m which shows how closely he sympathized with
Bach and Handel in his musical tendencies. He died while at the very
zenith of his powers, and we may well believe that a longer life would
have developed much richer beauty in his compositions. Short as his
career was, however, he left a great number of magnificent works, which
entitle him to a place among the Titans of music.

RICHARD WAGNER.

I.

It is curious to note how often art-controversy has become edged with
a bitterness rivaling even the gall and venom of religious dispute.
Scholars have not yet forgotten the fiery war of words which raged
between Richard Bentley and his opponents concerning the authenticity
of the "Epistles of Phalaris," nor how literary Germany was divided into
two hostile camps by Wolf's attack on the personality of Homer. It is
no less fresh in the minds of critics how that modern Jupiter, Lessing,
waged a long and bitter battle with the Titans of the French
classical drama, and finally crushed them with the thunderbolt of the
"Dramaturgie;" nor what acrimony sharpened the discussion between
the rival theorists in music, Gluck and Piccini, at Paris. All of the
intensity of these art-campaigns, and many of the conditions of
the last, enter into the contest between Richard Wagner and the
_Italianissimi_ of the present day.

The exact points at issue were for a long time so befogged by the smoke
of the battle that many of the large class who are musically interested,
but never had an opportunity to study the question, will find an
advantage in a clear and comprehensive sketch of the facts and
principles involved. Until recently, there were still many people who
thought of Wagner as a youthful and eccentric enthusiast, all afire with
misdirected genius, a mere carpet-knight on the sublime battle-field
of art, a beginner just sowing his wild-oats in works like "Lohengrin,"
"Tristan and Iseult," or the "Rheingold." It is a revelation full of
suggestive value for these to realize that he is a musical thinker, ripe
with sixty years of labor and experience; that he represents the rarest
and choicest fruits of modern culture, not only as musician, but as poet
and philosopher; that he is one of the few examples in the history of
the art where massive scholarship and the power of subtile analysis
have been united, in a preeminent degree, with great creative genius.
Preliminary to a study of what Wagner and his disciples entitle the
"Artwork o