{1} “Joh.  Christophori Wagenseilii De Sacri Rom.  Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio.  Accedit, De Germaniae Phonascorum Von Der Meister-Singer Origine, Praestantia, Utilitate, et Institutis, Sermone Vernaculo Liber.  Altdorf Noricorum Typis Impensisque Jodoci Wilhelmi Kohlesii.  Cid ICD xcvii.”

{2} I quote from Wagenseil’s book—­he is writing about the history of the mastersingers:  “Nach der Stadt Mayntz, hat in den Statten Nurnberg und Strassburg / die Meister-Singer-Kunst sonderlich floriret / wie dann auchXII.  Alte Nurnbergische Meister annoch im Beruff sind; so mit Namen geheissen / 1.  Veit Pogner. 2.  Cuntz Vogelgesang. 3.  Hermann Ortel. 4.  Conrad Nachtigal. 5.  Fritz Zorn. 6.  Sixtus Beckmesser. 7.  Fritz Kohtner. 8.  Niclaus Vogel. 9.  Augustin Moser. 10.  Hannss Schwartz. 11.  Ulrich Eisslinger. 12.  Hannss Foltz.”

{3} “In the musical contest it is only the perverted idea of Classicism which is treated with contumely and routed; the glorification of the triumph of Romanticism is found in the stupendously pompous and brilliant setting given to the mastersingers’ music at the end.  You see already in this prelude that Wagner is a true comedian.  He administers chastisement with a smile and chooses for its subject only things which are temporary aberrations from the good.  What is strong, and true, and pure, and wholesome in the art of the mastersingers he permits to pass through his satirical fires unscathed.  Classicism, in its original sense as the conservator of that which is highest and best in art, he leaves unharmed, presenting her after her trial, as Tennyson presents his Princess at the close of his corrective poem, when

                                “All
  Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
  And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
  Than in her mould that other, when she came
  From barren deeps to conquer all with love.”

—­“Studies in the Wagnerian Drama,” by H. E. Krehbiel, p. 95.

CHAPTER XVI

“Lohengrin”

In the last hundred lines of the last book of his epic poem to which Wagner went for the fundamental incidents, not principles, of his “Parsifal,” Wolfram von Eschenbach tells the story of one of the Grail King’s sons whom he calls Loherangrin.  This son was a lad when Parzival (thus Wolfram spells the name) became King of the Holy Grail and the knights who were in its service.  When he had grown to manhood, there lived in Brabant a queen who was equally gifted in beauty, wealth, and gentleness.  Many princes sought her hand in marriage, but she refused them all, and waited for the coming of one whom God had disclosed to her in a vision.  One day a knight of great beauty and nobley, as Sir Thomas Mallory would have said, came to Antwerp in a boat drawn by a swan.  To him the queen at once gave greeting as lord of her dominions; but in the presence of the