the Dresden idol of
his boyhood by calling attention to "the still very noticeable
connection" of his early work, "Tannhaeuser," with "the operas of my
predecessors, among whom I name especially Weber," He might have
mentioned others,--Gluck, for instance, who curbed the vanity of the
singers, and taught them that they were not "the whole show;" Marschner,
whose grewsome "Hans Heiling" Wagner had in mind when he wrote his
"Flying Dutchman;" Auber, whose "Masaniello," with its dumb heroine,
taught Wagner the importance and expressiveness of pantomimic music, of
which there are such eloquent examples in all his operas. During his
three and a half years' sojourn in Paris, just at the opening of his
career as an opera composer (1839-1842), he learned many things
regarding operatic scenery, machinery, processions, and details, which
he subsequently turned to good account. Even Meyerbeer, the ruler of the
musical world in Paris at that time, was not without influence on him,
though he had cause to disapprove of him because of his submission to
the demands of the fashionable taste of the day, which contrasted so
strongly with Wagner's own courageous defiance of everything
inconsistent with his ideals of art. The result to-day--Meyerbeer's fall
and Wagner's triumph--shows that courage, like honesty, is, in the long
run, the best policy, and, like virtue, its own reward.

It is important to bear in mind all these lessons that Wagner learned
from his predecessors, as it helps to explain the enormous influence he
exerted on his contemporaries. Wonderful as was the power and
originality of his genius, even he could not have achieved such results
had he not had truth on his side,--truth, as hinted at, in moments of
inspiration, by many of his predecessors.

Wagner was most shamefully misrepresented by his enemies during his
lifetime. A thousand times they wrote unblushingly that he despised and
abused the great masters, whereas in truth no one ever spoke of them
more enthusiastically than he, or was more eager to learn of them,
though, to be sure, he was honest and courageous enough also to call
attention to their shortcomings. In all his autobiographic writings
there is not a more luminous passage than the following, in which he
relates his experiences as conductor at the Riga Opera in 1838, when he
was at work on "Rienzi":--

"The peculiar gnawing melancholy which habitually overpowered me when I
conducted one of our ordinary