itten so magnificently about
the ecstatic state of Palestrina and such of the other church
composers as he knew, that he must, absolutely must, have realised
that his _Parsifal_ stuff was essentially untrue. Theatrically, the
end of the Second Act sounds true; but it will not bear rehearing. The
opening of the Third Act, again, is false; and the ending of the whole
business is tawdry stuff such as Meyerbeer might have been proud to
sign. Technically, the old man retained his hand; but to compare this
decrepit stuff with the music of the _Valkyrie_ would be preposterous,
and I have no wish to write more about it.

II

_Parsifal_ having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to
arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans
bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he
imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a
financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful
unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony
in C, worked away at his _Parsifal_ arrangements; his heart ruptured
and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded
life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can
do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death
sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man
could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a
prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest
detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid
her hair by his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests
there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending?
We must regard _Parsifal_ as the last sad quaverings of a beloved
friend: after that came peace, immortal peace.

III

Amongst musicians of the first rank stand four commanding, tremendous
figures. First comes Handel, by far the greatest personality of them
all: him I beg permission to think the greatest man who has yet
lived--greater than Caesar or Napoleon. After him came Gluck, a
triumphant bourgeois; then Beethoven, whose domination was the result
of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose
supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or
a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time;
he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pu