gratitude to even more superlative utterance, was the confidence
which Liszt showed in his genius, and without which, it is no
exaggeration to say, Wagner's greatest works would probably have
remained unwritten.

The first performance of "Lohengrin" at Weimar, which was really
the starting-point of his fame, has already been alluded to.
Every further step in his career was watched and encouraged by
the loving sympathy of Liszt, and when Wagner, overpowered by the
grandeur and difficulties of his "Nibelungen" scheme, was on the
point of laying down the pen, it was Liszt who urged him to
continue in his arduous task, and to go on in spite of all
discouragement.

It must not, however, be thought that Wagner alone derived
benefits from this remarkable friendship. Not only did he in his
turn encourage Liszt in the career of a composer of great and
novel works, but he distinctly raised the intellectual and
artistic level of his friend. Liszt's nature was of a noble, one
may say, ideal kind, but he had lived in dangerous surroundings,
and the influence of the great world and of the glaring publicity
in which a virtuoso moves, had left its trace on his
individuality. Here, then, the uncompromising idealism, the
world-defying artistic conviction of Wagner, served as a tonic to
his character. If the reader will refer to Letter 21, or at least
to that portion of it which has been vouchsafed by Madame Wagner,
he will see how necessary the administration of such a tonic was
to a man who even at that time could think it necessary to
deprecate the "superideal" character of "Lohengrin", and to
advise in a scarcely disguised manner that the Knight of the