it, and saw nothing in it, and put it on one side, and totally
forgot it. The symphony was lost for long years; but some one
discovered the parts somewhere, and a score was made, and at the very
end of his life Wagner directed a private performance of it. He
dismissed it with a humorously disparaging remark, and we need have
heard no more about it, had not sundry gentlemen who refuse to accept
any Wagner save the inspired prophet of their own imaginings insisted
on having it performed in public.

I have, I say, heard it fairly often and beg to testify that it is a
miracle of dullness. The themes are not good of their sort, the sort
being, as he said, the sort that are useful for contrapuntal working.
That working is coldly mechanical, and is not distinguished either by
lightness or by sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils
could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither
grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got
along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the
finale. Here we find at least sturdiness if not much character.

This criticism of his boyish work is not a disparagement of Wagner:
one might as well, indeed, disparage Shakespeare, or Beethoven, or the
sun and all the stars in heaven. The symphony tells us, as plainly as
words could tell, two things. First, that as far as craftsmanship is
concerned he fell between two stools: had his aim been lower, it would
have been also less confused, and the result would have turned out
better. That is, had he thought only of composing a well-constructed
symphony, with skilful, easy-running counterpoint, he might have
produced a more obviously clever if more superficial work. That aim
was missed by the fact that the Wagner who knew Beethoven by heart was
not at all content to achieve mere cleverness: he, too, wanted to
write a great symphony. But that ambition also was vague and robbed of
its force by his instinctive struggle to acquire a thorough technique.
So he showed himself neither a great poet-composer nor a contrapuntal
adept. The second fact so plainly stated in the symphony is that he
had not discovered what was to be the real driving force of his
invention throughout his creative career--the inspiration of a
dramatic or pictorial (not poetic) idea. The poetic idea is the
inspiration of the composer of pure, "absolute," music--the poetic
idea which is interpenetrated by the musical idea, the m