hesitatingly say that the selection has been very judiciously made; and, indeed, any one, after reading the volume, will obtain a definite conception of Wagner's personality, which will be felt to be a true conception.
The book opens with a brief introduction, in which the translator explains some of the difficulties which stand in the way of putting Wagner's German into tolerably plain English, and then proceeds to Wagner's autobiography; or so much of it as brings the account down to 1842, since which time his life has been in a great degree a public one.
His youth was idle and stormy, and it was only after hardship and some real misery that he came to thorough work; the determining cause of his action seems to have been an intellectual one, rather than an impulse.
Following the autobiography, come three essays much of the same class: "The Story of the First Performance of an Opera," "A Pilgrimage to Beethoven," and "The End of a German Musician in Paris."
The impressions with which one comes away from the reading of the autobiography are strengthened and amplified by these sketches.
These belong to Wagner as a man, and confirm the rather unpleasant impression which his own life, as written by himself, conveys; he seems to have let his enthusiasm degenerate into waywardness, or rather waywardness was his enthusiasm, and his aspect toward the world in general is disheartening. We are speaking now of Wagner as he was in his earlier years, before 1842, and we recognize the propriety of the selection of the second and third of these essays as exponents of his feeling at that time. Indeed, that must be the sufficient excuse for their selection, as the fictions themselves are of the slightest and-most trivial description.
From this point onward we have to deal with quite another phase; not, indeed, with another Wagner, for the unpleasant impression of his personality remains, but with the same Wagner under new impulses or new intellectual motives. To this period belong the two essays on "Der Freischiitz," which must be classed among the best specimens of musical literature extant.
They are charming for the keen appreciation of the points involved, and for the skill in which characteristics, good and bad, are brought out and set over against each other. Although these, in time, are of the same epoch as the ones previously noticed, they are an outcome of a decidedly higher phase of feeling.
Then follow essays on the music of the future, the purpose of the opera, musical criticism, and on the production of "Tannhäuser" in Paris. These are fine in all ways, and show how Wagner's musical theories were taking shape, and define, when taken together, what that shape is. We had meant to give this in brief, but find the task no light one, and we must refer the reader to the essays themselves for an explanation. Suffice it to say that Wagner proves, in such a way that all must follow him, that the form of the opera produced by the Italian school is entirely inadequate, not to say absurd. It is absurd poetically, dramatically, and above all musically. He also explains in what way he proposes to remedy these defects, and despite much "fine writing" and vague disquisition an idea may be had of his scheme. Two essays on the plan of the Grand Opera-House at Baireuth show that his ideas may be put into definite brick and mortar, although hard to formulate into words.
The "Legend of the Nibelungen" gives an excellent idea of his skill as an author, and would show to any one not acquainted with his operas that the dramatic situations and the swing and progress of a dramatic climax are likely to be fully understood and adequately treated by him. This volume gives, it seems to us, an adequate idea of Wagner as a man and as a musical theorist. As a man he is not lovable, scarcely admirable. One would call him acute rather than profound. As a theorist, it is impossible to give a suitable judgment in the short limits of a review, which shall not at the same time offend both his friends and his enemies. Any such judgment must be in a large degree personal, and therefore imperfect. Shall we say that dramatically and poetically he stands alone in opera—that symphonically he has not yet reached the limits of his master Beethoven—that in dramatic vocal forms R. Franz and Schu-
