and a set artistic purpose which may, in the light of his subsequent achievements, be taken as an indication, a small hint, that the subsequent achievements were possible.  So much, but not more, may be conceded. Das Liebesverbot is known to me only from descriptions and brief quotations, but these suffice to show that here is not the true Wagner.  Of the orchestral music—­the overtures and the symphonies—­I have heard oftenest and studied most closely the C major Symphony.  Let us take it first.

Already I have referred to the absence of what, in the popular acceptation of the word, might be called the “romantic” element in Wagner’s daily life during this period, and the symphony supports my suggested explanation.  In the letters, in accounts written by Dorn and others, we find fire, enthusiasm, even a good deal of blatherskite and wild vapouring, but scarcely a hint of “poetry,” of the special poetical sense, of the poet’s outlook on life:  and in his music he was chiefly occupied in mastering the technical side of the craft, assimilating, and at the same time emancipating himself from, the lessons with Weinlig, and, absorbed in the task, simply letting romance, poetry, imagination, fancy and the rest go hang; his practical outward life was devoted to talking what he thought was politics and drinking lager.

Though the symphony is worth looking at because it shows how far Wagner had then got, the general interest in it has for thirty years been its history.  It has led to a deal of unnecessarily acrimonious and barren dispute.  Wagner’s disagreeable diatribes aimed subsequently at the Jews were, and are, in part attributed to Mendelssohn’s behaviour regarding it.  It was sent to Mendelssohn; and that industrious gentleman never referred to the subject.  Wherefore we are asked two things—­to contemn the Jew and accept the symphony as a manifestation of tremendous genius.  Possibly Mendelssohn never clapped eyes on the symphony.  Had he done so, one would have expected him to pay Wagner a superficial, insincere compliment about the score, and imply that something might be done, etc.  We have Richard’s written word for it that Mendelssohn never referred to Wagner’s work.  All the same, what I believe may have been the case, and what Wagner most certainly would not have believed to be the case, is that Mendelssohn saw it, and saw nothing in it, and put it on one side, and totally forgot it.  The symphony was lost for long years; but some one discovered the parts somewhere, and a score was made, and at the very end of his life Wagner directed a private performance of it.  He dismissed it with a humorously disparaging remark, and we need have heard no more about it, had not sundry gentlemen who refuse to accept any Wagner save the inspired prophet of their own imaginings insisted on having it performed in public.