two elements of every work of art: matter and form, substance and
technique, [Greek: onta] and [Greek: gignomena], Brahm and Maya, Wille
und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man, or,
untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those feelings
to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic has
nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is whether
it has found adequate expression--that is, to try to understand the
language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do so
according to his ability. I do not say that the matter is one to which
we are indifferent. On the contrary, it is far the more important of
the two, since the thing expressed is prior to its expression. Only it
is no concern of the critic, because we may fairly assume that if the
technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist has
already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect language
of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it into
the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken and
distort the thought.

It does not seem to me that passions have abated very much, or
judgments have become much more sober, since Wagner has left us. In
England at least the ignorance and indifference which prevail among
the ordinary public are still profound. In truth the seed which he
sowed has fallen upon evil soil; his fate has been a cruel one. He,
the most sincere and transparent of men, whose only wish was to be
seen as he actually was, has perhaps more than any other great man
been the victim of misrepresentation, alike from his senseless
persecutors and from his equally senseless adulators. While he lived,
every imaginable calumny, plausible and unplausible, was invented to
besmirch his character and his art. Now it is, in Germany at least, no
longer safe to revile him on the ground of his technical artistic