of his projects. They
might help him from moment to moment, and did help him to remain alive
and to avert calamities: a secure and peaceful living they could not
guarantee him: they could not assist him in getting his works
properly performed, or performed at all. I have already discussed the
mistaken policy, on his part, of writing so much about himself, and
the futility of his German friends taking up the pen on his behalf.
The friends meant well, and there was nothing else they could do; but
at the time their efforts resulted in nothing. He published the words
of the _Mastersingers_ and of the _Ring_, and the consequence was only
that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity
as the second to music. It is hard to say who did him the greatest
amount of harm--his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies
on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days.
Whatever was done for him, whatever he did for himself, whatever was
done against him, it seemed all one: he walked steadily on into the
thickest of grimy fogs. By romping over Europe like any itinerant
conductor of this day, he might earn an uncertain livelihood: as for
any prospect of getting on with his _Mastersingers_, his _Ring_ and a
score of other plans bubbling in his head, that was a receding
prospect indeed: every year, every month, made the prospect still more
remote. His music was either misunderstood or disliked: certainly the
man's writings and the writings of his friends resulted in _him_ being
disliked. When he settled in Vienna after the triumphs of his earlier
operas he speedily discovered this sad truth, but did not discover the
reason why. His life had been a long tragedy, and with this collapse
of his Vienna hopes he seemed to touch the lowest depths.

So he got away from Vienna, and one day had a visitor. This gentleman
said, in effect, that King Ludwig II had just ascended the throne, and
would be glad of a call. Instantly the grimy fog cleared away; all was
splendid sunshine: in that sunshine Richard was henceforth to bask and
the fruits of his genius were to ripen. He went to Munich, and there
were prompt results. In 1865 _Tristan_ was (at last) produced; he was
enabled to make a new start on the _Mastersingers_, which was
eventually produced in Munich in 1868. But in Munich, as elsewhere,
the inevitable occurred. Wagner suddenly became the "favourite," quite
as in mediaeval times, of a not very p