ting
words to set to music. An animadversion on the length of the speeches
would be perfectly just if the drama were meant to be spoken; as the
drama is meant to be sung, it is irrelevant and silly. Now, it is idle
to say, in answer to all this, that Wagner proves the truth of his
premisses by the deductions he draws in the drama, as in Euclid a
proposition is stated to be a truth and then proved to be a truth. In
Wagner nothing is proved. Accept his premisses, and you understand the
subsequent drama; wait for the premisses to be proved true, and there is
no drama for you to understand--no drama, but a series of incoherent,
unrelated and inconsequent incidents. Finally, we all know that when a
man tumbles over a high precipice he is killed. Suppose that in a
melodrama the villain tumbled and is killed. Would some wise
commentator write, "The master here proves the wickedness of villainy,
and shows conclusively how it always meets with its just punishment, for
the villain tumbles over a precipice and is, if we mistake not, killed.
It is true the same fate unfortunately overtakes the hero, but the
circumstances and the moral are different. The villain met his just
reward; an unlucky accident befell the hero. Underlying this is the
profounder truth that when men--and we will even say women--fall off
high places, they get killed or seriously hurt"? This is on a par with
the "truths" and "morals" found in the _Ring_.

Throughout the _Ring_ Wagner fairly let himself go in the matter of
gorgeous, riotous colour in depicting Nature--the earth, the waters,
clouds, and the working of the elements. He had ampler opportunities
than any of his previous works afforded. He had not, as before, to place
his characters in a scene, to arrange a background for them. Many of the
characters are the elements typified--the water-nymphs, the giants,
Donner, Loge, Erda. Wotan himself rides on the tempest, surrounded with
fearful lightnings; the Valkyrie maidens ride through the air on
supernatural horses amidst thunder and wind and rain. The whole action
takes place in the open air, or in the bowels of the earth, or the
depths of the Rhine; mountain and storm-lashed woods, dismal caverns and
chasms, the broad river, are always before us. Two scenes take place
under a man-made roof: in the first act of _The Valkyrie_ we have
Hunding's rough hut, built round an ash-tree, which penetrates the top,
and its branches sway and dash together above the a