ly that the world missed his
wisdom and thought that he was just a beggar playing tunes in the
street. A generation ago he was commonly said to be too tuney, as you
might say that a flower was too flowery. People would no more consider
him than they would consider the lilies of the field. They preferred
Wagner in all his glory.

Even now you can enjoy _The Magic Flute_ as a more than usually absurd
musical comedy with easy, old-fashioned tunes. You can enjoy it anyway,
if you are not solemn about it, as you can enjoy _Hamlet_ for a bloody
melodrama. But, like _Hamlet_, it has depths and depths of meaning
beyond our full comprehension. Papageno is a pantomime figure, but he is
also one of the greatest figures in the drama of the world. He is
everyman, like Hamlet, if only we had the wit to recognize ourselves in
him. Or rather he is that element in us which we all like and despise in
others, but which we will never for one moment confess to in
ourselves--the coward, the boaster, the liar, but the child of nature.
He, because he knows himself for all of these, can find his home in
Sarostro's paradise. He does not want Sarostro's high wisdom; what he
does want is a Papagena, an Eve, a child of nature like himself; and she
is given to him. He has the wit to recognize his mate, almost a bird
like himself, and to them Mozart gives their bird-duet, so that, when
they sing it, we feel that we might all sing it together. It is not
above our capacity of understanding or delight. The angel has learnt our
earthly tongue, but transformed it so that he makes a heaven of the
earth, a heaven that is not too high or difficult for us, a wild-wood
heaven, half-absurd, in which we can laugh as well as sing, and in which
the angels will laugh at us and with us, laugh our silly sorrows into
joy.

There is Mozart himself in Papageno, the faun domesticated and sweetened
by centuries of Christian experience, yet still a faun and always ready
to play a trick on human solemnity; and in this paradise which Mozart
makes for us the faun has his place and a beauty not incongruous with
it, like the imps and gargoyles of a Gothic church. At any moment the
music will turn from sublimity into fun, and in a moment it can turn
back to sublimity; and always the change seems natural. It is like a
great cathedral with High Mass and children playing hide-and-seek behind
the pillars; and the Mass would not be itself without the children. That
is the mind of M