t strain I hear"; and he
stops and dreams again over Walther's song. "Springtime's behest,
within his breast, on heart and voice there was laid," he sings; and
to music compact of sheer loveliness he praises the song, terminating
with a passage which I take to be nine bars of vocal writing as fine
as can be found in the whole of music--"The bird who sang this morn."

Eva steals out from her father's door, and at once the dramatic motive
of the action deepens. We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the
night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs' artist's
heart as he dwells on Walther's song of spring: now the human element
comes in and is reflected in the music. Eva wants to know whether
there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and
she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love.
Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the
other shaped from a fragment of Walther's first song; these two are
gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in
expressiveness, until Eva's secret is no secret from the audience,
though Sachs himself is supposed not to be at first quite sure about
it. When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase
(_d_), and its full significance is brought out. The real Hans Sachs,
we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young
girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily. That, obviously, was
too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera--every one would
have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been
pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the
libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this: that Wagner
created a soul for _his_ Sachs. Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending
of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the
haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for
his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a
pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and
disastrous cad. In the trial scene he has already half divined
Walther's object, and the theme (_d_) in its application hints not
only at his longing to grasp "the new" in Walther's song, but also his
longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to
renounce her in favour of the younger suitor. Towards the end of the
opera, when Sachs brings the young pair toge