m afterwards, and yet to lead to the realization of his life's dream
in Bayreuth. A bare list of the names of the friends and opponents he
gained at this time would take up more space than is available in so
brief a study as this, and I must pass over many interesting incidents.
The most important is that connected with _The Flying Dutchman_
libretto. Wagner submitted his sketches to the opera, where they were
placed at the disposal of another composer, and he was offered (I think)
L20 or nothing for them. He took the L20, and then, his artistic
conscience happily triumphing over his commercial conscience, he used
the money to live upon until he had completed his own opera on the same
subject. The French _Dutchman_ (music by Dietsch) was produced. It
failed and is forgotten. How Wagner's fared all the world knows.

_Rienzi_ was now getting ready at Dresden, and thither Wagner went in
April, 1842. The opera was produced in October, with enormous success,
and the name of Wagner became famous throughout Germany. Nowadays so
much of the music appears so very cheap and tawdry that it is only after
a severe mental struggle one can understand the enthusiasm the work
aroused. We must put away all thought of the later Wagner; we must
forget that when _Rienzi_ was produced the _Dutchman_ had already been
some time finished. We must remember the sort of music the Dresden
public had suffered under: dull, workmanlike operas, without an original
touch, without the breath of life in them--in a word, kapellmeister
music. The pomp and outward show of that remarkable heavy-weight
Spontini must have come as a relief after the Dresden opera-goer's
ordinary fare; but Spontini, though he lays on his colours with a
barbarian regal hand, never sparkles; he is altogether lacking in
vivacity, elasticity; he had no gift for gracious or piquant melody. Of
the operas of Marschner much the same must be said; in them we find the
tricks of the Romantics without the best Romantics' sense of beauty, all
the horrors of Weber without Weber's passion. Black woods, supernatural
fireworks by night, enchantments, vampires, guns that went off by
themselves--all this jugglery was fast being done to death, and what at
first had been a nerve-shaking novelty was becoming a mere tedium. In
opera _The Castle of Otranto_ was played out. Into this region of
inspissated gloom Richard burst with _Rienzi_, the brilliant, the
fearless, the tragic hero; all was blazing ligh