nor modern, always new and incapable of growing old."
Lowell, Among My Books.