his years, as
well as many grown men, he fancied his talk would do something to put
the world and society right. But in no picture of his life at this
time that I have come across is there any hint of the poetic
atmosphere in which he should have lived. Surely in those days before
his health broke down, with his fervid imagination, his intimacy with
the masterworks of music and poetry, he must have drawn in a richer
air than the reek of a Leipzig cafe, his inner vision must have seen a
diviner light than the common light of the stodgy Leipzig streets,
with his inner ear he must have heard a music sweeter than the hoarse
arguments of students half-filled with lager-beer. In the accounts of
this time there is not--to use the phrase colloquially--a touch of
romance. Even his letters are stodgy. My surmise is that just as in
his boyhood the musical part of his nature lay latent and unsuspected
until Beethoven's music awoke it, so now the poetic part lay fallow
awhile, and he worked away at the technical side of his music,
mastering form and conventional development of themes, and in his
leisure spent his excess of energy in talking politics and
metaphysics. The C Symphony of the period can now be seen by all and
has often been played; and it supports my view very forcibly. When I
say there is no hint of Wagner in it I do not mean that the
phraseology does not resemble that of the later Wagner--one could
hardly expect that; I do mean that from _Die Feen_ onward there is
always atmosphere, always emotion and colour, in his music; while the
symphony is as bald, as unpoetical, as any mean street in Kennington.
I do not doubt that he had his poetic dreams, because with such a
nature he could not help it; but he must have been temporarily
indifferent to them, absorbed in mastering the purely technical part
of his business. If we compare the letters of the time with, say,
Keats's and Shelley's, it is startling to find him enthusing over the
affairs of the parish and seemingly turning his back on the great
thoughts of life, on life's colour, romance, poetry--call it what we
like. About the Poles he is enthusiastic and fiery enough. Hundreds of
these heroes passed through Leipzig, living on charity as they went to
their new homes in all quarters of the globe--where many of their
descendants live on charity to this day. Richard wept over their
griefs, and got the idea for a "Polonia" overture; and his ardour was
sufficiently hot to