of the nineteenth century:  therefore it was generally agreed that the gift of melodic invention had been denied him by a merciful Providence, who reserved that gift for the Jews and their friends.  He could hold neither his tongue nor his pen; if a bull may be excused, he replied before he was attacked, he hit back before he was struck.  Proud as Satan, and through his pride a beggar; giving the world unheard-of delights, and yet dependent on the world for his bread; quarrelling with his friends, picking quarrels with his supposed enemies, quarrelling with his wife, running away with the wife of his best friend, theorising about his art and promptly throwing his theories overboard, declaring he would never allow excerpts from his operas to be given, nor even one single opera of the Ring to be given, and then allowing single operas to be given and conducting excerpts himself—­there never was in the world such a mass of contradictions as this musical apostle of universal peace born during the Napoleonic wars of 1813.

All this we may joyfully concede, knowing how much may be said on the other side.  Wagner not only was the most stupendous personage born into the nineteenth century:  he was also one of the noblest, most generous men that have lived.  There is not a mean trait in his character.  He endured privation, actual starvation; he was shamefully treated; his wife did not believe in his genius; his simplest actions were misinterpreted; frantic endeavours were made to hound him out of the public life of opera; his publishers took advantage of his poverty to try to rob him; the scores of his masterpieces were returned unopened from theatres—­in some cases they were not returned, and he had infinite difficulty to secure them; moreover, he was ill all his life:  yet he never lost faith in mankind, and when he became, comparatively, a well-to-do man he went on doing generous deeds as though nothing had happened.  With humbugs and pretenders he would have no dealings; but no genuine young artist ever asked his help in vain.  He spared even that rancorous decadent Nietzsche; he owned his obligations to that soul of chivalry, Liszt.  He spared that mediocre person Meyerbeer; he treated Mendelssohn with almost exaggerated courtesy.  He fought a terrific fight with all the forces of reaction and stupidity, and he came through untainted, unstained; if he sorely belaboured the charlatans, he had all the finest musicians, and all other fine artists, on his side.  The composer who won and held the friendship and esteem of such men as Liszt, Cornelius, Jensen, Tausig and Buelow, not to mention the admiration of our own Swinburne, is not a man to be dismissed by enumerating his defects.  Some of us, I suppose, will admit that we may possibly have our defects:  none of us, so far as I know, can possibly claim his great qualities.