at
the Schopenhauerian, Feuerbachian notions working in Wagner's brain
when he planned the _Ring_, and wrote its finest music; in art--as in
business, if it comes to that--one judges by results and results only.
But we can see that it was these ridiculous ideas, as perhaps I have
already pointed out, that were the postilion's whip to Wagner's
Pegasus. Of some men it can be said that no one knows anything of the
postilion's whip: of every artist concerning whom a fair tail of facts
is available and consultable we find a very distinct whip. We may
laugh at the idea of the "stories" to which Beethoven worked: who
would laugh at the Fifth Symphony would not even be laughed at. And I
have not the slightest hesitation in affirming that when Wagner set
to work on _Parsifal_ his most eager and greedy desire was to show the
world that he desired nothing. Knowing Bayreuth a failure, fancying
his whole life a failure, from a particular point of view, one idea
seized hold on him--- the idea that those who did not like his music
were in a pitiable condition, and compassion exhorted him to rescue
them, to redeem them. He meant to heap coals of fire upon a generation
that refused to recognise him as a prophet. He did it--with a double
vengeance: he made the detractors come to his knees and he made a
fortune out of them--them alone. For Bayreuth never became a
profitable investment for Jewish money until the one great Christian
drama of modern times was produced there.

_Parsifal_, in one form or another, had long fermented in Wagner's
brain. At first it was--incongruous though the thing may seem--either
_Jesus of Nazareth_ or _Wieland the Smith_; then _Parzival_ grew out
of the Siegfried idea; and at length, stimulated by the attentions and
help of poor Ludwig, he settled on _Parsifal_. These are matters not
of opinion, but of historical fact. Ludwig, when not masquerading in
woman's clothing, or ordering it from Paris, or appearing at private
performances in one opera or another, suffered from great attacks of
religion; and, unhappily for the art of music, what appealed to his
diseased brain from one side appealed to Wagner's tired brain from the
other side. Ludwig asked him to complete _Parsifal_ and he did so. I
doubt whether without the royal request he ever would have done so.
But in doing so he, as Americans say, "struck lucky." Throughout
Western Europe you have only to bawl the word "religion" and your
fortune is made; in Am