to Othello, Ulick eagerly
accepted the challenge, and like one sure of his adversary's life, began
the attack.

Wagner had been all his life dreaming of an opera with a subjective
hero. Christ first and then Buddha had suggested themselves as likely
subjects. He had gone so far as to make sketches for both heroes, but
both subjects had been rejected as unpractical, and he had fallen back
on a pretty mediaeval myth, and had shot into a pretty mediaeval myth all
the material he had accumulated for the other dramas, whose heroes were
veritable heroes, men who had accomplished great things, men who had
preached great doctrines and whose lives were symbols of their
doctrines. The result of pouring this old wine into the new bottle was
to burst the bottle.

In neither Christ nor Buddha did the question of sex arise, and that was
the reason that Wagner eventually rejected both. He was as full of
sex--mysterious, sub-conscious sex--as Rossetti himself. In Christ's
life there is the Magdalen, but how naturally harmonious, how implicit
in the idea, are their relations, how concentric; but how excentric
(using the word in its grammatical sense) are the relations of Parsifal
to Kundry.... A redeemer is chaste, but he does not speak of his
chastity nor does he think of it; he passes the question by. The figure
of Christ is so noble, that whether God or man or both, it seems to us
in harmony that the Magdalen should bathe his feet and wipe them with
her hair, but the introduction of the same incident into "Parsifal"
revolts. As Parsifal merely killed a swan and refused to be kissed--the
other preached a doctrine in which beauty and wisdom touch the highest
point, and his life was an exemplification of his doctrine of
non-resistance--"Take ye and eat, for this is my body, and this is my
blood."

In "Parsifal" there was only the second act which he could admire
without enormous reservations. The writing in the chorus of the "Flower
Maidens" was, of course, irresistible--little cries, meaningless by
themselves, but, when brought together, they created an enchanted
garden, marvellous and seductive. But it was the duet that followed that
compelled his admiration. Music hardly ever more than a recitative,
hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes
merely served to lift the words, to impregnate them with more terrible
and subtle meaning; and the subdued harmonies enfolded them in an
atmosphere, a sensual moo