pear was shattered, and now that the Ring is returned to the
Rhine no other power controls Loge. He flares up, and we see Valhalla
on high in flames.

So ends the _Dusk of the Gods_ and the whole gigantic cycle. A noble
race has come and gone, and the world is prepared to make a fresh
start. I have discussed the music as we went along, and there is
nothing more to add.

CHAPTER XVIII

'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN

I

After Wagner had completed the _Ring_, a work which, in regard to its
gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he
was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous
musician--more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or
Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph
than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had
dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have
dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as
his lackey--and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth
festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person
could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors
to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much
of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all;
Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of _his_
Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take
these three because they are three of the most successful financial
composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be
added. That is what they would have done: made a little money they
did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more
successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or
ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in
proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they
were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub,
it may be remarked, was a preciously comfortable one, and he made no
pretence about it being anything else. He was a successful man of
business; in spirit he was broken, exhausted, defeated.

That is the first point to be considered; the next is a corollary.
This man of dashed, broken hopes still needed the driving force of
either human passions, griefs or sorrows, or of great human ideals,
before he could compose ten notes. It is no desire of mine to scoff