hought and
emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions
which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her.
The first (_a_, p. 191) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner
invented; the third (_d_)--not second--is a thing any one might have
concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use
as Wagner uses it; the second (_c_) is by way of being a study for the
best of the _Parsifal_ themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that
the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely
exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state
of decrepitude.

The leitmotiv (_a_) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a
little bit (_b_) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from
the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than
anything else, which gives _Lohengrin_ the vividness of reality
combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of
the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off
mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as
delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his
brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but
the land of ever-enduring dawn--a land that other poets have dreamed
of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end
Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this
strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would
tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that
reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is
conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to
inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in
obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly
as a needle drawn by a magnet.

The prelude opens with a series of chords, ascending, all on A. Handel
might have done this: none of the Viennese composers could, or perhaps
I should rather say, would, have done it. Beethoven got as near to the
naked truth as ever composer did in dealing with the emotions of
humanity; Mozart, too, worked his miracles; Weber, non-Viennese
though he was, gave us weird, fantastic pictures of fairy adventures
in the darkness of grim woods, but nothing more. It was left for
Wagner to give us in a few bars a picture, such as no painter could
have painted, of the blue heav