to-day we exchange for that of yesterday, and forget to-morrow--still
we know not why; which is sad when we are gay, merry when we are
sorrowful, and which we yet hum--just because we know not why."

Let us not be misled by Wagner's bantering description into despising
Italian melody and supposing it to be a thing utterly worthless. True,
it has not the musical elevation of German melody. The little
Neapolitan urchin who basks all day in the sunshine, sings, steals,
and is ready to drive a knife into his companion, is not perhaps as
high a type of humanity as the English public-school boy. Nevertheless
he has a charm entirely his own, and his large round eyes will make
you forget his sins. Woe to art and to mankind when our hearts are
closed to such influences! Italian operatic melody is the expression
of Southern Italian individuality, and has in its very irresponsibility a
certain fascination different from that of the far nobler German music.
Wagner waged warfare, not against the Italian opera, not against
operatic composers, but against impostors and sophists, and while
trampling upon the serpent in his own path he was as little likely to
remain untouched by the good-natured lovableness of the Italian as
he was to slight the high intelligence, the artistic receptiveness and
thoroughness of the French. On reading his works it is hard to escape
the impression of a lurking fondness for Rossini on Wagner's part,
even while he is making game of the whole school. Above all, Italian
melody possesses one quality which is the highest of all in melody--it
is eminently singable. No German, unless perhaps Handel, ever
understood the human voice as did the Italians. Wagner's own
words leave no doubt as to what he thought. In one of his earliest
writings he utters a prayer that German composers may one day write
such melody and learn such treatment of the voice as are found in
Bellini's _Norma_. But, like Odysseus, he stopped his ears to the