Mr. Hadow has truly observed that we have not yet learned to treat
genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with
irrational excess of enthusiasm. If the malicious misrepresentations
and persecutions which Wagner endured during his lifetime were the
outcome of ignorance, assuredly the hysterical raving of our day is no
less ignorant and contemptible. I hear it said that in England
"Wagnerism" is an attitude, and can only reply that it is so in
Germany too. Among the cosmopolitan audiences who crowd the theatres
of Dresden and Munich on a Wagner night and greet his works with
thundering applause, there is probably not one person in a hundred who
really knows what he sees and hears. Not that these people are not
perfectly sincere; _something_ they have undoubtedly taken in;
the marvellous euphony and balance of Wagner's orchestra under the
conductors we now have, the exquisite grace of the melodic and
harmonic structure, and the lyric beauty of so many scenes are
apparent to all, and will always awaken the boundless enthusiasm of
those who go only to be diverted. But these are only the ornaments of
the drama; to understand the drama itself requires a serious effort on
the part of the hearer which few are prepared to make, a moral
sympathy with the composer and receptive understanding of his aims of
which few are capable.

We in England seem content to remain in darkness. I am not, of course,
referring to the many competent men who have given serious attention
to the works of Wagner; I am speaking of the general public. The
English people has plenty of poetry in its heart, but our attitude
towards German literature and art is not creditable to us as a nation.
We who possess the finest literature ever produced by any people,
whose Chaucers and Shakespeares and Popes and Byrons are the models on