of an evening weeping and declaring himself a ruined man, and in a few hours gone to bed calculating the cost of throwing out bow windows to his house.  Throughout his life his resilience of spirit was one of his most amazing characteristics:  I have no doubt that in the depth of despair he would write to Liszt swearing that he only wanted solitude; and in an hour’s time he would think it might be pleasant to spend an hour with the Wesendoncks—­and go.  In the same way he longed earnestly for death while spending all his friends’ money on baths and cures and doctors, and seeing to it that Minna provided the best of everything for his table.  The pile of work remains to show his life was one of incredible industry.  Between the end of 1848 and the end of 1854 he wrote at least a dozen long pamphlets, and as many more that are not so long; he wrote the words of the Ring and composed and scored the Rhinegold, and began the music of the Valkyrie.  Further, he revised the overture to Gluck’s Iphigenia in Aulis, and reconstructed his own Faust overture.  How on earth he managed his interminable correspondence is more than I can guess.  When we bear in mind the calls upon his time by his superintendence of opera and concerts, we cannot wonder that a man who did so much, and was born a weakling, was rarely quite well, and incessantly complains of his nerves.  Yet these nerves, he wrote, gave him wonderful hours of insight.

There remains one thing to mention of these first Zurich years:  his operas were gradually spreading through Germany, and, especially, Liszt had produced Lohengrin at Weimar in 1850.  It quickly became so popular that before long Wagner could complain, or boast, that he was the only German who had not heard it.  His movements during these years can easily be traced.  Zurich remained his headquarters, but he went hither and thither, mainly in search of health.  But the chief cause of his ill-health he carried with him—­his irrepressible activity of mind.  Could some intelligent doctor have given him a dose to stop him thinking for not less than one month, he would, I verily believe, have enjoyed ten years of unbroken freedom from sickness.  These flittings are of no great interest in themselves; he never got far until his famous expedition to London in the summer of 1855.  But now it is time to take a glance at the writings of the period.

II

In the introduction I announced my intention of dealing with Wagner’s prose-writings only in so far as they reveal anything of value concerning the artist.  His theories have been explained and elucidated to death; hundreds of books have been written about them; never was a man so much explained; never did a man suffer more from the explanations.  The day when Wagner began, not to theorise, but to publish his theorisings, was an unlucky one for him.  He began with the intention, and certainly in the hope, of