more manifests that miraculous
gift of depicting, in terms of music, light and colour, a personal
emotion. We can see the flickering lights glaring amongst the trees
and feel Mime's terror.

The forge scene is one of Wagner's most stupendous efforts--for really
inspired, not mechanical, energy it is by far the greatest thing in
the opera. As Siegfried sets to work pulling the bellows, his first
call "Nothung!" (the name of the Sword) is practically the same as the
cobbler's song in the _Mastersingers_; but immediately after it goes
off into a sheer song of spring and the joy of spring; while the
bellows groan and the fire roars the feeling of growing green forest
life overflows into the music, and the intoxicating exhilaration is
expressed as only Wagner himself had expressed it before. When the
hammering business begins we again find a likeness to the Sachs music,
but what a dissimilarity from the petty tapping of Mime! Mime's
theme, and that of all the Nibelung smiths, is characteristic enough;
they are not contemptible in themselves, though through them we find
the whole tribe of these smiths to be contemptible; and the tremendous
swing of this second section of Siegfried's song makes every other
smith's song seem by comparison contemptible. Finally, when Nothung is
ready for action there is a coruscation of light from the orchestra as
the Sword theme, which, of course, we have heard long before, and the
Siegfried-the-hunter theme are blared out and the anvil is split.

Many other points must be left until later. I wish for the present to
give a notion of Wagner's powers at the time he wrote the earlier
portions of _Siegfried_. Had the whole opera been equal to these
portions it might have ranked with the _Valkyrie_. But though his
powers were not yet on the wane, as we get on we shall see that the
subject was getting a little stale. He had not the smallest hope of
seeing his work performed. If ever a man wrote purely for posterity it
was Wagner at this period; and though the general inspiration remained
as deep and powerful as ever, we cannot be surprised if the continuous
white heat of the _Valkyrie_ was checked and broken very often. The
surprising thing is that so circumstanced he achieved so much.

IV

The story of the next Act is so simple that I shall deal with it and
the music at the same time. Near Hate-cave black Alberich, who first
steals the gold, ceaselessly watches: he cannot gain the gold, but it