as ask why the legs were not all in pairs, like
the horns and eyes, so long as I saw in the animal's habits a certain
congruity, a conformity to what I would willingly regard as
Jabberwock nature. But who can pretend to believe in a ship which
comes against the rocks in a storm and anchors there while the captain
goes ashore to see whether shipwreck is imminent? That the majority of
opera-goers cannot live near the sea is self-evident, and that few of
them should ever have seen a shipwreck unavoidable; but surely anyone
who has crossed the Channel must have a vague suspicion that to place
this vessel against the rocks in a tempest is the last thing a seaman
would dream of doing, and that, if he were driven there and managed to
get ashore, he would call his men after him (if they needed calling),
and trouble neither about casting anchor nor going aboard again. The
thing is ludicrously stagy. I suppose that Wagner was too sea-sick to
observe what happened during his weeks of roughing it in the North
Sea. But the second scene is admirable. That monotonous drowsy hum of
the Spinning song is exactly what is needed to put one in the mood for
sympathising with Senta and her dreams. With the third there is an
occasional return to the bad stagecraft of Scribe; but there are also
hints of the simple directness of the later Wagner.

The music is like the stagecraft: now and then simply dramatic, now
and then stagily undramatic; sometimes rich and splendid, sometimes
threadbare and vulgar. And by this I do not mean that the
old-fashioned set pieces are of necessity bad, and the freer portions
necessarily good. Good and bad may be found in the new and the old
Wagner alike. That sailor's dance is to me as odious as anything in
Meyerbeer, and the melody which ends the love-duet is scarcely more
tolerable. On the other hand, not even in "The Valkyrie" did Wagner
write more picturesquely weird music than most of the first act. The
shrilling of the north wind, the roaring of the waves, the creaking of
cordage, the banging of booms, an uncanny sound in a dismal night at
sea,--these are suggested with wonderful vividness. At times Wagner
gives us gobbets of unassimilated Weber and Beethoven, but some
passages are as original as they are magnificent. The finest bars
in the work are those in which Senta declares her faith in her
"mission," and the Dutchman yields himself to unreasoning adoration.
Other moods came to Wagner, but never again t