in reasonable comfort, and he would in return present the world with
masterpieces. Yet he was not content when he was, for a comparatively
slight return in daily labour, kept comfortably alive. But, after all,
what appears at first to have been an act of madness turned out anything
but disastrous in the long-run. It is true that without the generous
help of Liszt, Wesendonek and others he could not have lived as he did
in Zurich, and, as it was, constant apprehensions of approaching
poverty harassed him. The old fear of an empty belly which got into his
very blood and bones in the Riga--Paris period now began to show itself
in those appealing letters written to his friends when there appears to
have been no necessity whatever. He had exaggerated hopes and
exaggerated fears. The hopes were realized--as well as anything can be
realized in this imperfect world--at Bayreuth; the fears found
expression in the begging letters of which advantage was taken by every
mean and cowardly spirit without the intelligence to understand his real
greatness. Mendelssohn, we are reminded, wrote no such letters; but
Mendelssohn, it may be remarked, was always rich, and has no such record
of charitable deeds as stands to Wagner's credit. The nearest parallel
to the case of Wagner is that of Beethoven in his old age. He, although
perfectly well off, scared himself almost to death with his dread of
poverty. Wagner's letters written about this time are well worth
reading. There is no need to discuss them; they should be read and
carefully weighed. Nor do I propose to spend any great space on the
prose writings of the period. They are full of theories which were no
sooner formulated than they had to be discarded in practice. At a time
when Wagner was quite thoroughly misunderstood, the notion--perhaps
naturally--became prevalent that he was simply completing a work
commenced by Gluck. Now, no two men ever had more widely different aims
than Wagner and Gluck. True, both wrote for the theatre, both employed
singers and orchestra; and there the likenesses terminate. Gluck never