Of the songs it is impossible, within the present limits, to give even a sketch. They number over 600, excluding scenas and operatic pieces, and they contain masterpieces from the beginning of his career to the end. Gretchen am Spinnrade was written when he was 17, Erlkonig when he was 18; then there follows a con tinuous stream which never checks or runs dry, and which broadens as it flows to the Miillerlieder, the Scott songs, the Shakespearian songs, the Winterreise, and the Schwanengesang. He is said to have been undiscriminating in his choice of words. Schumann declared that "he could set a handbill to music," and there is no doubt that he was inspired by any lyric which con tained, though even in imperfect expression, the germ of a poetic idea. But his finest songs are almost all to fine poems. He set over 70 of Goethe's, over 6o of Schiller's.
In his earlier songs he is more affected by the external and pictorial aspect of the poem ; in the later ones he penetrates to the centre and seizes the poetic conception from within. But in both alike he shows a gift of absolute melody which, even apart from its meaning, would be inestimable. Neither Handel nor Mozart—
his two great predecessors in lyric tune—have surpassed or even approached him in fertility and variety of resource. The songs in Acis are wonderful; so are those in Zauberflote, but they are not so wonderful as Litanei, and Who is Sylvia? and the Steindchen. To Schubert we owe the introduction into music of a particular quality of romance, a particular "addition of strangeness to beauty"; and so long as the art remains his place among its supreme masters is undoubtedly assured.