Outside his musicianship the man had interests in everything human—­in painting, sculpture, drama, poetry and prose.  He made what we consider mistakes, as what man does not who is a product of a period of passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?—­but how few they are!  They hardly count.  He absorbed all the culture of all the centuries.  The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were the English.  Hardly a great book had been written which he did not know familiarly.  There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in Europe he did not know.  All came as grist to his mill.  I end this book by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest minds the ages have produced—­the equal of Shakespeare, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Michael Angelo:  a man it is an honour to have known as it is a disgrace to have scorned—­the one man born into the last century that one can absolutely, without reservation, praise.

INDEX

Abendzeitung (Dresden), 75

Apel, August, 41, 51

Auber, D.F.E., Masaniello, 47, 89; compared with Meyerbeer, 67, 68

Avenarius, Eduard, marries Caecilie Geyer, 72

Bakunin, Michael, 136, 196

Baumgaertner, Wilhelm, 209

Bayreuth, 71, 323, 325-329, 400, 407, 409, 410

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 25, 26, 330, 331, 347, 350, 356, 371, 408, 416; his influence on Wagner, 33-35, 42, 62; arrangements of, by Wagner, 37; Fidelio, 148

Bellini, Vincenzo, 50, 92, 116, 150, 178

Bennett, Joseph, 328

Berlioz, Hector,
 Wagner’s criticism on, 71; tragedy of his life, 72; praises the Flying Dutchman, 128; in London, 225; his relations with Wagner, 226; his “Ride to the Abyss,” 370

Bethmann, Heinrich, 52, 54

Bispham, David, 277

Brahms, Johannes, 164

Brangaena, 245-248

Brazil,
 Wagner receives a commission from, 230, 237

Brendel, Karl Franz, 50, 218

Brockhaus, Friedrich, marries Louise Wagner, 32

Buelow, Cosima von, and Wagner, 60, 323-325

Buelow, Hans von, 71, 250, 418; serves his apprenticeship under Wagner, 208; married to Cosima Liszt, 323, 324

Communication to my Friends, 219

Cornelius, Peter, 71, 418

Cusins, W.G., 46, 134

Dannreuther, Edward, 37, 67

Davison, J.W., 46

Dietsch, Pierre, 80

Dorn, Heinrich, 32, 37, 39, 40, 57

Dusk of the Gods, The, 178, 188, 325, 356, 373, 398; analysis and criticism, 400-406

Dvorak, Anton, compared with Wagner, 291, 292

Elgar, Sir Edward, 291

End in Paris, An, 212, 213

Europa, 75

Feen, Die, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 60-63. 72, 86, 93, 137