appearance is like a world-catastrophe. In one vast flood, comparable
only to the tide of his overwhelming music, all that was trivial and
experimental was swept away. What was strong enough to swim in the
tide was invigorated and strengthened; Goethe, Schiller, Kleist,
Grillparzer, Weber, Mozart, Beethoven, and their compeers are both
better performed and better understood now than they were before
Wagner's appearance, but all the second-rate has perished. The days of
experimenting have passed; the danger now threatening German art is
not from abroad, but is within itself, from those of its own body who,
just when the only hope lies in sobriety and self-restraint, are
goading it on the career of intoxication.

There remain the Hellenic and the Spanish dramas. Wagner's true
spiritual progenitors were Sophokles and Calderon. Different as are
the creations of two such widely separated epochs in their external
physiognomy, they possess one vital characteristic in common. In both
man is the instrument of higher powers; whether they be, as in the one
case, Zeus or Ate, or, as in the other, Honour or Christian faith,
matters little. These are the real actors, impersonated in flesh and
blood in the heroes.

An Englishman who, like myself, is ignorant of the Spanish language
and people can never hope to understand, still less to expound, their
literature. The Spanish drama is largely dependent upon subtleties of
metre and diction which cannot be reproduced in translations, and it
is inspired by motives very different from our own. Our watchwords are
"self-interest," "freedom," "progress"; those natural to the Spaniard
are "honour" and "Catholic Christianity." No great people has been so
uniformly true to the traditions of its nationality as the Spanish.
Alone among the nations Spain has refused to assimilate the