These five years had been for him profitable.  He got the best part of his education at Dresden, where he had skilful and sympathetic masters; and almost, one may say, without knowing it he had received an informal musical education which was profoundly to affect him as soon as he started writing operas.  I mean that he constantly attended the opera while Weber was conductor, and Weber, who had been a friend of Geyer’s, used to call at the house to pass the time of day with the widow.  Richard looked up to him with awe and worshipped every bar of his music; and this, together with a knowledge of the road Richard was soon to take and of what he was to become, makes one wonder that he had not already decided to compose another Freischuetz.  But, as I have said, the theatre—­that is, the theatre with the spoken drama—­was his first love; and evidently it had a wondrous hold on him, for after spending a rapturous evening with Freischuetz—­first given in Leipzig in 1822—­he would return contentedly to his tragedy.  It took a stronger spirit even than Weber’s to awaken the musical side of his nature.  But unconsciously the foundation had been laid, as we shall have ample reason to understand before long.  These years at Dresden, too, are noteworthy, inasmuch as they saw the beginning of some friendships, at least one of which was to prove lifelong and invaluable to Richard.

III

When the family settled again in Leipzig one Ludwig van Beethoven died (March 1827), and Wagner heard of this composer, it is said, for the first time.  It is all but unimaginable, yet there seems no reason to doubt it.  After all, that was not an age of halfpenny morning and evening papers, and if composers were boomed the deed was accomplished tranquilly in the houses of great society leaders, dukes and archbishops, and the general public knew little of what was going on.  I dare say even in our newspaper age many a clever boy of fourteen has never heard of Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do:  the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages.  So there is the amazing fact:  Wagner, who worshipped Weber’s operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber.  The great hour was at hand.

First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and disappointment.  At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters, and had worked hard.  His own account of the methods, temper, and intellectual qualifications of his masters seems to me eminently reasonable.  Their aim was to bring out whatever was best in their pupils.  His account of his first masters at Leipzig similarly