without an effort. Artist and hearer must co-operate together towards
a common end. Wagner's first purpose throughout his life was to
educate his public, or, to use his own phrase, prepare a soil in which
his art could flourish. Whenever an attempt is made to create an art
by authority, whether it be Court patronage, theoretical exposition,
or any other form of authority, this important principle is forgotten.
The would-be teachers of the people scatter the seed irrespectively of
the soil, and the attempt, however laudable, is ill-timed.

The subsequent history of the Italian opera has been told by Wagner
himself in the entertaining pages of the first part of his _Oper und
Drama_, which should be carefully read by all who wish to gain a
distinct understanding of his aims. A useful supplement to Wagner's
treatise will be found in a conversation which took place between him
and Rossini in 1860, a "scrupulously exact" account of which has been
published forty-six years after it took place from notes taken at the
time in a pamphlet by E. Michotte of Brussels.[24]

[Footnote 24: Paris, _Librairie Fischbacher_, 1906.]

It would have been impossible for the opera to continue as it had
begun. People would not have gone to the theatre to hear dreary
recitatives, and from the very first we hear of concessions being made
to the singers--i.e. to the audience. By degrees there forms itself
that peculiar kind of vocal melody which we recognize to-day as
distinctively Italian. Not, be it noted, melody proper, which is the
very truest expression of the human soul; not the melody that was
known to the great Germans, but "naked, ear-tickling, absolute melodic
melody; melody which is nothing but melody; which glides into our
ears--we know not why; which we sing again--we know not why; which