ns to huge proportions, as does also his instinct to dispense
entirely with higher law and _style_. The elementary factors--sound,
movement, colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music--suffice.
Wagner never calculates as a musician with a musician's conscience, all he
strains after is effect, nothing more than effect. And he knows what he
has to make an effect upon!--In this he is as unhesitating as Schiller was,
as any theatrical man must be; he has also the latter's contempt for the
world which he brings to its knees before him. A man is an actor when he
is ahead of mankind in his possession of this one view, that everything
which has to strike people as true, must not be true. This rule was
formulated by Talma: it contains the whole psychology of the actor, it
also contains--and this we need not doubt--all his morality. Wagner's music
is never true.

--But it is supposed to be so: and thus everything is as it should be. As
long as we are young, and Wagnerites into the bargain, we regard Wagner as
rich, even as the model of a prodigal giver, even as a great landlord in
the realm of sound. We admire him in very much the same way as young
Frenchmen admire Victor Hugo--that is to say, for his "royal liberality."
Later on we admire the one as well as the other for the opposite reason:
as masters and paragons in economy, as _prudent_ amphitryons. Nobody can
equal them in the art of providing a princely board with such a modest
outlay.--The Wagnerite, with his credulous stomach, is even sated with the
fare which his master conjures up before him. But we others who, in books
as in music, desire above all to find _substance_, and who are scarcely
satisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off.
In plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His
recitative--very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth--I christened
"_alla genovese_": I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this
remark, but rather the _older recitativo_, the _recitativo secco_. And as
to Wagnerian _leitmotif_, I fear I lack the necessary culinary
understanding for it. If hard pressed, I might say that I regard it
perhaps as an ideal toothpick, as an opportunity of ridding one's self of
what remains of one's meal. Wagner's "arias" are still left over. But now
I shall hold my tongue.

9.

Even in his general sketch of the action, Wagner is above all an actor.
The first thing that occurs to hi