The French stories and articles are as good as anything Wagner wrote.  He had not yet fallen into the villainous German philosophic style, or was restrained by the consciousness that he must write in a lingo that could be translated into French.  These pieces were written for bread and bread alone in the terrible years of starvation, 1840-41. An End [of a German Musician] in Paris is full of autobiography, and intensely interesting on that account; it is interesting, too, because of its display of the naive arrogance which leads Germans to believe the whole world was made for Germans.  This German musician, for instance, arrives in Paris, where scores of French musicians—­Berlioz amongst them—­are roughing it, if not actually starving in the streets; yet he expects the French to find him employment in preference to their own countrymen, their own flesh and blood.  One can overlook that, however; and the story is pathetic and beautifully written. A Pilgrimage to Beethoven is, in its way, a masterpiece.  It also is full of self-revelation; some of it conscious, some unconscious. A Happy Evening is another charming thing; the skit on how Rossini’s Stabat Mater came to be composed is amusing, and is cruel with a cruelty that was justified.  The other articles are of no particular value, save, perhaps, that on the overture; they are of an ephemeral character and were evidently concocted when the writer was fully aware he was writing for French readers, and if he hurt French feelings or vanity, a French editor wouldn’t print, wouldn’t publish, wouldn’t pay.

The next production of any importance is his autobiographical sketch, and of this nothing need be said.  So much of it as seemed to me needful has been utilized in this book.  The account of the bringing home of Weber’s remains to Dresden from London has a perennial interest.  We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work.  Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed.  The speech delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is characteristic—­exceptionally so even for Wagner of this period, 1844—­in its assertion of the Germanity of Weber and Weber’s music; and his deep joy that at last the German musician’s bones should repose in German earth.  This topic of Germanism haunted Wagner for years, and I may have a little to say about it later.  The account of the 1846 rendering of the Choral Symphony is the most masterly exposition of the right and the wrong way of playing orchestral music to be found in any language.  Wagner’s method was, after all, very simple:  the conductor had to understand and feel the music aright, and then pains, pains, never-ending pains must be expended on coaxing, persuading, bullying or in some other way getting the band to reproduce precisely what he felt.