warrants it, demands
it. Amidst the roar of the fire and with the divine lulling phrase,
fragments of the Farewell are heard; and twice, as Wotan looks back on
his daughter, we hear the Fate theme--the Scandinavian sense that this
tragedy _mysteriously had to be_: the mighty god and lord of the
universe himself knows and feels that the things preordained must
happen. He goes slowly off; the central tragedy is virtually
accomplished; to the end the fire blazes and sparkles, and the curtain
descends on a soft chord. The revolving seasons will pass; strange
events will happen in the outer world of men; Bruennhilda will sleep
there, the guarding fire seen from afar by awe-stricken warrior
tribes.

The spring freshness of the music, its vivid pictorial quality, the
intense human feeling expressed, its profound sense of the past and
the mystery of things, the godlike power, place it hardly second, if
indeed second, to _Tristan_. There are love-duets in music which may
be compared with those in _Tristan_: there is nothing with which the
music of the _Valkyrie_ may be compared. The grandeur of Handel's
picture-painting in _Israel in Egypt_ is a different quality
altogether. Handel is unapproachable; but he worked with a different
aim, in a different way, and in a different material. Wagner's music
is beautiful and sublime, and he blent the human element with the
others in a fashion no other musician has attempted.

CHAPTER XVI

'SIEGFRIED'

I

In a letter to Liszt Wagner says he would not have undertaken the toil
of completing so gigantic a work as the _Ring_ but for his love of
Siegfried, his ideal of manhood. It is as well, from one point of
view, that his love of his ideal was so intense, for in consequence we
have the _Ring_; but from another point of view it is not so well, for
the youth Siegfried is the least lovable, perhaps the most inane and
detestable character to be found in any form of drama. He is a
combination of impudence, stupidity and sheer animal strength--mere
bone and sinew; his courage comes from his stupidity. The courage and
strength and impudence carry him through to his one victory; then his
stupidity leads him straight to destruction. He possesses not one fine
trait: he is as weak in will and intellect as he is strong in muscle.
In the 'fifties and 'sixties not only Germans but men of all other
nationalities seem to have vainly imagined they had solved all the
problems of this very diff