tirely
different thing. He himself gave an account of the joy with which he
worked at it, incidentally proving the truth of his assertion that he
was a "wholly [creative] artist." He was not built to be happy in the
outer world, but in his world of art he was content; in the outer
world he might have an hour of felicity and months of misery, but
given a chance of settling down for a while to his operas he at once
became and remained cheerful. Fate did not will that in the case of
the _Mastersingers_ his contentment should endure any length of time.
No sooner was his text written than he had to set out on his travels
again, hunting his daily food from land to land. It was not until 1862
that he began the music; not until 1867 did he get it finished, and in
the interval many things tragic and other, had occurred. These, I say,
will occupy us presently.

In the sixteenth century there flourished in Nuremberg, as in many
another city, a guild of minstrels--at once poets and musicians. The
name of Hans Sachs is familiar to us all, but not his verse; and as
for his music, it has gone down the winds. After composing
_Tannhaeuser_, Wagner thought of doing what Germans call a comic
pendant to that tragedy; though what there is in the _Mastersingers_
that hangs from _Tannhaeuser_ I beg the reader not to ask me. There is
this similarity: the central scene of each is a minstrel-contest;
there is this dissimilarity: one opera is tragic in spirit and the
other comic in spirit. Beyond this there is no connection, whether of
resemblance or of contrast, between the two. The plan was not
developed in 1845, the obvious real reason being that Wagner felt the
want of a great central figure, Sachs being originally not more than a
benevolent heavy father. When he had created a soul for this Sachs he
went ahead and wrote the poem.

All that it is necessary to know of the plot may be briefly told in a
skeleton form. One of the mastersingers, Pogner, dissatisfied with the
prizes usually given at the competitions, has decided to grant his
daughter Eva in marriage to the winner of the next. There are cases on
record where such an offer has had the effect of reducing the number
of entries--as when in a later age Matheson and Handel would not
compete for the position of organist because one of the conditions was
that the successful man must marry the retiring organist's daughter.
There is no cup of joy without its drop of bitterness, but Handel an