hing grudging in the attitude of the masters, reminds
them that it had long been one of the rules made by themselves that
an applicant being a lord or a peasant should have no significance,
that inquiry concerning art alone should be made of one desiring to
become a master-singer. Kothner passes thereupon to the question:
"Of what master are you a disciple?" And then is born into the world
a new, a ravishing melody--which has all the delight in it that
can be compressed into the space. Airily, confidently, debonairly,
Walther delivers himself, in the sweet ingenuousness of his heart,
"new," as he had said, ignorant as yet of the jealous world's ways:
"Beside my quiet hearth in winter-time, when castle and court were
buried in snow, in an ancient book, bequeathed to me by my fathers,
I was wont to read recorded the engaging beauties of past Springs,
as well as, prophesied, the beauties of the Spring soon to reawaken.
The poet, Walther von der Vogelweid, he it is who has been my master!"
Sachs has listened with a surprised, charmed sympathy. He nods
beamingly: "A good master!"--"But long dead!" snaps Beckmesser;
"How could he learn the canons from him?"

Kothner proceeds without comment to the next question: "In what
school did you learn to sing?"--"Then when the sward was free from
frost, and summer-time was come back, all that in the long
winter-evenings I had read in the old book was proclaimed aloud
in the luxuriance of the forest. I caught the clear sound of it
there. In the forest where the birds congregate, I learned likewise
to sing!"--"Ho, ho, from finches and tomtits you acquired the art
of master-singing?" Beckmesser jeers; "Your song no doubt smacks
of its teachers!"--"What do you think, masters," inquires Kothner,
upon this hopeless revelation, "shall I proceed with the questions?
It strikes me his lordship's answers are altogether wide of the
mark."--"That is what will presently be seen," Sachs interposes
warmly; "If his art is of the right sort, and he duly proves it, of
what consequence is it from whom he learned it?" Whereupon Kothner
proceeds, addressing Walther: "Are you prepared, now, at once,
to attempt an original master-song, new in conception, original
both in text and tune?" Walther answers unhesitatingly: "All that
winter-night and forest-splendour, that book and grove have taught
me; all that the magic of poetry has secretly revealed to me; all
that I have gathered, a thoughtful listener, from