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A man wearied by an over-active life seeks repose in art; a man who lives a narrow, commonplace life seeks energy in art. A great artist writes a gay work when he is sad, and a sad work when he is gay, almost in spite of himself. Beethoven's symphony To Joy is the offspring of his misery; and Wagner's Meistersinger was composed immediately after the failure of Tannhäuser in Paris.

I cheerfully endeavoured to set his mind at rest by telling him of the contract I had made with Schott, who had bound himself to provide me with the necessary funds in the form of advances on my Meistersinger. This seemed to reassure him.

That this woman who so impressed Wagner was in her turn filled with admiration for his gifts appears from two letters which, during the summer of 1862, she wrote from Biebrich to her father. In one of these she speaks enthusiastically of some of the "Tristan" music. The other letter concerns "Die Meistersinger:"

For, to take only modern instances, Italy, on whose congenial soil 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and the productions it suggested met with such extraordinary success, saw also in 'Falstaff' the wittiest and most brilliant musical comedy since 'Die Meistersinger', and in 'Madama Butterfly' a lyric of infinite delicacy, free from any suggestion of unworthy emotion.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to call "Die Meistersinger" a humorous opera; for while the story of the mediaeval knight who wins the goldsmith's daughter has comic features, its chief characteristic is humor, with that undercurrent of seriousness that belongs to all masterpieces of humor.

Wagner he often listens to with pleasure, and especially the "Meistersinger," which is his pet opera. Of Italian operas Verdi's "Aida" and Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" are those he is most disposed to hear. He has been laughed at for once attempting musical composition.

Had he been caught, like his friends, and, like them, imprisoned during these years, it is not likely that the world would now possess those seven monuments of his ripest genius, "Rheingold," "Die Walküre," "Siegfried," "Götterdämmerung," "Tristan and Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," and "Parsifal."

The Hackleton apprentice was still a child when the great Goethe was again adding to the then artificial literature of his country his own true predecessor, Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nürnberg, the friend of Luther, the meistersinger of the Reformation.

In the same way Wagner was a mere continuator of Weber in "Lohengrin" and "Tannhaeuser", and first came to his own in the "Meistersinger" and "Tristan", after years of meditation in Switzerland. This period for Oscar Wilde began with his marriage; the freedom from sordid anxieties allowed him to lift up his head and be himself.

I also came across Friedrich Uhl again, an old acquaintance who was now editing a political paper called Der Botschafter with Julius Frobel under Schmerling's auspices. He placed his journal at my disposal, and made me give him the first act of the libretto of Meistersinger for his feuilleton. Whereupon my friends chose to think that Hanslick grew more and more venomous.