text:  Why is it that works so popular in their day and abounding with so many traits of real genius should so soon have palled upon the world? Simply because they were not founded upon a broad and general view of human nature; because they were drawn not from real life in the innumerable phases which it presents to the observer but imaginary life as it was conceived in the mind of the composer; because they were confined to one circle and class of society and having exhausted all the natural ideas which it could present its authors were driven in the search of variety to the invention of artificial and often ridiculous ones