o souls, the value of
which work, to be sure, is slightly vitiated when we remember that the
same arguments were used, in Seventeen Hundred One, by Bishop Volberg,
in showing that women were in a like predicament.

And now Henry T. Finck has compiled a list of more than one hundred
names of musical critics who placed themselves on record in opposition
to Richard Wagner and his music. Only such men as proved themselves past
masters in density and adepts in abuse are given a place in this Academy
of Immortals.

No writer, musician or artist who ever lived brought down on his head
an equal amount of contumely and disparagement as did Richard Wagner.
Turner, Millet and Rodin have been let off lightly compared with the
fate that was Wagner's; and even the shrill outcry that was raised in
Boston at sight of MacMonnies' Bacchante was a passing zephyr to the
storm that broke over the head of Wagner in Paris, when, after one
hundred sixteen rehearsals, "Tannhauser" was produced.

The derisive laughter, catcalls, shouts, hisses and uproar that greeted
the play were only the shadow of the criticisms that filled the daily
press, done by writers who mistook their own anserine limitations for
inanity on the part of the composer. They scorned the melody they could
not appreciate, like men who deny the sounds they can not hear; or those
who might revile the colors they could not distinguish. And worse than
all this, the aristocratic hoodlums refused to allow any one else to
enjoy, and would not tolerate the thought that that which to them was
"jumbling discord, seven times confounded" might be a succession of
harmonies to one whose perceptions were more fully developed.

Wagner himself only escaped personal violence by discreetly keeping out
of sight. The result of the Paris experiment was that the poor man lost
nearly a year's time, all of his modest savings were gone, creditors
dogged his footsteps, and the unanimous tone of the critics, for a time,
almost made him doubt his own sanity. What if the critics were really
right?

And this, we must remember, was in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one, when
Wagner was forty-eight years of age.

That even a strong man should doubt his value when he finds a world of
learned men arrayed against him is not strange. Every man who works in a
creative way craves approbation. Some one must approve. After the first
fever of ecstasy there comes the reaction, when the pulse beats slow and
the mind is f