sentimentality. The magnificent work begun by the Hon. Mrs. Burrell,
of which there is a copy in the British Museum, would have been a
monumental biography had she lived to complete it, but it stops when
Wagner is about twenty. Of the rest, the less said the better. Of
works against Wagner I know of none that are even worth reading,
except Hanslick, to whom I shall have occasion to return. It is much
to be regretted that none of Wagner's opponents have ever stated their
case fairly and soberly. There is much to be said, but assuredly it
has not been said by men of the stamp of Nordau, who cites disgusting
accounts from French medical journals in order to show his abhorrence
of what he considers Wagner's immorality! Tolstoi is a writer of wide
authority among his followers, and might be expected to feel some
responsibility for his utterances; yet he thought it right to publish
his verdict to the world after having witnessed _one_ very
inferior performance of a _portion_ of Siegfried! He is often
appealed to as if he were an authority by the opponents of Wagner, but
his utterances have no more weight than the thoughtless expressions of
a Ruskin or a William Morris, which their biographers have thought fit
to drag from the privacy of private letters or conversation and
publish as their deliberate judgments. From Nietzsche at least
something better might have been expected, but I can find little in
his anti-Wagnerian writings except coarse vituperation and low
scandal. There is no anti-Wagnerian literature worthy of the name.
There are plenty of highly musical and artistic natures who honestly
dislike his art, and I am so far able to sympathize with them as to
believe that an inestimable benefit would be conferred upon all of us
if they would publish their objections in sober and reasoned form. But
they do not; or if they do speak, they descend to the slums.

[Footnote 4: Not his _Richard Wagner_, which is a more popular