ng must be taken to
confute the letter just as conclusively as if the two had been written
by different hands. However, nobody fairly well acquainted with Wagner's
utterances as a whole will find any unaccountable contradictions in
them. As in all men of his type, our manifold nature was so marked in
him that he was like several different men rolled into one. When he had
exhausted himself in the character of the most pugnacious, aggressive,
and sanguine of reformers, he rested himself as a Pessimist and
Nirvanist. In The Ring the quietism of Brynhild's "Rest, rest, thou God"
is sublime in its deep conviction; but you have only to turn back the
pages to find the irrepressible bustle of Siegfried and the revelry of
the clansmen expressed with equal zest. Wagner was not a Schopenhaurite
every day in the week, nor even a Wagnerite. His mind changes as
often as his mood. On Monday nothing will ever induce him to return to
quilldriving: on Tuesday he begins a new pamphlet. On Wednesday he
is impatient of the misapprehensions of people who cannot see how
impossible it is for him to preside as a conductor over platform
performances of fragments of his works, which can only be understood
when presented strictly according to his intention on the stage: on
Thursday he gets up a concert of Wagnerian selections, and when it is
over writes to his friends describing how profoundly both bandsmen and
audience were impressed. On Friday he exults in the self-assertion
of Siegfried's will against all moral ordinances, and is full of a
revolutionary sense of "the universal law of change and renewal": on
Saturday he has an attack of holiness, and asks, "Can you conceive a
moral action of which the root idea is not renunciation?" In short,
Wagner can be quoted against himself almost without limit, much as
Beethoven's adagios could be quoted against his scherzos if a dispute
arose between two fools as to whether he was a melancholy man or a merry
one.

THE MUSIC OF THE RING

THE REPRESENTATIVE THEMES

To be able to follow the music of The Ring, all that is necessary is to
become familiar enough with the brief musical phrases out of which it
is built to recognize them and attach a certain definite significance
to them, exactly as any ordinary Englishman recognizes and attaches a
definite significance to the opening bars of God Save the King. There is
no difficulty here: every soldier is expected to learn and distinguish
between differ