that in which the interest is centred in the motives or characters of
the actors. The character of any individual is only another name for
his permanent will, the abiding metaphysical side of his being and its
most direct expression is music, while words are the proper vehicle of
the logical intellect. Gottfried's epic--the latter part of it I mean,
with which alone we are concerned--is entirely spectacular in the
sense in which I have used that term. The poet conducts us through a
succession of incidents related as being interesting or amusing in
themselves. Wagner, for reasons which I have explained, in dramatizing
the story, went to the opposite extreme, and composed a work so
entirely musical that it makes the impression of a gigantic symphony.
Gottfried cares nothing for the moral characters of his heroes.
Wooden, soulless puppets are sufficient for him so long as they act
and react upon one another. But the drama which centres in these
characters cannot be satisfied with nonentities; the poet had
therefore to create them himself, and the incidents then dropped out
as superfluous.

For a character to be poetically interesting it is not necessary that
it should be faultless. But it must be human--intensely human, both in
its virtues and in its defects; then the large-hearted spectator can
reverence its nobility and sympathize with its shortcomings without
his aesthetic or moral faculties being outraged. Some loftiness of
purpose there must be in a dramatic hero, something which raises us
out of ourselves and calls forth feelings of worship and awe in spite
of what seem to be his errors. "Es irrt der Mensch so lang er
lebt"--"It is not the finding of truth, but the honest search for it
that profits"; the spectacle of a noble soul striving against
adversities and often failing, but never crushed, is one which touches
the heart most deeply, and is the proper subject of tragedy. Above all